and offering to become his servant for life, if he would spare him. Glenlyon was moved; but the same Drummond stabbed the child with his dirk, while he was in this agony of supplication.

At a place called Auchnaion, one Barber a sergeant, with a party of soldiers, fired on a group of nine Macdonalds, as they were assembled round their morning fire, and killed four of them. The owner of the house, a brother of the slain Auchintriaten, escaped unhurt, and expressed a wish to be put to death rather in the open air than within the house. "For your bread which I have eaten," answered Barber, "I will grant the request.' Macdonald was dragged to the door accordingly; but he was an active man, and when the soldiers were presenting their firelocks to shoot him, he cast his plaid over their faces, and, taking advantage of the confusion, escaped up the glen.

The alarm being now general, many other persons, male and female, attempted their escape in the same manner as the two sons of MacIan and the person last mentioned. Flying from their burning huts, and from their murderous visitors, the half-naked fugitives committed themselves to a winter morning of darkness, snow, and storm, amidst a wilderness the most savage in the West Highlands, having a bloody death behind them, and before them tempest, famine, and desolation. Bewildered in the snow-wreaths, several sunk to rise no more. But the severities of the storm were tender mercies compared to the cruelty of their persecutors. The great fall of snow, which proved fatal to several of the fugitives, was the means of saving the remnant that escaped. Major Duncanson, agreeably to the plan expressed in his orders to Glenlyon, had not failed to put himself in motion with four hundred men, on the evening preceding the slaughter; and had he reached the eastern passes out of Glencoe by four in the morning, as he calculated, he must have intercepted and destroyed all those who took that only way of escape from Glenlyon and his followers. But as this reinforcement arrived so late as eleven in the forenoon, they found no Macdonald alive in Glencoe, save an old man of eighty, whom they slew; and after burning such houses as were yet unconsumed, they collected the property of the tribe, consisting of twelve hundred head of cattle and horses, besides goats and sheep, and drove them off to the garrison. Thus ended this horrible deed of massacre. The number of persons murdered was thirty-eight; those who escaped might amount to a hundred and fifty males, who, with the women and children of the tribe, had to fly more than twelve miles through rocks and wildernesses, ere they could reach any place of safety or shelter.

This detestable execution excited general horror and disgust, not only throughout Scotland, but in foreign countries, and did King

William, whose orders, signed and superscribed by himself, were the warrant of the action, incredible evil both in popularity and character. Stair, however, seemed undaunted, and had the infamy to write to Colonel Hill, while public indignation was at the highest, that all that could be said of the matter was, that the execution was not so complete as it might have been. There was, besides, a pamphlet published in his defence, offering a bungled vindication of his conduct; which indeed amounts only to this, that a man of the Master of Stair's high place and eminent accomplishments, who had performed such great services to the public, of which a laboured account was given; one also, who, it particularly insisted upon, performed the duty of family worship regularly in his household, ought not to be over-severely questioned for the death of a few Highland Papists, whose morals were no better than those of English highway men.

No public notice was taken of this abominable deed until 1695, three years after it had been committed, when, late and reluctantly, a Royal Commission, loudly demanded by the Scottish nation, was granted, to inquire into the particulars of the transaction, and to report the issue of their investigations to parliament.

The commission was of a different opinion from the apologist of the Secretary of State, and reported, that the letters and instructions of Stair to Colonel Hill and others, were the sole cause of the murder. They covered the King's share of the guilt by reporting, that the Secretary's instructions went beyond the warrant which William had signed and superscribed. The royal mandate, they stated, only ordered the tribe of Glencoe to be subjected to military execution, in case there could be any mode found of separating them from the other Highlanders. Having thus found a screen, though a very flimsy one, for William's share in the transaction, the report of the Commission let the whole weight of the charge fall on Secretary Stair, whose letters, they state, intimated no mode of separating the Glencoe men from the rest, as directed by the warrant; but, on the contrary, did, under a pretext of public duty, appoint them, without inquiry or distinction, to be cut off and rooted out in earnest and to purpose, and that "suddenly, secretly, and quietly." They reported, that these instructions of Stair had been the warrant for the slaughter; that it was unauthorized by his Majesty's orders, and, in fact, deserved no name save that of a most barbarous murder. Finally, the report named the Master of Stair as the deviser, and the various military officers employed as the perpetrators, of the same, and suggested, with great moderation, that Parliament should address his Majesty to send home Glenly on and the other murderers to be tried, or should do otherwise as his Majesty pleased.

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The Secretary, being by this unintelligible mode of reasoning thus exposed to the whole severity of the storm, and overwhelmed at the same time by the King's displeasure, on account of the Darien affair, was deprived of his office, and obliged to retire from public affairs. General indignation banished him so entirely from public life, that, having about this period succeeded to his father's title of Earl of Stair, he dared not take his seat in Parliament as such, on accourt of the threat of the Lord Justice Clerk, that if he did so, he would move that the address and report upon the Glencoe massacre should be produced and inquired into. It was the year 1700 before the Earl of Stair found the affair so much forgotten, that he ventured to assume the place in Parliament to which his rank entitled him; and he died in 1707, on the very day when the treaty of Union was signed, not without suspicion of suicide.

