alrous rejection of sublunary testimony, and deification of the accused, which have characterised the subsequent vindicators of Queen Mary's innocence; and there is in his resolute singleness of purpose, and energy of championship, the charm which, when one can forget the facts, pervades the writings of this class. Blackwood married Catherine Courtinier, daughter of the Procureur du Roi of Poitiers. She bore to him four sons and seven daughters—a progeny so abnormal in France, that it induces M. Michel to express admiration at his continuing the pursuit of letters, "malgré ses devoirs de magistrat, d'époux, et de père." He published a collection of pious meditations in prose and verse, of which M. Michel tells us that, paying a visit to London, where he was presented at court, King James showed him a copy of his 'Meditations' in the royal library. One of Blackwood's sons became a judge at Poitiers. His son-in-law, George Crichton, was professor of Greek "au collège de France." His brother Henry taught philosophy in the University of Paris; another brother, George, "fit un chemin assez brillant dans l'église de France."

This was a method of enrichment which could not give a territorial hold to a family; and whether it was from a distaste towards acquisitions which could not be made hereditary, or to difficulties in the way of a foreigner rising in the Church, it is observable that the ecclesiastical is the department in which the Scots took the least portion of the good things

going in France. Yet some of them drew considerable temporal prizes in the profession which deals. with our eternal destiny. A certain priest named John Kirkmichael, or Carmichael, seems to have had an eventful history, of which but the outline remains. As he is said to have escaped from the carnage of Verneuil, it is to be presumed that he fought there, and was not in orders. But he afterwards became Bishop of Orleans, and is known in French ecclesiastical history as Jean de St Michel. It is a question whether it is he who established in his cathedral church the messe écossaise for his countrymen slain at Verneuil. The great Cardinal Beaton, Bishop of Mirepaux, was an ecclesiastical prince in France, whence great portion of his lustre was reflected on his own poor country. His nephew James, a far worthier man, had a different career, spending his old

His

age in peace among his French endowments, instead of coming home to fall in the wild contests of his native land. He was employed as Queen Mary's ambassador in France, and continued ever faithful to her cause. He saw, as the shadow of the change of rule and religion in his own country, a like change come over the fortunes of the Scot in France. countrymen were now no longer adventurers seeking the region best fitted for pushing their fortunes, but poor refugees seeking bread or a place of hiding and refuge. Yet a gleam of patriotic feeling came over the old man when he heard from his retirement that the son of his old mistress-heretic though he was

--had succeeded to the broad empire of Britain; and he caused fire on the occasion certain feux de joie at St Jean de Lateran.

Several of the Kennedys, predominant among the hard-fighting clans near the Border, obtained distinctions in France, where the sharp contour of their name was smoothened into Cenedy. Thomas de Houston is pleased to accept from Louis XI. the seigneury of Torcy in Brie, in place of the châtellenie of Gournay, which he resigns. Robert Pittilloch, a Dundee man, seems to have first entered the service in the humblest rank, and to have worked his way up to be captain of the Guard, and to enjoy the nickname of Petit Roi de Gascogne, along with a more substantial reward in the lordships of Sauveterre. One could go on at great length with such an enumeration, but it is apt to be tiresome. This is not intended as a work of reference or a compendium of useful knowledge, and I must refer the reader who, either for historical or genealogical purposes, wishes to find all that is known about the settlements of the Scots families in France, to go to M. Michel's book.

The names and titles thus casually brought together, will serve to show how thoroughly reviving France was impregnated with good Scots blood. The thorough French aristocratic ton characterising the numerous territorial titles enjoyed by the adventurers, may strike one who meets the whole affair for the first time as mightily resembling the flimsy

titles by which men of pretension beyond their caste try to pass themselves off for somebodies. But everything about these Scots was real and substantial, in as far as the fortunes they achieved were the fruit of their courage and counsel, their energy and learning. The terrible slaughter among the French aristocracy in the English battles made vacancies which came aptly to hand for the benefit of the enterprising strangers, and of course they could not do otherwise than adopt the custom of the country, with its complex system of territorial titles, in which men's proper names got swamped and buried, in so far that half-a-dozen Frenchmen, all brothers born of the same father and mother, will be commemorated under names totally distinct.

It was during the hundred years' war that this colony, as it might almost be termed, of Scots settled in France. The affair bears a striking resemblance to the influx of Northmen, or Normans, five hundred years earlier, with this grand distinction, that these came as enemies and depredators, seizing upon their prey, while the Scots came as friends and champions, to be thankfully rewarded. The great similarity of the two migrations is in the readiness with which both sets of men settled down, assimilating themselves with the people. The assimilation, however, was not that of slave or follower in the land of adoption-not even that of equal, but partook of leadership and guidance. Both were received as a sort of aristocracy by race and caste; and hence it

came to be a common practice for those who were at a loss for a pedigree to find their way to some adventurous Scot, and stop there, just as both in France and England it was sufficient to say that one's ancestors came in with the Normans.

Colbert, who has left his mark on history as the most powerful of financiers, when he became great, got the genealogists to trace his family back to the Scots, as many a man in England, on rising to distinction, has spanned over intervening obscurities and attached his pedigree to a follower of the Norman. The inscription, indeed, on his Scottish ancestor's tomb will be found in Moreri

"En Escosse j'eus le berceau,

Et Rheims m'a donné le tombeau."

Molière professed Scots descent, to cover, as the invidious maintained, the vulgarity of the sound of his paternal name of Poquelin. A mystery worth clearing up surrounds a suggestion sometimes made about the great Sully, that he professed relationship with the Beatons of Scotland to bring him rank. What makes such hints appear rather invidious is, that he claimed for his own family of Bethune a lustre which could get no aid from Scotland. He arrogated descent for it from the house of Austria, and specifically warned the public against the supposition that he meant the existing imperial house of Hapsburg, whose ancestors were but private gentlemen a century or two ago-his ancestors were of