or war saddle, with an air that showed it was his familiar seat. He had a bright burnished head-piece, with a plume of feathers, together with a cuirass, thick enough to resist a musket-ball, with a back-piece of lighter materials. These defensive arms he wore over a buff jerkin, along with a pair of gauntlets or steelgloves, the tops of which reached up to his

elbow, and which, like the rest of his armour, were of bright steel. At the front of his military saddle hung a case of pistols, far beyond the ordinary size, nearly two feet in length, and carrying bullets of twenty to the pound. A buff-belt, with a broad silver buckle, sustained on one side a long straight double-edged broadsword, with a strong guard, and a blade calculated either to strike or push. On the right side hung a dagger of about

eighteen inches in length; a shoulder-belt sustained at his back a musquetoon or blunderbuss, and was crossed by a bandelier containing his charges of ammunition. Thigh-pieces of steel, then termed taslets, met the tops of his huge jack-boots, and completed the equipage of a well-armed trooper of the period.

"The appearance of the horseman himself corresponded well with his military equipage, to which he had the air of having

been long inured. He was above the middle size, and of strength sufficient to bear with ease the weight of his weapons, offensive and defensive. His age might be about forty and upwards, and his countenance was that of a resolute weather-beaten veteran, who had seen many fields, and brought away in token more than one

scar.

This singular personage never for a moment derogates from his character, by saying or doing any thing that could properly be said or done by any other man. Nothing can be more admirable than the account he gives of the different services in which he had been engaged, and his motives for quitting them. They are detailed in the author's very best manner, and in spite of the sordid selfishness of his character, and his utter destitution of every amiable quality, we feel some good will to him on account of his reverence for the great Gustavus, the lion of the North, and bulwark of the Protestant religion. The radiance of the Protestant hero's splendid exploits, not only throws a light over the hard and sordid characters of his adherent, but the very horse, whom he names after his great leader, derives an interest from that circumstance. Perhaps the regard the ritt-master shows

VOL. V.

for Gustavus, the horse, induces our endurance of him full as much as his military skill, presence of mind, and professional sagacity; and when Gustavus falls in the battle of Inverlochy, should have done had the wound been we feel nearly as much regret as we inflicted on his master. Though become familiar with it in so many instances, we have never done wondering at the plastic power displayed in this author's mimic creations. His is a theatre where there are neither mutes nor candle-snuffers,-figures busy and full of life continually pass before us, not merely amusing us for the moment, but claiming an interest in our feelings, and a place in our memory. The very animals that make up the dumb show in his scenes insist on taking their place in the remembered groupes that haunt our fancy. Who can forget the beautiful animal that bore Claverhouse through fields of carnage, and over precipices of danger, the fond and faithful Wasp, so inhospitably received by the family of Pepper and Mustard,-or the little quey that was called Effie, and so carefully fed by David Deans? Here, too, the author's character breaks forth in all the beauty of benevolence. He luxuriates in strewing lights of kindness and intelligence from his full stores, even over the inferior creation, when they casually appear among his characters.

The skilful management of light and shade in his delineations produces a variety in portraits that seem somewhat akin to each other, like that we daily meet with in life. Meg Merrilees is old and poor, wanders about without a settled home, and is feared and respected by her equals from her native superiority of talent and lofty sense of right breaking through the cloud of depravity and ignorance by which she is surrounded. Edie Ochiltree is also old, poor, wanderer, and has been engaged in scenes not favourable to moral purity; and, from this casual resemblance in a few exterior circumstances, many not capable, it should seem, of discrimination, or given to depreciate what they do not well understand, have accused the author of copying himself in these two most discordant characters, which agree in no one particular excepting in those circumstances, merely extrinsic, that have been already mentioned. Edie

