Life of Flora Macdonald and her adventures with Prince Charles

petitions, and recommendations which he has written for the
poor is scarcely credible. No one asked him for such
favours in vain. He was the means of starting many a
young man in a successful career, especially from the Isle
of Skye, among whom may be mentioned Mr. Rowland
Hill Macdonald, of the Glasgow Post-Office, and Mr.
Matheson, late Collector of Customs at Perth. He often
related the particulars of their humble beginnings ; how he
was instrumental in securing their first civil appointments,
and how interested he continued to feel in their success.
Among other acts of goodness he succeeded in securing
pensions, of ^ioo each, for the late Misses Maccaskill, and
for years before their death he personally drew the money
for them.
In his ministerial spheie his labours were incessant. He
was always busy, visiting the dying, the poor, or the dis-
tressed in spirit; going to a marriage, a baptism, or a
funeral. And it made not the slightest difference to what
faith they belonged. The sympathies of his large heart
extended to every denomination, Catholic, Episcopalian, or
Dissenter ; while, at the same time, he stood firmly by his
own beloved Kirk, and fully believed in her as the Church
of Scotland. Though his own congregation in recent years
largely increased — more than doubled during the last fifteen
— he was as often consoling the last moments of the dying
of other denominations as those of his own flock. He was
ever in request at the supreme moment to sooth and en-
courage. He left those of his profession who had been
cast in a more contracted ecclesiastical mould to thunder
out the law. His favourite theme was the Saviour and His