_ THE LAST OF THE BUCHANITES.
THE Dumfries Courier announces the death of the last of the " Buchanites." This was a sect founded in the eighteenth century, by a female of the name of Buchan, who believed herself to be inspired, as many other enthusiasts have done. On her deathbed, in 1796, Mrs. Buchan assured her followers that she was only called to Paradise for a time on special business; that she would return and reanimate her body in nine days; it not, in nine years; at all events, after the lapse of half a century. The sect, never numerous, has gradually been thinned by death: about a week ago, the last of them—an old man of some small property, in whose house Mrs. Buchan expired—died, at the age of eighty-two. After his decease, the remains of the prophetess— a skin-clad skeleton, with luxuriant hair—were found in an upper chamber, in a bed, wrapped in blankets. Here was a strong undying faith. For the space of fifty years —while the rest of the world was engrossed with the meteor rise of Napoleon or his earthquake fall—with Continental block- ades under the Imperial dynasty of France, and Corn-laws under the Aristocratic dynasty of England—with wars such as the world had never known before—with the creation and destruction of monarchies in Europe and republics in America—with the dragging of a Pope at the chariot-wheels of a conqueror, and the restoration of the Jesuits,—in an obscure corner of Scotland, lived a man from the fresh adolescence of thirty-two to an age exceeding the "threescore and ten," caring for none of these things; hugging himself with the belief that he was possessor of a treasure greater than all other things the earth contained. The few participators in his secret died off leaving him the only one who even knew of its existence. In the varying moods of his mind he triumphed over or pitied the blind and ignorant world, which busied itself about trifles, while he was the alone possessor of the fountain of truth, one day to be reopened. His faith was sincere : he sought not to derive profit from it. His faith was pure and affectionate : a few years before his de- parture, the old man, in a letter to a curious inquirer, described the prophetess, as of small stature, marked with the small-pox, always clean and neat, and with a voice the mere tones of which, impressed conviction that "she was the truth." In this reveren- tial spirit did he for fifty years tend her senseless corpse with all the care of a mother for her child. There is a mystery in the order of things which links a capacity of faith so pure and strong as to be sublime with an intellect so weak. Had that deep-toned imagi- nation been allied to a mind as powerful, what might their owner not have accomplished for his kind?
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