ife he had been seeking.

There is no one in the long line of great Scottish Churchmen whose
memory deserves more honour than James Melville, or inspires so much
affection, so gracious was his spirit, so pure his character, so
disinterested his aims. With the solitary exception which we need not
name, there was no one in his own day who rendered better or more varied
service to the Church and to the country. For many years he was his
uncle's right-hand man as a teacher in our two chief Universities; the
Church never had a pastor who had more of the true pastor's heart, nor
a leader of more wisdom in counsel, more persuasiveness in conference,
more decision in action; it never had a more vivid historian, nor one
whose writings are so great a treasure of our Scottish literature. When
James Melville came to his grave, how different the world would be to
his great kinsman, who could so truly have said, 'Very pleasant hast
thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of
women.' His uncle's grief found its only solace in the thought that he
was 'now out of all doubt and fashrie, enjoying the fruits of his
suffering here.'

Melville himself never lost his hopefulness and happy ardour. In 1612 he
wrote to Robert Durie, one of the banished brethren:--

'Am I not threescore and eight years old; unto the which age
none of my fourteen brethren came? And yet, I thank God, I eat,
I drink, I sleep, as well as I did these thirty years bygone,
and better than when I was younger--_in ipso flore
adolescentiae_. Only the gravel now and then seasons my mirth
with some little pain, which I have felt only since the
beginning of March the last year, a month before my deliverance
from prison. I feel, thank God, no abatement of the alacrity
and ardour of my mind for the propagation of the truth. Neither
use I spectacles now more than ever, yea, I use none at all,
nor ever did, and see now to read Hebrew without points, and in
the smallest characters. Why may I not live to see a changement
to the better, when the Prince shall be informed truly by
honest men, or God open His eyes and move His heart to see the
pride of stately prelates?'

The last production from Melville's pen was a pamphlet against the
Anglican ceremonies imposed by the King on the Church in _The Five
Articles of Perth_ in 1618. We know little of the last years of his
life. His he