Eleven years later, in 1689, he passes off it for
ever. It is with the tale of that brief time, so crowded with action, so
variously recorded, that we shall be from this point concerned.
He was now in his thirty-fifth year. Confused and conflicting as the
witnesses of his life and character may be, of the man himself as he
looked to the eyes of his contemporaries there is the clearest
testimony. Over the mantelpiece of Scott's study in Castle Street hung
the only picture in the room--a portrait of Claverhouse. An original
portrait Lockhart calls it, but which of the five portraits engraved in
Napier's volumes it may have been, if any of them, I cannot tell. All
these engravings, with a unanimity not common in the portraiture of the
time, show the same face: a face of delicate, almost feminine beauty,
framed in the long full love-locks of the period.[15] The eyes are large
and dark, the figure small but well made, and the general expression of
the countenance one of almost boyish smoothness and simplicity. His
manners were gentle and courteous, though reserved: his habit of life
was, as has been already said, singularly decorous: he was scrupulous in
the observance of all religious ordinances. After his death an old
Presbyterian lady, who had lodged below him in Edinburgh, told Lochiel's
biographer how astonished she had been to find one of his profession so
regular in his devotions.
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