now they would be of use." 'Let them blow then like the devil," replied the general, " if that will bring back the men." The pipes were ordered to play a favourite martial air. The Highlanders, the moment they heard the music, returned and formed with alacrity in the rear.-In the late war in India, Sir Eyre Coote, after the battle of Porto Nuovo, being aware of the strong attachment of the Highlanders to their ancient music, expressed his approbation of their behaviour on that day, by giving them fifty pounds to buy a pair of bagpipes.*

The following (more recent) anecdote is related of Serjeant Alexander Cameron, Piper Major of the 92d, or Cameronian Highlanders, whose merits as a performer on the Highland bagpipes were generally acknowledged to be of the first wind, though they could not be duly appreciated but by those who felt the inspiring effects of his animating strains on the toilsome march, or amid the thunder of the battle. He served on the Peninsula, during the whole of the late war, and by his zeal attracted the notice of several officers of high rank. LieutenantGeneral Sir William Erskine, in a letter to a friend, after the affair of Rio del Molinas, says, "the first intimation the enemy had of our approach, was the piper of the 92d, playing, "Hey Johnie Cope, are ye waking yet." To this favourite air from Cameron's pipe, the streets of Brussels re-echoed on the 15th of June, when the regiment assembled to march out to the field of Waterloo. Once, and once only, was this brave soldier missed in his accustomed place in the front of the battle, and the occasion strongly marks the powerful influence which the love of fame had upon his mind. In a London paper, a very flattering eulogium had appeared on the conduct of a piper of another regiment. Our gallant musician, conscious that no one could surpass him in zeal or intrepidity, felt hurt that he should not also have gained this flattering distinction, and declared, that “if his name did not appear in the newspapers, he would no more play in the battle field!" Accordingly, in the next affair with the enemy, Cameron's "bellows ceased to blow"-his pipe was mute! some insinuations against the piper reached his ear. The bare idea of his motives being misunderstood was torture to poor Cameron, and overcame at once the sullen resolution he had formed

* See a curious and interesting volume, entitled “ Demonologia, or Naturał Knowledge revealed," by J. S. F. p. 194, published, 1827.

of remaining silent in the rear. He rushed forward, and not content with gaining his place at the head of the regiment, advanced with a party of skirmishers, and, placing himself on a height, in full view of the enemy, continued to animate the party by playing favourite national airs. For the last two years of his life his health sensibly declined. He was afflicted with an asthma, which the blowing of the pipes tended to aggravate. Notwithstanding he could not be induced to relinquish his favourite employment, but continued to play within a very short time of his death "the gathering" for the daily assembling of the regiment. He died at Belfast, October 18th, 1817. His remains were attended to the grave by several officers, all the non-commissioned officers, and the grenadier company, to which the deceased belonged.

PRESENTIMENT.—The nearer we approach to times when superstition shall be universally exploded, the more we consign to oblivion the antiquated notions of former days, respecting every degree of supernatural agency or communication. It is not long ago, however, since second sight, as it is called, peculiar to the Scotch Highlanders, was a subject of dispute, and although it be true, as some assert, that all argument is against it, yet it is equally certain that we have many well asserted facts for it. We think upon the whole that this question is placed in its true light, in the following communication from a gentleman in Scotland, who had opportunities to know the facts he relates, and who has evidently sense enough not to carry them farther than they will bear. What is called in this part of the island by the French word pressentiment, appears to us to be a species of second sight, and it is by no means uncommon: why it is less attended to in the "busy haunts of men," than in the sequestered habitations of the Highlanders, is accounted for by the following detail, and we apprehend upon very just grounds.

"Of all the subjects which philosophers have chosen for exercising their faculty of reasoning, there is not one more worthy of their attention than the contemplation of the human mind. There they will find an ample field wherein they may range at large, and display their powers; but at the same time it must be observed, that here, unless the philosopher calls in religion to his aid, he will be lost in a labyrinth of fruitless conjectures, and here, in particular, he will be obliged to have a reference to a

great first cause, as the mind of man (whatever may be asserted of material substances) could never be formed by chance; and he will find his affections so infinitely various, that instead of endeavouring to investigate, he will be lost in admiration.

"The faculty or affections of the mind attributed to our neighbours of the Highlands of Scotland, of having a foreknowledge of future events, or, as it is commonly expressed, having the second sight, is perhaps one of the most singular. Many have been the arguments both for and against the real existence of this wonderful gift. I shall not be an advocate on either side, but I shall presume to give you a fact or two, which I know to be well authenticated, and from which every one is at liberty to infer what they please.

