sibility to the point of honour overruled his wisdom. Charles appealed to his loyalty, and he could not brook the reproaches of his prince. When Charles landed at

66

Borrodale, Lochiel went to meet him, but, on his way, called at his brother's house (Cameron of Fassafern,) and told him on what errand he was going; adding, however, that he meant to dissuade the prince from his enterprise. Fassafern advised him in that case to communicate his mind by letter to Charles. "No," said Lochiel, "I think it due to my prince to give him my reasons in person for refusing to join his standard." Brother," replied Fassafern, "I know you better than you know yourself; if the prince once sets his eyes on you, he will make you do what he pleases." The interview accordingly took place, and Lochiel, with many arguments, but in vain, pressed the Pretender to return to France, and reserve himself and his friends for a more favourable occasion, as he had come, by his own acknowledgment, without arms, or money, or adherents; or, at all events, to remain concealed till his friends should meet and deliberate what was best to be done, Charles, whose mind was wound up to the utmost impatience, paid no regard to this proposal, but answered, "that he was determined to put all to the hazard. In a few days," said he, "I will erect the royal standard, and proclaim to the people of Great Britain, that Charles Stuart is come over to claim the crown of his ancestors, and to win it or perish in the attempt. Lochiel, who by my father has often told me he was our firmest friend, may stay at home, and learn from the newspapers the fate of his prince." No," said Lochiel," I will share the fate of my prince, and so shall every man over whom nature or fortune hath given me any power."

The other chieftains who followed Charles embraced his cause with no better hopes. It engages our sympathy most strongly in their behalf, that no motive, but their fear to be reproached with cowardice or disloyalty, impelled them to the hopeless adventure. Of this we have an example in the interview of prince Charles with Clanronald, another leading chieftain in the rebel army.

Charles," says Home, "almost reduced to despair, in his discourse with Boisdale, addressed the two High

landers with great emotion, and, summing up his arguments for taking arms, conjured them to assist their prince, their countryman, in his utmost need. Clanronald and his friend, though well inclined to the cause, positively refused, and told him that to take up arms without concert or support was to pull down certain ruin on their own heads. Charles persisted, argued, and implored. During this conversation (they were on shipboard) the parties walked backwards and forwards on the deck; a Highlander stood near them, armed at all points, as was then the fashion of his country. He was a younger brother of Kinloch Moidart, and had come off to the ship to inquire for news, not knowing who was aboard. When he gathered from their discourse that the stranger was the prince of Wales; when he, heard his chief and his brother refuse to take arms with their prince, his colour went and came, his eyes sparkled, he shifted his place, and grasped his sword. Charles observed his 'demeanour, and turning briskly to him, called out, "Will you assist me?" "I will, I will,” said Ronald, "though no other man in the Highlands should draw a sword, I am ready to die for you!" Charles, with a profusion of thanks to his champion, said, he wished all the Highlanders were like him. Without farther deliberation the two Macdonalds declared that they would also join, and use their utmost endeavours to engage their countrymen to take arms." Home's Hist. Rebellion, p. 40.

Page 115, l. 11 and 12.

Lo! anointed by heav'n with the vials of wrath,
Behold, where he flies on his desolate path!

The lines allude to the many hardships of the royal sufferer.

An account of the second sight, in Irish called Taish, is thus given in Martin's description of the Western Isles of Scotland. "The second sight is a singular faculty of seeing an otherwise invisible object, without any previous means used by the person who sees it, for that end. The vision makes such a lively impression upon the seers, that they neither see nor think of any thing else except the vision as long as it continues; and

then they appear pensive or jovial according to the object which was represented to them.

"At the sight of the vision the eyelids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue staring until the object vanish. This is obvious to others who are standing by when the persons happen to see a vision; and occurred more than once to my own observation, and to others that were with me.

"There is one in Skie, of whom his acquaintance observed, that when he sees a vision the inner parts of his eyelids turn so far upwards, that after the object disappears, he must draw them down with his fingers, and sometimes employs others to draw them down, which he finds to be the easier way.