F

has as little of the stern and solemn

commanding power that in the lowest state of poverty and wretchedness overawes us in Meg, as Meg has of Edie's gay good humour, sarcastic wit, pliant accommodation, and occasional fits of penitence, and endeavours at piety. We respect Meg, but shrink from her. We do not respect Edie, yet very much incline to draw near and chat with him. There is infinitely more tact and nice discrimination shown in marking the specific difference of characters, having these casual and merely superficial points of resemblance, than in depicting those who are in every particular distinct from each other. We have been somewhat scandalized at hearing some of our countrymen, in the same spirit, compare Dalgetty, the rapacious, heartless, and coarse-minded soldier of fortune, as near of kin, and resembling in feature our much respected favourite the Baron of Bradwardine. This comparison is worthy of Captain Fluellin himself. The circumstances of being both Scotchmen, bred at a Scotch college, and going early to serve in a foreign country, produce an inevitable resemblance in some outward circumstances. But, in regard to characteristic traits, it can only be by the most marked contrast that we can associate such a character with the nobleminded, disinterested, honourable, and generous Baron, self-denied, careless of every thing but strict truth, with the most delicate feeling of honour, and the most devoted sense of loyalty, still rising in dignity as he sinks in fortune, and commanding our highest esteem when fallen into the depth of adversity. Even when we view him in the ludicrous attitude of scrambling into his sheltering cave, or guarding the inside of Janet's door, in his faded uniform, the temptation to smile is instantly checked by veneration melting into sympathy. His pedantry, his prolixity, his pride of pedigree, are all forgot; and if we do smile, it is at the recollection of another worthy of old renown, of whom the Baron forcibly reminds us. The gaunt and meagre form of Don Quixote, with all his delicate honour, shaded by certain absurdities, less harmless than those of the Baron, rises to our fancy as a more suitable associate than that assigned to him by some of his Countrymen.

At the period to which the story in question belongs, it appears that no less than five regiments had been raised in Scotland to assist Gustavus, the lion of the North, and bulwark of the Protestant faith. Considering the love of a military life, and the hatred of Popery then prevalent in this country, it is but fair to suppose that many joined the standard of that heroic monarch from motives equally pure and noble. Of such it may be conjectured, that they returned to their own country when their leader's glorious career was closed at Lutzen. Very many, however, who went young abroad, without even the advantage of dispatching their commons in the Marischal College, might forget their own country, without giving fealty or affection to any other, become hardhearted and unprincipled among the scenes of plunder and devastation, which they daily witnessed, and finally be prepared to sell their services with perfect indifference to the readiest bidder. The long period of peace which preceded the war, in which the Scotch estates for a while made common cause with the English Parliament, precluded the possibility of finding officers, or even soldiers of experience in the military arts at home. Thus depending upon the mercenary troops who had served abroad for recruiting and conducting their army, it may well be supposed to contain many such as the ritt-master, who is brought forward as Knight of the Shire," to represent them all.

that drove the mother of Allan Macauley to wander through the mountains in a state of distraction, and the attraction that drew her from the force of habit to watch the milking of the cattle in the shealings, has also an air of romance, but is nevertheless literally true, as is the account of her pregnancy, her recovery, and the impetuous temper of the son born under such inauspicious circumstances. A worthy and respectable family still exist, descended from this hard fated lady. The name of Macauley, under which they are shadowed forth, belonged to a small but fierce and vindictive sept, the head of which is well remembered as being in possession of Ardincaple during those troublous times.

The well known fact of Montrose making his first appearance in this country, in the disguise of a servant, appears revolting to some who have forgotten or never known the history of that period. Yet this circumstance is extremely well managed, the hero performs his part in the masquerade admirably, and supports the character of a respectful, yet manly and well informed domestic so well, that it is merely in decorous propriety of manners above ordinary servants, that any gleam of elegance breaks through his disguise. The Menteith appears like the blossom of every thing lovely and noble in character; and there is a fine contrast between his generous disdain and abhorrence of Dalgetty's avowed, selfish, and unprincipled versatility, and the experience of life, that reconciles his no less noble-minded friend to the necessity of using his talents, and profiting by his military skill and hard-headed valour, without bestowing on him his esteem or his confidence. Dalgetty is altogether an admirable and highly finished portrait. We have met with nothing in life or in fiction that exactly resembles him, and yet we have not a doubt of his existence, easily conceiving how such a character might be found amidst the scenes and events with which he was connected. Gillespie Gruamach merely walks out of the frame in which contemporary writers have inclosed his portrait, to act and to avoid action with the precision, upon the whole, of historical truth. To be sure we have no accurate details in said writers of his inter

view in his own dungeon with the redoubted Major, yet that is more probable than his leaving his clan to fight the battle without him, which we know did actually happen, otherwise we should consider it as nearly impossible.