"The late Rev. D. M'Sween was minister of a parish in the high parts of Aberdeenshire, and was a native of the Isle of Sky, where his mother continued to reside. On the 4th of May, 1738, Mr. M'Sween, with his brother, who often came to visit him from Sky, were walking in the fields. After some interval in their discourse, during which the minister seemed to be lost in thought, his brother asked him what was the matter with him; he made answer he hardly could tell, but he was certain that their mother was dead. His brother endeavoured to reason him out of his opinion, but in vain. And upon his brother's return home, he found his mother had really died on that very day on which he was walking with the minister.

"In April, 1744, a man of the name of Forbes, walking over Culloden Muir, with two or three others, was suddenly, as it were, lost in thought, and when in some short time after he was interrupted by his companions, he very accurately described the battle that was fought on that very spot two years afterwards; at which description his companions laughed heartily, as there was no expectation of the Pretender's coming to Britain at that time."

Many such instances might be adduced, but these, I am afraid, are sufficient to stagger the credulity of most people. But to the incredulous I shall only say, that I am very far from attributing the second sight to the Highlanders more than to ourselves. I am pretty certain there is no man whatever, who is not sometimes seized with a foreboding in his mind, or as it may

be termed, a kind of reflection which it is not in his power to prevent; and although his thoughts may not be employed in any particular kind of exigency, yet he is apt to dread from that quarter where he is more immediately concerned. This opinion is agreeable to all the heathen mythologists, particularly Homer and Virgil, where numerous instances might be brought forward, and these justified in the event; but there is an authority which I hold in more veneration than all the others put together, I mean that now much disused book called the Bible, where we meet with many examples, which may corroborate the existence of such an affection in the mind; and that too in persons who were not ranked among prophets. I shall instance one or two. The first is in the 14th chapter of I. Samuel, where it is next to impossible to imagine that had not Jonathan been convinced of some foreboding in his mind, that he should certainly be successful, he and his armour-bearer being only two in number, would never have encountered a whole garrison of the enemy. Another instance is in the 6th chapter of Esther where the king of Persia (who was no prophet) was so much troubled in his mind, that he could not sleep, neither could he assign any reason for his being so, till the very reason was discovered from the means that were used to divert his melancholy, viz. the reading of the records, where he found he had forgot to do a thing which he was under an obligation to perform. Many of the most judicious modern authors also favour this opinion. Addison makes his Cato, some time before his fatal exit, express himself thus: "What means this heaviness that hangs upon me?" Shakspeare also makes Banquo exclaim, when he is about to set out on a journey: "A heavy summons hangs like lead upon me!" De Foe makes an instance of this kind the means of saving the life of Robinson Crusoe, at the same time admonishes his readers not to make light of these emotions of the mind, but to be upon their guard, and pray to God to assist them and bear them through, and direct them in what may happen to their prejudice in consequence thereof.

To what then are we to attribute these singular emotions? Shall we impute them to the agency of spiritual beings called guardian Angels, or more properly to the divinity that stirs within us, and points out an hereafter? However it may be,

it is our business to make the best of such hints, which we are confident every man must have experienced, perhaps more frequently than he is aware of.

In great towns the hurry and dissipation that attend the opulent, and the little leisure that the poor have, from following the avocations which necessity drives them to, prevent them from taking any notice of similar instances to the foregoing, which may happen to themselves. But the case is quite different in the Highlands of Scotland, where they live solitary, and have little to do, or see done, and consequently, comparatively have but few ideas. When any thing of the above nature occurs, they have leisure to brood over it, and cannot get it banished from their minds; by which means it gains a deep and lasting impression, and often various circumstances may happen by which it may be interpreted, just like the ancient oracles by the priests of the heathen deities. This solitary situation of our neighbours is also productive of an opinion of worse tendency -I mean the belief in spirits and superstitions, to which no people on earth are more addicted than the Scotch Highlanders: this opinion they suck in with their mother's milk, and it increases with their years and stature. Not a glen or strath, but is haunted by its particular goblins and fairies. And, indeed, the face of the country is in some places such, that it wears a very solemn appearance, even to a philosophic eye. The fall of cataracts of water down deep declivities, the whistling of the wind heath, rocks, and caverns, a loose fragment of a rock falling from its top, and in its course downward bringing a hundred more with it, so that it appears like the wreck of nature; the hooting of the night-owl-the chattering of the heath cock-the pale light of the moon or the dreary prospect, with here and there a solitary tree on an eminence, which tree magnifies to an unusual size; all these considered, it is not to be wondered at, that even an enlightened mind should be struck with awe: what then must be the emotion of a person prejudiced from his infancy, when left alone in such a situation?

Until the last century, the spirit Brownie, in the Highlands of Scotland, was another story of second sight, as the following story will show :-" Sir Norman MacLeod, playing at tables, at a game called by the Irish Palmer-more, wherein there are three of a side, and each of them throw dice by turns; there happened