, which yielded him a salary of about L50 a-year, he retained
till 1847, when he was led to tender his resignation. In his
seventy-first year he returned to his original trade, after being thirty
years occupied with literary concerns. He died suddenly on the 30th July
1853, at the advanced age of seventy-seven.

A man of strong intellect and vigorous imagination, John Struthers was
industrious in his trade, and persevering as an author, yet he failed to
obtain a competency for the winter of life; his wants, however, were
few, and he never sought to complain. Inheriting pious dispositions from
his parents, he excelled in familiarity with the text of Scripture, and
held strong opinions on the subject of morality. Educated in the
communion of the Original Secession Church, he afterwards joined the
Establishment, and ultimately retired from it at the Disruption in 1843.
He was a zealous member of the Free Church, and being admitted to the
eldership, was on two occasions sent as a representative to the General
Assembly of that body. An enthusiast respecting the beauties of external
nature, he was in the habit of undertaking lengthened pedestrian
excursions into the country, and took especial delight in rambling by
the sea-shore, or climbing the mountain-tops. His person was tall and
slight, though abundantly muscular, and capable of undergoing the toil
of extended journeys. Three times married, he left a widow, who has
lately emigrated to America; of his children two sons and two daughters
survive.

Besides the works already enumerated, Struthers was the author of other
compositions, both in prose and verse. He wrote an octavo pamphlet of 96
pages in favour of National Church Establishments; contributed memoirs
of James Hogg, minister of Carnock, and Principal Robertson to the
_Christian Instructor_, and prepared various lives of deceased worthies,
which were included in the "Illustrious and Distinguished Scotsmen,"
edited by Mr Robert Chambers. At the period of his death, he was engaged
in preparing a continuation of his "History of Scotland," to the era of
the Disruption; he also meditated the publication of a volume of essays.
His poetical works, which appeared at various intervals, were
re-published in 1850, in two duodecimo volumes, with an interesting
autobiographical sketch. Of his poems those most deserving of notice,
next to the "Sabbath," are "The House of Mourning, or the Peasant's
Death," and "The Plough," both