Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/327

Rh equally distinguished for their learning and piety, he removed to Broadhurst, an estate in Sussex belonging to his sister Mrs Lightwater, for whom he entertained the strongest affection. Here he lived ten years, occupied in study, meditation, and prayer, and doing all the good in his power. He distributed through the hands of other persons whatever he possessed beyond the means of subsistence, so unostentatious was he in his charity. He was in every instance through life most generous in pecuniary matters. When principal of the college of Edinburgh he presented the city with £150, the income of which was destined for the support of a student in philosophy. The college of Glasgow is also indebted to him for two bursaries, or for a sum the interest of which is to be appropriated to support two students. On the hospital of St Nicholas, Glasgow, he bestowed £150, the proceeds of which were to be given to two poor men of good character. Three such persons are now enjoying the benefit of that sum, which yields £4, 10s. annually to each of them. This forms but a small specimen of the good works he perfromed during his long and valuable life.

Five years after he had retired from the business of active life, he was surprised and alarmed at receiving from his sovereign the following epistle:

Windsor, July 16, 1679. , I am now resolved to try what clemency can prevail upon such in Scotland as will not conform to the government of the church there; for effecting of which design I desire you may go down to Scotland with your first conveniency, and take all possible pains for persuading all you can of both opinions to as much mutual correspondence and concord as may be; and send me from time to time, characters of both men and things. In order to this design I shall send you a preceipt for two hundred pounds sterling upon my exchequer, till you resolve how to serve me in a stated employment. Your loving friend, CHARLES R. ''For the Bishop of Dumblane. ''

Leighton was now in his sixty-eighth year; and however flattering such a notice might be to a mind of an inferior grade to his, which was exclusively bent on preparing for a heavenly kingdom, it gave only pain and apprehension. What were the vain disputes of angry men to him? besides, he could have little or no hopes in succeeding in the mission. He was saved, however, the trouble of trying the experiment, as the duke of Monmouth, with whom the humane plan originated, fell into discredit, and the offer made to Leighton was never again renewed. This was the only serious interruption he met with in his retirement. Burnet saw him two years after, and says, "I was amazed to see him at above seventy look so fresh and well, that age seemed as it were to stand still with him. His hair was still black, and all his motions were lively ; he had the same quickness of thought, and strength of memory ; but above all, the same heat and life of devotion that I had ever seen him in." "When I took notice to him," continues this celebrated writer, "upon my first seeing him, how well he looked, he told me he was very near his end for all that, and his work and journey were now almost done. This at the time made no great impression on me. He was next day taken with an oppression, and it seemed with cold and with stitches, which was indeed a pleurisy." This disease he foretold was doomed to be his last; he grew so suddenly ill, that speech and sense almost immediately left him; and in twelve hours after the first attack, he breathed his last, without a struggle, in the arms of his long-revered and faithful friend Dr Burnet, on the 26th June, 1684, at the advanced age of seventy-four. The place in which his pure spirit departed from its earthly tenement was an inn in Warwick Lane, London; and it is somewliat singular that he often used to say, that if he had