hailstones on the Highland line, ploughing deep furrows wherever they struck the plain, and carrying death and confusion through the ranks. It was a fearful trial for those undisciplined mountaineers, accustomed as they always had been to come at once to close quarters, and decide every thing by the impetuosity of their onset. At length the order was given to advance, and again their war-cry rang loud and shrill, and each man, drawing his cap tight over his brow, firmly grasping his claymore in his right hand, and throwing out his dirk and target with his left, sprang forward with tiger fury to grapple with his foe. The English line stood firm to receive them, and, presenting their bayonets obliquely, met the shock without wavering. The targets glanced harmlessly along the polished barrels of the muskets, but the point of the bayonet went true to its mark, and with every thrust a Highlander fell. Another struggle, and still another, and the mangled bodies of the dead and the dying, of friend and foe, were heaped up like a bulwark in front of the line. The first rank of the English was crushed, but a terrific cross-fire from the second came to support the bristling wall of bayonets, at whose feet the second rank of the Scotch fell, one upon another, before they could aim a blow in return. A few still pressed onward with the recklessness of despair, but it was only to swell the bloody pile of victims, and Wolfe's regiment, formed en potence, now prepared with the reserve and the extreme right to envelope the survivors. The MacDonalds, dissatisfied at not having received their usual post on the right, refused to charge with the rest of the line, and after a short scattering fire retired from the field. Their chief alone rushed forward, with his shield-bearer and his nephew. The children of my tribe abandon me!" was his melancholy cry, and a few moments afterwards he fell, pierced with wounds.

The rout of the first line was complete, but the second remained entire, and with this Charles Edward still hoped to win the day. His horse had checked the English cavalry, and could the Highlanders have been rallied, and induced to try their terrific charge once more, it might have been thrown back upon the infantry, and opened the way for the advance of the second line. "Courage!" cried the prince, riding in among them to place himself at their head; "we can yet make the day our own." But their discouragement had

struck too deep, and his officers, gathering around him, forced him from the field. A part of the vanquished army fled towards Inverness, and part, crossing the Nairn, dispersed themselves among the mountains.

on.

Resistance had ceased, but still the work of death went Cumberland lingered upon the plain to count his victims. "Wolfe, blow out that insolent fellow's brains," said he to the future hero of Quebec, pointing out to him a wounded Highlander, who had raised his head upon his hand, and lay gazing upon his conqueror with a bitter smile. "I am no executioner," replied Wolfe, and the noble rebuke was long treasured up with the unerring tenacity of revenge.

The soldiers, animated by the example and approbation of their leader, gave full play to their thirst of blood. They mangled the wounded; they mutilated the dead; they dipped their hands in the blood, and threw it at one another with shouts and laughter, as children play with water. Those whom they did not see fit to despatch at once they stripped of their clothes, and, reserving them for a longer torture, left them naked upon the field, exposed to all the horrors of a tempest and a night among the mountains. Next day they returned, and renewed their fiendlike sports. A few unhappy wretches, less severely wounded, or stronger than their fellows, had survived the horrors of the night, and were still breathing. They were instantly despatched, and this might almost be called a deed of mercy. But on counting their victims anew, the third day after the battle, it was found that some had either escaped, or been carried away by their friends. A strict search was immediately instituted through all the cottages of the neighbourhood, and wherever a wounded soldier was found, he was mercilessly butchered. There was one small party which had taken refuge in a shed, where the shepherds had kindly sheltered them, and dressed their wounds. The shed was instantly set on fire, and the wounded men and their protectors were consumed in the flames, while a strong body kept guard around it, that none might escape. Nineteen officers, after wandering two days and two nights in a wood, had been admitted into a court-yard of one of the Culloden-house farms. The moment that they were discovered, they were seized, tightly bound with cords that entered their wounds, dragged upon a cart to a neighbouring inclosure, and shot; and the murderers, as if

doubting the effects of their bullets, rushed in upon them as they lay stretched upon the ground, and completed their work of death by beating out their brains with their musketstocks. The imagination shrinks appalled from such wanton barbarity, and one is almost tempted to deny that deeds like these could have been perpetrated in a civilized country, and under the eyes of a son of the king of England. But the narratives which record them are of unquestionable authenticity, and, revolting as the picture is, we have not hesitated to sketch it, as a record for our countrymen of the ideas which, only thirty years before the outbreak of our own revolution, the king of England and his soldiers attached to the name of rebel.*

