It was not thus you've seen me sitting,
Return'd in triumph from town-meeting;
When blust'ring Whigs were put to stand,
And votes obey'd my guiding hand,
And new commissions pleased my eyes;
Blest days, but ah, no more to rise!
Alas, against my better light,
And optics sure of second-sight,*
My stubborn soul, in error strong,
Had faith in Hutchinson too long.
See what brave trophies still we bring
From all our battles for the king;

And yet these plagues, now past before us,
Are but our entering wedge of sorrows!
"I see, in glooms tempestuous, stand
The cloud impending o'er the land
That cloud, which still beyond their hopes
Serves all our orators with tropes;
Which, though from our own vapors fed,
Shall point its thunders on our head!

* The second-sight of the Highlanders furnishes poetry with a new kind of machinery. Walter Scott has since made use of it with great advantage, in several of his poems.

I see the Mob, beflipp'd at taverns,

Hunt us, like wolves, through wilds and caverns!

What dungeons open on our fears!

What horsewhips whistle round our ears!

Tar, yet in embryo in the pine,

Shall run on Tories' backs to shine;
Trees, rooted fair in groves of sallows,
Are growing for our future gallows;
And geese unhatch'd, when pluck'd in fray,
Shall rue the feathering of that day.*

"For me, before that fatal time,
I mean to fly th' accursed clime,
And follow omens, which of late
Have warn'd me of impending fate.
"For late in visions of the night
The gallows stood before my sight ;
I saw its ladder heaved on end;
I saw the deadly rope descend,

And in its noose, that wavering swang,

Friend Malcolmt hung, or seem'd to hang.

*The child shall rue, that is unborn,

The hunting of that day. Chevy-chase.

Malcolm was a Scotchman, Aid to Governor Tryon in

How changed from him, who bold as lion,
Stood Aid-de-camp to Gen'ral Tryon,
Made rebels vanish once, like witches,

And saved his life, but dropp'dt his breeches.
I scarce had made a fearful bow,

And trembling ask'd him, "How d'ye do ;"

his expedition against the Regulators, as they called themselves, in North Carolina. He was afterwards an under-officer of the Customs in Boston, where becoming obnoxious, he was tarred, feathered and half-hanged by the mob, about the year 1774.

*

quantum mutatus ab illo
Virg.

Hectore, qui rediit spoliis indutus.

This adventure was thus reported among the anecdotes of the day. When Governor Tryon marched with his militia, to suppress the insurgents in the western counties of North Carolina, and found them, drawn up in array to oppose him, Malcolm was sent with a flag to propose terms, and demand the surrender of their arms.

the parley, Tryon's militia began to

The fire was immediately returned.

Before the conclusion of

fire on the Regulators. Malcolm started to es

cape to his party; and by the violence of his pedestrian exertion (as Shakespeare says)

"His points being broken, down fell his hose;"

and he displayed the novel spectacle of a man running the gauntlet sans culottes, betwixt two armies engaged in action, and presenting an unusual mark to his enemy.