(Vol. vii., pp. 475. 600.)
"Religious freedom was at that time [the middle of the sixteenth
century] enjoyed in Poland to a degree unknown in any other part of
Europe, where generally the Protestants were persecuted by the
Romanists, or the Romanists by the Protestants. This freedom, united to
commercial advantages, and a wide field for the exercise of various
talents, attracted to Poland crowds of foreigners, who fled their
native land on account of religious persecution; and many of whom
became, by their industry and talents, very useful citizens of their
adopted country. There were at Cracow, Vilna, Posen, &c., Italian and
French Protestant congregations. A great number of Scotch settled in
different parts of Poland; and there were Scotch Protestant
congregations not only in the above-mentioned towns, but also in other
places, and a particularly numerous one at Kieydany, a little town of
Lithuania, belonging to the Princes Radziwill. Amongst the Scotch
families settled in Poland, the principal were the Bonars, who arrived
in that country before the Reformation, but became its most zealous
adherents. This family rose, by its wealth, and the great merit of
several of its members, to the highest dignities of the state, but
became extinct during the seventeenth century. There are even now in
Poland many families of Scotch descent belonging to the class of
nobles; as, for instance, {132} the Haliburtons, Wilsons, Ferguses,
Stuarts, Haslers, Watsons, &c. Two Protestant clergymen of Scotch
origin, Forsyth and Inglis, have composed some sacred poetry. But the
most conspicuous of all the Polish Scotchmen is undoubtedly Dr. John
Johnstone [born in Poland 1603, died 1675], perhaps the most remarkable
writer of the seventeenth century on natural history. It seems, indeed,
that there is a mysterious link connecting the two distant countries;
because, if many Scotsmen had in bygone days sought and found a second
fatherland in Poland, a strong and active sympathy for the sufferings
of the last-named country, and her exiled children, has been evinced in
our own times by the natives of Scotland in general, and by some of the
most distinguished amongst them in particular. Thus it was an eminent
bard of Caledonia, the gifted author of _The Pleasures of Hope_, who,
when
'Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime,'
has thrown, by his immortal strains, over the fall of her liberty, a
halo of glory which will remain unfaded as long as the English language
lasts. The name of Thomas Campbell is venerated throughout all Poland;
but there is also another Scotch name [Lord Dudley Stuart] which is
enshrined in the heart of every true Pole."--From Count Valerian
Krasinski's _Sketch of the Religious History of the Sclavonic Nations_,
p. 167.: Edinburgh, Johnstone and Hunter, 1851.