It was under the burning influence of revenge that the wife of MacGregor commanded that the hostage, exchanged for her husband's safety, should be brought into her presence. I believe her sons had kept this unfortunate wretch 5 out of her sight, for fear of the consequences; but if it was so, their humane precaution only postponed his fate. They dragged forward, at her summons, a wretch, already half dead with terror, in whose agonized features I recognized, to my horror and astonishment, my old acquaint10 ance Morris.

He fell prostrate before the female chief with an effort to clasp her knees, from which she drew back, as if his touch had been pollution, so that all he could do in token of the extremity of his humiliation, was to kiss the hem 15 of her plaid. I never heard entreaties for life poured forth with such agony of spirit. The ecstasy of fear was such, that, instead of paralyzing his tongue, as on ordinary occasions, it even rendered him eloquent, and, with cheeks as pale as ashes, hands compressed in agony, eyes 20 that seemed to be taking their last look of all mortal

objects, he protested, with the deepest oaths, his total ignorance of any design on the life of Rob Roy, whom he swore he loved and honored as his own soul. In the inconsistency of his terror, he said, he was but the agent 25 of others, and he muttered the name of Rashleigh. — He prayed but for life— for life he would give all he had in the world; it was but life he asked-life, if it were to be prolonged under tortures and privations; - he asked only breath, though it should be drawn in the damps of 30 the lowest caverns of their hills.

It is impossible to describe the scorn, the loathing, and contempt, with which the wife of MacGregor regarded this wretched petitioner for the poor boon of existence.

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'I could have bid you live," she said, "had life been 35 to you the same weary and wasting burden that it is to me - that it is to every noble and generous mind. But

you-wretch ! you could creep through the world unaffected by its various disgraces, its ineffable miseries, its constantly accumulating masses of crime and sorrow; you could live and enjoy yourself, while the noble-minded 5 are betrayed, while nameless and birthless villains tread on the neck of the brave and long-descended; -ули could enjoy yourself, like a butcher's dog in the shambles, fattening on garbage, while the slaughter of the brave went on around you! This enjoyment you shall not live 10 to partake of; you shall die, base dog, and that before yon cloud has passed over the sun!"

She gave a brief command, in Gaelic, to her attendants, two of whom seized upon the prostrate suppliant, and hurried him to the brink of a cliff which overhung the flood. 15 He set up the most piercing and dreadful cries that fear ever uttered—I may well term them dreadful, for they haunted my sleep for years afterwards. As the murderers, or executioners, call them as you will, dragged him along, he recognized me even in that moment of hor20 ror, and exclaimed, in the last articulate words I ever heard him utter, O, Mr. Osbaldistone, save me!

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save

I was so much moved by this horrid spectacle, that, although in momentary expectation of sharing his fate, I 25 did attempt to speak in his behalf, but, as might have been expected, my interference was sternly disregarded. The victim was held fast by some, while others, binding a large heavy stone in a plaid, tied it round his neck, and others again eagerly stripped him of some part of his 30 dress. Half naked, and thus manacled, they hurried him into the lake, there about twelve feet deep, drowning his last death-shriek with a loud halloo of vindictive triumph, over which, however, the yell of mortal agony was distinctly heard. The heavy burden splashed in the dark 85 blue waters of the lake, and the Highlanders, with their pole-axes and swords, watched an instant, to guard, lest,

extricating himself from the load to which he was attached, he might have struggled to regain the shore. But the knot had been securely bound; the victim sunk without effort; the waters, which his fall had disturbed, set5 tled calmly over him, and the unit of that life, for which he had pleaded so strongly, was forever withdrawn from the sum of human existence.

(DANIEL WEBSTER was born at Salisbury, New Hampshire, January 18, 1782, and died at Marshfield, Massachusetts, October 24, 1852. He was graduated at Dartmouth College in 1801, was admitted to the bar in 1805, and settled in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1807. He was a member of the House of Representatives from New Hampshire from 1813 to 1817. In the latter part of 1816 he removed to Boston, and resided in that city, or at Marshfield, during the remainder of his life. He was chosen to the House of Representatives from the district of Boston in 1822, and was a member of that body till 1827, when he was elected to the United States Senate by the Legislature of Massachusetts. He continued there during the remainder of his life, with the exception of two intervals, when he held the office of Secretary of State, first under the administrations of Presidents Harrison and Tyler, and secondly under that of President Fillmore.

For the last twenty-five years of his life, Mr. Webster's biography is identified with the history of his country. Having been a leader of one of its great political parties, the time has hardly yet come for a calm and unbiased judgment to be passed upon his services; but no candid mind will ever question the sincerity and comprehensiveness of his patriotism, still less the splendor of his intellectual powers. He was a great lawyer, a great statesman, a great debater, and a great writer. As a writer-in which point of view alone we have now to regard him- he stands among the very first of his class. No style can be found more suited for the subjects of which it treats than his. It is strong, simple, and dignified; vehement and impassioned when necessary; readily rising into eloquence, and occasionally touched with high imaginative beauty. He excels in the statement of a case or the exposition of a principle; and in his occasional discourses there are passages of a lofty moral grandeur by which the heart and mind are alike affected. Some of his state papers may fairly challenge comparison with the best productions of the kind which the past has transmitted to us.

The following passage is taken from a discourse, pronounced at Plymouth, December 22, 1820, in commemoration of the first settlement of New England.]

Ir the blessings of our political and social condition have not now been too highly estimated, we cannot well overrate the responsibility which they impose upon us

We hold these institutions of government, religion, and learning, to be transmitted as well as enjoyed. We are in the line of conveyance through which whatever has been obtained by the spirit and efforts of our ancestors, is to be 5 communicated to our children.

We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by the example of our own systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, 10 may all be preserved and secured in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be signal, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which maintain that government can rest 15 safely on nothing but power and coercion.

As far as experience may show errors in our establishments, we are bound to correct them; and if any practices exist contrary to the principles of justice and humanity, within the reach of our laws or our influence, we are inex20 cusable if we do not exert ourselves to restrain and abolish them.

I deem it my duty on this occasion to suggest that the land is not yet wholly free from the contamination of a traffic at which every feeling of humanity must revolt — I 25 mean the African slave-trade. Neither public sentiment nor the law has yet been able entirely to put an end to this odious and abominable trade. At the moment when God in his mercy has blessed the world with a universal peace, there is reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the Chris20 tian name and character, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade, by subjects and citizens of Christian states, in whose hearts no sentiment of justice inhabits, and over whom neither the fear of God nor the fear of man exercises a control.

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In the sight of our law, the African slave-trader is a pirate and a felon; and in the sight of Heaven, an offender

far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt.

There is no brighter part of our history than that which records the measures which have been adopted by the government, at an early day, and at different times since, for the sup5 pression of this traffic; and I would call upon all the true sons of New England to co-operate with the laws of man and the justice of Heaven.

If there be, within the extent of our knowledge or influence, any participation in this traffic, let us pledge our10 selves here, upon the Rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the 15 visages of those, who by stealth, and at midnight, labor in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian 20 world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards; and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it.

I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister at her altar, that they execute the whole25 some and necessary severity of the law. I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they proclaim its denunciation of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent, whenever or wherever there may be a sinner, bloody with this 30 gailt, within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust.

I call on the fair merchant, who has reaped his harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging from those seas the worst pirates that ever infested them. That ocean 35 which seems to wave with a gentle magnificence, to waft the burdens of an honest commerce, and to roll its treas