Discharged in several duties and observations of service, first,
under the magnanimous King of Denmark, during his wars against

the Empire; afterwards under the invincible King of Sweden,
during his Majestie's lifetime; and since under the Director-

General, the Rex-Chancellor Oxensterne, and his Generals:
collected and gathered together, at spare hours, by Colonel

Robert Monro, as First Lieutenant under the said Regiment, to the
noble and worthy Captain Thomas MacKenzie of Kildon, brother to

the noble Lord, the Lord Earl of Seaforth, for the use of all
noble Cavaliers favouring the laudable profession of arms. To

which is annexed, the Abridgement of Exercise, and divers
Practical Observations for the Younger Officer, his

consideration. Ending with the Soldier's Meditations on going on
Service."--London, 1637.

Another worthy of the same school, and nearly the same views of
the military character, is Sir James Turner, a soldier of

fortune, who rose to considerable rank in the reign of Charles
II., had a command in Galloway and Dumfries-shire, for the

suppression of conventicles, and was made prisoner by the
insurgent Covenanters in that rising which was followed by the

battle of Pentland. Sir James is a person even of superior
pretensions to Lieutenant-Colonel Monro, having written a

Military Treatise on the Pike-Exercise, called "Pallas Armata."
Moreover, he was educated at Glasgow College, though he escaped

to become an Ensign in the German wars, instead of taking his
degree of Master of Arts at that learned seminary.

In latter times, he was author of several discourses on
historical and literary subjects, from which the Bannatyne Club

have extracted and printed such passages as concern his Life and
Times, under the title of SIR JAMES TURNER'S MEMOIRS. From this

curious book I extract the following passage, as an example of
how Captain Dalgetty might have recorded such an incident had he

kept a journal, or, to give it a more just character, it is such
as the genius of De Foe would have devised, to give the minute

and distinguishing features of truth to a fictitious narrative:--
"Heere I will set doun ane accident befell me; for thogh it was

not a very strange one, yet it was a very od one in all its
parts. My tuo brigads lay in a village within halfe a mile of

Applebie; my own quarter was in a gentleman's house, ho was a
Ritmaster, and at that time with Sir Marmaduke; his wife keepd

her chamber readie to be brought to bed. The castle being over,
and Lambert farre enough, I resolved to goe to bed everie night,

haveing had fatigue enough before. 'The first night I sleepd well
enough; and riseing nixt morning, I misd one linnen stockine, one

halfe silke one, and one boothose, the accoustrement under a
boote for one leg; neither could they be found for any search.

Being provided of more of the same kind, I made myselfe reddie,
and rode to the head-quarters. At my returne, I could heare no

news of my stockins. That night I went to bed, and nixt morning
found myselfe just so used; missing the three stockins for one

leg onlie, the other three being left intire as they were the day
before. A narrower search then the first was made, bot without

successe. I had yet in reserve one paire of whole stockings, and
a paire of boothose, greater then the former. These I put on my

legs. The third morning I found the same usage, the stockins for
one leg onlie left me. It was time for me then, and my servants

too, to imagine it must be rats that had shard my stockins so
inequallie with me; and this the mistress of the house knew well

enough, but would not tell it me. The roome, which was a low
parlour, being well searched with candles, the top of my great

boothose was found at a hole, in which they had drawne all the
rest. I went abroad and ordered the boards to be raised, to see

how the rats had disposed of my moveables. The mistress sent a
servant of her oune to be present at this action, which she knew

concerned her. One board being bot a litle opend, a litle boy of
mine thrust in his hand, and fetchd with him foure and tuentie

old peeces of gold, and one angell. The servant of the house
affirmed it appertained to his mistres. The boy bringing the gold

to me, I went immediatlie to the gentlewomans chamber, and told
her, it was probable Lambert haveing quarterd in that house, as

indeed he had, some of his servants might have hid that gold; and
if so, it was lawfullie mine; bot if she could make it appeare it

belongd to her, I should immediatlie give it her. The poore
gentlewoman told me with many teares, that her husband being none

of the frugallest men (and indeed he was a spendthrift), she had
hid that gold without his, knowledge, to make use of it as she

had occasion, especiallie when she lay in; and conjured me, as I
lovd the King (for whom her husband and she had suffered much),

not to detaine her gold. She said, if there was either more or
lesse then foure and tuentie whole peeces, and two halfe ones, it

sould be none of hers; and that they were put by her in a red
velvet purse. After I had given her assureance of her gold, a

new search is made, the other angell is found, the velvet purse
all gnawd in bits, as my stockins were, and the gold instantlie

restord to the gentlewoman. I have often heard that the eating
or gnawing of cloths by rats is ominous, and portends some

mischance to fall on those to whom the cloths belong. I thank
God I was never addicted to such divinations, or heeded them. It

is true, that more misfortunes then one fell on me shortlie
after; bot I am sure I could have better forseene them myselfe

then rats or any such vermine, and yet did it not. I have heard
indeed many fine stories told of rats, how they abandon houses

and ships, when the first are to be burnt and the second dround.
Naturalists say they are very sagacious creatures, and I beleeve

they are so; bot I shall never be of the opinion they can forsee
future contingencies, which I suppose the divell himselfe can

neither forknow nor fortell; these being things which the
Almightie hath keepd hidden in the bosome of his divine

prescience. And whither the great God hath preordained or
predestinated these things, which to us are contingent, to fall

out by ane uncontrollable and unavoidable necessitie, is a
question not yet decided." [SIR JAMES TURNER'S MEMOIRS, Bannatyne

edition, p. 59.]
In quoting these ancient authorities, I must not forget the more

modern sketch of a Scottish soldier of the old fashion, by a
masterhand, in the character of Lesmahagow, since the existence

of that doughty Captain alone must deprive the present author of
all claim to absoluteoriginality. Still Dalgetty, as the

production of his own fancy, has been so far a favourite with its
parent, that he has fallen into the error of assigning to the

Captain too prominent a part in the story. This is the opinion of
a critic who encamps on the highest pinnacles of literature; and

the author is so far fortunate in having incurred his censure,
that it gives his modesty a decentapology for quoting the

praise, which it would have ill-befited him to bring forward in
an unmingled state. The passage occurs in the EDINBURGH REVIEW,

No. 55, containing a criticism on IVANHOE:--
"There is too much, perhaps, of Dalgetty,--or, rather, he

engrosses too great a proportion of the work,--for, in himself,
we think he is uniformly entertaining;--and the author has

nowhere shown more affinity to that matchless spirit who could
bring out his Falstaffs and his Pistols, in act after act, and

play after play, and exercise them every time with scenes of
unbounded loquacity, without either exhausting their humour, or

varying a note from its characteristic tone, than in his large
and reiterated specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted Ritt-

master. The general idea of the character is familiar to our
comic dramatists after the Restoration--and may be said in some

measure to be compounded of Captain Fluellen and Bobadil;--but
the ludicrous combination of the SOLDADO with the Divinity

student of Mareschal-College, is entirely original; and the
mixture of talent, selfishness, courage, coarseness, and conceit,