Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-04-21
CHAPTER III.

1t is said that those stories are best liked
which present a hero and sing his achieve
ments from beginning to end. And the
more faultless and brilliant the hero, the
better goes the tale. and the louder the
applause. Certainly John Graham is the
central figure in this history. and so rich Is
the color of the man, and so intense his
vitality. that other personages among whom
he moves become pale ana uninteresting.
They had, If one takes the long result, a
larger share in affairs. and their hand
stretches across the centuries, but there
was not in them that charm of humanity
which captivates the heart. One must
study the work Of William of Orange if he
is to understand the history of his nation,
but one would not go round the corner to
meet him. Claverhouse, if one faces the
facts and sweeps away the glamour was
only a dashng cavalry officer, who hap
pened to win an insignificant battle by
obvious local tactics. and yet there are few
men whom one would prefer to meet One
would make long journey to catch a sight
of Claverhouse riding down the street. as
one today Is caught by the fascination of
his portrait. But the reader has already
discovered that Graham can hardly be
called a hero by any of the ordinary tests
except beauty of personal appearance. He
was not an ignorant man, as certain per-
sons have concluded from the varied and
picturesque habits of his spelling, but his
friends cannot claim that he was endowed
with rich intellectual gifts. He had sense
enough to condemn the wilder excuses Of
his colleagues in the government of the
day but he had not force enough to replace
their foonshness by wiser policy. Had
his powers been more commanding, or in
deed if he had had any talent for con-
structve action, with. his unwayering in
tegrity and masterful determination, he
might have ousted Lauderdale and saved
Scotland for King James. But accomplished
intriguers and trained politicians were al
ways too much for Claverhouse. and held
him as 1.-THE wild animal is caught in the
meSheS of a net
Wild partisans, to whom every man is
either white as snow or black as Ditch,
have gone mad over Graham, making him
out according to their craze either an
angel or devil, and forgetting that most
men are half and between. But it must be
also said that those who hold John Ora
ham to have been Jacobite saint are the
more delirious in their minds, and hys-
terical in their writing, for they will not
hear that he ever did anything less than
the best or that the men he prosecuted had
any right upon their side. He is from first
to last a perfect paladin of romance whom
every one is bound to praise. Then artists
rush in and not only make fine trade of his
good looks, but lend his beauty to the
clansmen who fought at kf1liecrankte, till
the curtain falls upon Bonnie Dundee"
being carried 10 MS grave Dy picturesque
and broken-hearted Highlanders dressed in
the costly panoply of the Inverness gather
ing and with faces of the style of George
Macdonald or Lord Leighton. Whatever
Claverhouse was. and this story at least
suggests that he was brave and honorable
he was in no sense a saint, and would have
been the last to claim this high degree It
is open to question whether he deserved to
be called a good man, for he was am
bilious of power and, perhaps for public
ends, of wealth; he had no small measure of
pride and Jealousy in him: he was head
strong aand unmanageable. and for his own
side he was unreentfnE and cruel. There
are things he would not have done to ad-
vance his cause. as. for instance, tell lies.
or stain his honor but he never would have