" And alluding to his
services during the retreat to Corunna, he said, "Graham was their
best adviser in the hour of peril; and in the hour of disaster, their
surest consolation." Scott eulogizes him in the poem, "The Vision of
Don Roderick," in the lines,--
"Nor be his praise o'erpast who strove to hide
Beneath the warrior's vest affection's wound,
Whose wish Heaven for his country's weal denied;
Danger and fate, he sought, but glory found.
"From clime to clime, wher'e'r war's trumpets sound,
The wanderer went; yet, Caledonia, still
Thine was his thought in march and tented ground;
He dreamed mid Alpine cliffs of Athole's hill,
And heard in Ebro's roar his Lynedoch's lovely rill.
"O hero of a race renowned of old,
Whose war-cry oft has waked the battle swell!"
Old Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, wrote of a late Duke of Athole:
"Courage, endurance, stanchness, fidelity, and warmth of heart,
simplicity, and downrightness, were his staples." They are ever the
staples of the Scotch character, and they were all pre-eminent in Sir
Thomas. His life was noble, and his affection was faithful to its
early troth.
A pathetic history attaches to this picture of Mrs. Graham: When its
subject died, the sorrowing husband had it bricked up where it hung,
and it was only by an accident that it was discovered at his death, in
1843.
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