at the stake for heresy, while the pathetic picture of his wife with "nine small children, and one at the breast," added unutterable gloom to the narrative.
George Keith, waxing fat in the fulness of his salary, proved himself a troublesome colonist. Like a true Scottish "unco gude," he felt the piety of his neighbours to be of an inconsistent and unsatisfactory character; so founded his own little sect of "Christian Quakers," thus relegating his former brethren into the darkness of heathenism, an innuendo which they were not slow to resent. The schoolmaster was accused in Meeting of "enmity, wrath, self-exaltation, contention, and jangling,"—a long indictment,—and also of making the Friends whom he reviled "a scorn to the profane, and the song of the drunkards," the meaning of which words they probably understood. After much animated quarrelling he returned to England, abandoned the Quaker creed, took orders in the Anglican church, and became Penn's most bitter opponent, arousing by every means in his power that sharp animosity which led to the Proprietor's being temporarily deprived of his province. In return, Keith has been roundly abused by Voltaire, who condescended to pelt his insignificance into notice. "The wretch was doubtless possessed of the devil, for he dared to preach intolerance," said the great Frenchman,—himself the most genuinely intolerant of mortals.
After the departure of this Scottish firebrand from