"This faculty of the second sight does not lineally de scend in a family, as some have imagined; for I know several parents who are endowed with it, and their children are not: and vice versa. Neither is it acquired by any previous compact. And after strict inquiry, I could never learn from any among them, that this faculty was communicable to any whatsoever. The seer knows neither the object, time, nor place of a vision before it appears; and the same object is often seen by different persons living at a considerable distance from one another. The true way of judging as to the time and circumstances is by observation; for several persons of judgment who are without this faculty are more capable to judge of the design of a vision than a novice that is a seer. If an object appear in the day or night, it will come to pass sooner or later accordingly.

“If an object is seen early in the morning, which is not frequent, it will be accomplished in a few hours afterwards; if at noon, it will probably be accomplished that very day; if in the evening, perhaps that night; if after candles be lighted, it will be accomplished that night the latter always an accomplishment by weeks, mouths, and sometimes years, according to the time of the night the vision is seen.

:

"When a shroud is seen about one, it is a sure prognostic of death. The time is judged according to the height of it about the person; for if it is not seen above the middle, death is not to be expected for the space of a year, and perhaps some months longer: and as it is

T

frequently seen to ascend higher towards the head, death is concluded to be at hand within a few days, if not hours, as daily experience cónfirms. Examples of this kind were shown me, when the person of whom the observations were then made was in perfect health.

"It is ordinary with them to see houses, gardens, anu trees, in places void of all these, and this in process of time is wont to be accomplished; as at Mogslot, in the isle of Skie, where there were but a few sorry low houses thatched with straw; yet in a few years the vision, which appeared often, was accomplished by the building of several good houses in the very spot represented to the seers, and by the planting of orchards there.

“To see a spark of fire is a forerunner of a dead child, to be seen in the arms of those persons; of which there are several instances. To see a seat empty at the time of sitting in it, is a presage of that person's death quickly after it.

"When a novice, or one that has lately obtained the second sight, sees a vision in the night time without doors, and comes near a fire, he presently falls into a

swoon.

"Some find themselves as it were in a crowd of people, having a corpse, which they carry along with them; and after such visions the seers come in sweating, and describe the vision that appeared. If there be any of their acquaintance among them, they give an account of their names, as also of the bearers; but they know nothing concerning the corpse."

Horses and cows (according to the same credulous author) have certainly sometimes the same faculty: and he endeavours to prove it by the signs of fear which the animals exhibit, when second-sighted persons see visions in the same place.

"The seers (he continues) are generally illiterate and well meaning people, and altogether void of design: nor could I ever learn that any of them ever made the least gain by it; neither is it reputable among them to have that faculty. Besides, the people of the isles are not so credulous as to believe implicitly before the thing predicted is accomplished; but when it is actually aocomplished afterwards, it is not in their power to deny

it, without offering violence to their own sense and reason. Besides, if the seers were deceivers, can it be reasonable to imagine that all the islanders who have not the second sight should combine together, and offer violence to their understandings and senses, to enforce themselves to believe a lie from age to age. There are several persons among them whose title and education raise them above the suspicion of concurring with an impostor, merely to gratify an illiterate, contemptible set of persons; nor can reasonable persons believe that children, horses, and cows, should be pre-engaged in a combination in favour of the second sight"-Martin's Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, p. 3, 11. Page 115, l. 20.

Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?

An English historian, after enumerating the severe execution of the Highland rebels at Culloden, Carlisle, and other places, concludes by informing us that many thousands experienced his majesty's mercy, in being transported for life to the plantations.

Page 115, l. 21.

Ah no! for a darker departure is near.

The brother of Lochiel returning to England ten years after the rebellion, though he acted only as a surgeon in the rebel army, suffered the dreadful fate here predicted, by a sentence which happily has no parallel for needless severity in the modern history of state trials in this humane age and country.