Meanwhile, wearied, wounded, and disheartened, Charles Edward had directed his flight towards Gorthleek, a seat of Lord Lovat, the chief of the Frazers. His horse had been shot under him, and when he presented himself in the hall, with his garments soiled with mire and stained with blood, the vaunted courage of the wily old chief seemed to abandon him at the sight, and, instead of receiving his prince with words of consolation and respect, he broke out into exclamations of despair at the ruin of his house, and the bloody fate which awaited his own gray hairs. After a few hours of repose, the prince resumed his flight, with only seven companions, part of whom he was soon compelled to separate from; for the alarm had been spread, and numerous parties, allured by the price that had been set upon his head, were searching for him in every direction. Soon, the country became so rugged that he could no longer continue his way on horseback. The mountains rose on every side wild and broken, separated only by deep glens, where torrents, swollen and chilled by the rain and snow, were to be forded at every pass. A straggling sheep-path that he found from time to time was his only relief from climbing precipices, and letting himself down the sides of worn and slippery crags. Thus, after four days, he reached the little village

* Four hundred English officers had been released by Charles Edward upon parole. When the Duke of Cumberland came to take the command, he sent a circular to them, ordering them to join their regiments under pain of disobedience. All obeyed but four, who alone had the courage to reply to this insulting order," that the duke was master of their commissions, but not of their honor."

of Glenbeisdale, in the canton of Moidart, where, but a few
months before, he had landed so full of confidence and hope.
Here he received a letter from Lord George Murray, beg-
ging him to come and put himself at the head of the relics
of his army, a little more than a thousand men, who were as-
But he
sembled at Badenoch, and make one more effort.
was now convinced that nothing could be done without the
succours of France, which, if they had been withheld at a
moment when every thing seemed to promise success, would
His own pres-
hardly be ventured after so fatal a reverse.

ence at Versailles seemed to offer the only chance of bringing the hesitating and reluctant court to a decision, while the utmost that he could hope to accomplish by remaining in Scotland would be to keep up for a few weeks longer a destructive partisan warfare, which, even if successful, could lead to no decisive results. This reasoning, so plausible in itself, was supported by the advice of Clanranald and the other chiefs who had joined him ; and although, upon a cooler examination, there appear many grounds for calling its correctness in doubt, yet it can hardly be considered surprising that it should have been adopted as the wisest course, at a moment of such deep depression. Sorrow has its intoxication as well as joy, and few men have received from nature, or won by education, so firm a texture of mind, as to justify the inconsiderate condemnation which is lavished so freely upon the errors into which we are led by giving way to despondency.

The whole country was now on the alarm; English cruisers hovering on the coast, and guarding the passes of the islands, and strong bands of soldiers scattered in patrols along the shore and through the valleys, following like bloodhounds upon every track, and subjecting every nook and corner to the most rigorous examination. Charles Edward was not suffered to remain long in tranquillity at his little asylum of Airsaig. His traces had been discovered, and a party was approaching to seize him. His companions fled in different directions, and he took refuge in a wood. As he was wandering here alone, at a loss which way to direct his steps, he met the pilot whom he had sent for to the isle of Skye. It was a cheering omen, and seemed to say that all had not The weather was abandoned him in this hour of need. upon the point of changing, and the heavens were lowering

with the well known signs of an approaching tempest. It seemed like courting destruction to embark at such a moment upon that stormy sea; but to remain on shore was captivity or death. The tempest burst upon them in all its fury. The rain fell in torrents upon their unprotected heads. The waves tossed their little bark like foam, seeming at times as if they would engulph it in their abysses, or dash it in fragments upon the rock-bound coast, where the breakers broke and roared with the deafening noise of thunder. Night came on, and they had no compass to steer by. In ten hours, they had run a hundred miles, and at length they landed on the little island of Benbecula. It was almost a desert. crabs which they caught among the rocks, and a little barley-meal mixed with water, was their only food; an old cowhouse was their shelter. Next day they found the cow, and made a better meal.

A few

The tempest still continued to rage with unabated violence, and it was not till the 29th that they were enabled to embark once more, and direct their course towards Lewis island, where they hoped to find a French cruiser. But they had hardly put off when another tempest came up, which drove them to the islet of Glass. Here they gave themselves out for shipwrecked merchants, O'Sullivan taking the name of St. Clair, and passing the prince for his son. A farmer gave them shelter, and lent his boat to MacLeod, the pilot, to go upon the lookout as far as Stornoway, the port of Lewis island, which they looked to as the end of their wanderings. He soon sent back word to the prince to follow him, but the wind again drove him from his course, and he was compelled to land at Loch Seaforth, and continue his journey on foot. The guide missed his way, and it was not till the evening of the second day that he reached Point Ayrnish, a mile from Stornoway. Here he stopped, while one of the party went forward to reconnoitre. MacLeod soon joined him, not with the cheering tidings that the vessel he had hoped to find was ready to receive him, but to tell him that the population, warned of his approach, were upon the point of rising to repel him or make him prisoner, unless he consented to retrace his steps without delay. Burke was for retreating at once. "My good friend," said Charles Edward, "if you are afraid, you will spoil our supper. If it is me that you are alarmed for, be under no uneasiness, for