Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/245

Rh a pardon extended by the king to earl Marischal, and an act of parliament to enable him to inherit property in Great Britain.

After this happy event, he proceeded to London, and was introduced to the king (George II.) who received him very graciously. It afterwards was discovered that, by this movement, he escaped a very considerable danger, for within thirty-six hours of his departure from Madrid, notice was received by that court of the communication he had made. The reconciliation of the earl to the house of Brunswick appears to have given great offence to the relics of the Jacobite party, who, it is needless to mention, still retained all their pristine antipathy to that family. Among the papers of bishop Forbes of Leith, is an anecdote to the following effect: "It had been a constant practice in the parish of Langside in Aberdeenshire, to have bonfires, and even to ring the parish bell, on the 2nd of April, O.S., the birth-day of earl Marischal. On Thursday, the 12th February, being a general fast throughout Scotland, when the bellman was ringing the first bell, the news came to Langside, containing the accounts of the earl Marischal having taken the oaths at London; and at that very instant, the said bell rent from the top downwards, and then across near the mouth, and that soon after the bell had begun to ring.

"A gentleman," continues this curious memorial, "walking in his garden, about a quarter of a mile from the church of Langside, asked a man passing by, what the matter was with the bell, in stopping so suddenly. The answer being that she was rent, 'Well,' said the gentleman, 'do you know what the bell says by that?—even, the deil a cheep mair sail I speak for you, earl Marischal!'"

The earl resided in Britain for several years, purchased back some of his family property, and intended finally to settle for the remainder of his life in Scotland. The king of Prussia, however, pressed him so warmly to return to his dominions—saying, in one of his letters, "if I had a fleet, I would come and carry you off by force,"—that he once more became an exile from his native land. He spent the rest of his life in Prussia, on the most intimate terms of friendship with its extraordinary monarch, and the enjoyment of every pleasure that a cultivated mind and a virtuous course of life can secure for mortals, Frederick had discovered that the earl was sincerely attached to his person, and he therefore bestowed upon him in return more of his own friendship than was ever experienced by any other individual. The earl was also the friend and correspondent of Hume, and other literary men of his own country, besides the European literati in general. He died at Potsdam, May 28, 1778, in the 86th year of his age, two days before Voltaire, who had nearly attained the same age, expired at Paris. An "Eloge de My-lord Marischal," by the celebrated D'Alembert, was published at Berlin in 1779.

KEITH,, commonly called bishop Keith, an eminent scholar and antiquary, was born at Uras in Kincardineshire, February 7, 1681. He was named Robert after the viscount of Arbuthnot, who had been suckled by his mother. His father, Alexander Keith, having died while he was only two years of age, the care of his education devolved upon his mother, a most exemplary woman, who spared no pains and no expense within the reach of a very limited income, to inculcate those lessons of virtue and religion, and that knowledge of letters which afterwards procured her son so much honourable distinction.

The bishop seems to have entertained, during his whole life, a deep sense of the obligations under which he lay to this amiable parent, and to have taken great pleasure in expressing it. Though in but indifferent circumstances in the