Of the direct agents in the massacre, Hamilton absconded, and afterwards joined King William's army in Flanders, where Glenlyon, and the officers and soldiers connected with the murder, were then serving. The King, availing himself of the option left to him in the address of the Scottish Parliament, did not order them home for trial; nor does it appear that any of them were dismissed the service, or punished for their crime, otherwise than by the general hatred of the age in which they lived, and the universal execration of posterity.

Although it is here a little misplaced, I cannot refrain from telling you an anecdote connected with the preceding events, which befell so late as the year 1745-6, during the romantic attempt of Charles Edward, grandson of James II., to regain the throne of his fathers. He marched through the Low Countries, at the head of an army consisting of the Highland clans, and obtained for a time considerable advantages. Amongst other Highlanders, the descendant of the murdered MacIan of Glencoe joined his standard with a hundred and fifty men. The route of the Highland army brought them near to a beautiful seat built by the Earl of Stair, and the principal mansion of his family. An alarm arose in the councils of Prince Charles, lest the Macdonalds of Glencoe should seize this opportunity of marking their recollection of the injustice done to their ancestors, by burning or plundering the house of the descendant of their persecutor; and, as such an act of violence might have done the Prince great prejudice in the eyes of the people of the Low Country, it was agreed that a guard should be posted to protect the house of Lord Stair. Macdonald of Glencoe heard the resolution, and deemed his honour and that of his clan concerned. He demanded an audience of Charles Edward, and admitting the propriety of placing a guard on a house so obnoxious to the feelings of the Highland army, and to those of

III.

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his own clan in particular, he demanded, as a matter of right rather than a favour, that the protecting guard should be supplied by the Macdonalds of Glencoe. If this request was not granted, he announced his purpose to return home with his people, and prosecute the enterprise no further. "The Macdonalds of Glencoe," he said, "would be dishonoured by remaining in a service where others than their own men were employed to restrain them, under whatsoever circumstances of provocation, within the line of their military duty." The royal Adventurer granted the request of the highspirited chieftain, and the Macdonalds of Glencoe guarded from the slightest injury the house of the cruel and crafty statesman who had devised and directed the massacre of their ancestors. Considering how natural the thirst of vengeance becomes to men in a primitive state of society, and how much it was interwoven with the character of the Scottish Highlander, Glencoe's conduct on this occasion is a noble instance of a high and heroic preference of duty to passion.

GLENCOE.

SEEST thou yon ocean of stupendous cliffs,
Heaving their snowy bosoms to the sky,
Whose frozen front the hovering eagle skiffs
With her broad wings, while passing dimly by ?
And list that mountain-torrent's dreary sigh,
As through the horrid glen it wanders slow;
Ah! deeds have there been done of blackest dye,
And purest blood, by guile, was doom'd to flow!
Oh! pause, and mark it well, that desert is Glencoe,

The form of nature here is grim and gaunt,

A desert without tree to cheer the view;
The eagle is the sole inhabitant,

Throned in his palace of ethereal blue :
Amid the sky, the rent cliffs breaking through,
Where desolation keeps his withering hold,

Throwing his naked pride and murky hue

Upon each mountain's rugged forehead bold,

That lowers with shatter'd front, making creation old.

Where rise the hills, as if they long'd to kiss

And join each other in a rude embrace,

Like savage lovers in the wilderness,

There sport the desert's fair and chainless race; Far from the hunter's aim, the blood-hound's chase, The red deer wanders, and the stately stag Bounds gallantly along the mountain's face

While the gray fox seems in the glen to lag;
The airy-footed goat sports on from crag to crag.

And see upon the stream of Cona, stand

A few gray stones, the monuments of blood: They show the lowly dwellings of the band

Who cheer'd their murderers in courteous mood; They were not conquer'd by those villains rude, But in night's solitude, when all was still,

When sleep each manly spirit had subdued,

They felt the brand of murder through them thrill,
Then death's long hollow groan rung widely o'er each hill!

Ay, in the hour of slumber and of faith,

When youthful love seem'd cradled with delight, When friendship should have come instead of death, To guard the courteous sleepers in the nightThe yell of murder spread from height to height, Then waked the startled eagle on her cloud Scared by the flames that broke upon her sight;

Scared by the dying screams, that long and loud

Rose from the manly hearts, that 'neath death's tempest bow'd.

Oh! for a tongue-an arm to blast the slave

Who did the deed-the heart that gave it birth! May scorn, with her lean finger, point the grave Where such vile monsters mingle with the earth. Kings are but men ;-yet they, with hellish mirth, Can sport with hearts more noble than their own; Plant red destruction on the friendly hearth ;

Make shackled millions with oppression groan;

Upraise the seeds of peace, which Thou, O God! hast sown.

Cona! though lonely, still thou hast a charm,

Which all thy desolation cannot blight:

Within thee Fingal raised his mighty arm,
And Ossian's harp rung to the breeze of night.
And now, methinks, upon you awful height,
That beetles o'er the desolated way,

I mark his giant form and tresses white,

Floating upon the mountain-storm like spray,
And like a shade he seems of some forgotten day.

But, hark! those echoes stealing o'er the hill,

Wild and unearthly ;-are they from his lyre?
Ah! no-his mountain harp-strings now are still;
Dark nameless time beheld the Bard expire,
But not his glory, nor his deep-toned fire.
No-like the blasts of his own uplands blue,
It seems to strengthen as it warbles higher;
And from the dreary spot where first it grew,

The breath of fame has blown it's sparks creation through.