aggrandisement.  At any rate, after the failure of the Indulgence had been made clear even to those hopeful spirits who still, with Leighton, had believed it possible to efface years of wrong by a few grudging concessions, the cruel game was renewed with fresh vigour.  The Highlanders, indeed, had gone, but their place was now to be filled by a more dangerous because a more disciplined foe.  Orders were given to raise three new troops of cavalry for special service in Scotland.  The Earls of Home and Airlie were chosen by Lauderdale to command two of these troops:  the third was, at the King’s express desire, given to Claverhouse.  At the same time, Athole, who was now in opposition with Hamilton and Argyle, was superseded by Montrose, and Linlithgow named commander-in-chief of all the royal forces in Scotland.

Claverhouse now for the first time steps in his own person on the stage of Scottish history.  Eleven years later, in 1689, he passes off it for ever.  It is with the tale of that brief time, so crowded with action, so variously recorded, that we shall be from this point concerned.

He was now in his thirty-fifth year.  Confused and conflicting as the witnesses of his life and character may be, of the man himself as he looked to the eyes of his contemporaries there is the clearest testimony.  Over the mantelpiece of Scott’s study in Castle Street hung the only picture in the room—­a portrait of Claverhouse.  An original portrait Lockhart calls it, but which of the five portraits engraved in Napier’s volumes it may have been, if any of them, I cannot tell.  All these engravings, with a unanimity not common in the portraiture of the time, show the same face:  a face of delicate, almost feminine beauty, framed in the long full love-locks of the period.[15] The eyes are large and dark, the figure small but well made, and the general expression of the countenance one of almost boyish smoothness and simplicity.  His manners were gentle and courteous, though reserved:  his habit of life was, as has been already said, singularly decorous:  he was scrupulous in the observance of all religious ordinances.  After his death an old Presbyterian lady, who had lodged below him in Edinburgh, told Lochiel’s biographer how astonished she had been to find one of his profession so regular in his devotions.  In truth, one of the most curious, and at the same time one of the most indisputable, points in the life of this singular man is the contrast between those public actions which have had so large a share in moulding the popular impression, and his private character and conduct.  And not less curious is the contrast between the reality of his personal appearance and the counterfeit presentment likely to be fostered by a too liberal adherence to that impression.  It would be difficult to imagine a more complete surprise than awaits those who turn for the first time from the stern, brutal, and profane soldier of the historian’s page to the high-bred and graceful gentleman of the painter’s canvas.