The Son of the Mist seems to have been born three or four centuries too late; yet he belongs not to the age of the Fingalians, not being sufficiently exalted and poetical for that cloudy period. Even with all the exasperation, which we take for granted, there is, in his character, a ferocity always revolting, and in the article of death so startling, that we were much inclined to be of Dalgetty's opinion, with regard to the want of decorum in his exit. Lord Byron has seen fit to invest his heroes with a kind of terrific or demoniac grandeur, as he seems to think it, by making them die not only impenitent, but breathing a sort of defiance to the terrors of a dark futurity. So did not even the villains of Shakespeare, and so do not the Highlanders of Scotland, however savage or ferocious. Their very wildest superstitions have a solemn tincture of pious feeling mingled with them, and those doubts of the soul's immortality in which impenitence takes refuge, never once entered into the mind of the most savage Highlander. On the contrary, the more ignorant and superstitious they are, they are so much the more sensibly impressed with the existence of separate spirits, whose reappearance on earth they consider as something frequent and familiar. Their firm conviction of the reality of such visitations, predisposes them to those lively dreams and passionate reveries of fond recollection, which serve to confirm the illusion. Such a person as the author describes might in his ignorance think the barbarities he exercised on his enemies in some measure justified by the injuries he had sustained. He might not feel remorse as it would act upon a more enlightened and better regulated mind. But still a sense of futurity is ever present to those whose creed admits of so slight a partition between the unseen world and that which we inhabit.

It has been already observed, that this author draws no fancy pictures The prototypes of his characters are

before his mind's eye, and if in any instance there is a little indistinctness, if the lights and shades are not rightly distributed, or the attitudes not fitly chosen, it is not from want of skill in the painter, but we may conclude that he has not had a distinct view of the objects that his ever faithful pencil pourtrays. In personal observation, One only has equalled him, and of those he has not met with in his ordinary walks, he has notices sufficient to supply the deficiency. The Covenanters still live and speak in the memorials they have left behind, among which ample materials are found for many of the subordinate figures which fill up his inimitable paintings. One class of beings exists however, who have not afforded him these facilities of observation. A people concealed among their mountains, who have not been described by others, and have left no written memorials of themselves, and who, in times of old, secluded in their fastnesses, were only characterized by their fidelity to their chiefs, the impetuosity of their valour, and their predatory incursions into the more fertile districts of the Lowlands. Divided from all other people of Scotland, their manner of thinking and expressing themselves were as little known as the obscure recesses of their country. They were, in short, a kind of non-descripts. Those that did know any thing of them, only saw them as dangerous neighbours or declared enemies. To the southern counties they were little if at all known, and they who dwelt on their borders knew them to their cost, drew them under every disadvantage, and reported of them with malevolent exaggeration. Indeed, it must be allowed they saw only the worst specimens of the mountain population. The hand of power, directed by embittered revenge, had reached them in many instances, and sowed the seeds of interminable hatred betwixt those bordering clans and their more powerful neighbours. And it is from these neighbours that we derive such accounts of the country as that given by Bailie Jarvie, and such pictures as those exhibited in the Legend of Montrose. Must we wonder, then, if drawn from such sources, the harsher features of the mountaineers should appear with con

siderable exaggeration, and the softer traits of tenderness, social affection, and gentle courtesy, find no place upon the canvass? These people, in some degree, resemble the country they inhabit. The bleak moors and desart eminences, the dusky mountains and rugged rocks, impress the mind of a stranger only with images of sublime desolation, while the soft retired beauties of sheltered glens, and glades of fresh and flowery verdure opening in natural woods, are only discovered and enjoyed in their full extent by those to whom residence has made these occult beauties familiar. To give the same free and faithful portraiture of the domestic manners of the Highlanders, as that exhibited in this work of the Lowland Scotch, the author should be as familiarly acquainted with them. This, without a knowledge of their language and a residence among them, is impossible. All that can be expected he performs; all that he knows he tells, "but with no friendly voice," and this we cannot wonder at, knowing from what sources he drew his information.

In

The lions of the high country were not painters, and the painters of the low country have given such likenesses of them as the ingenious Mr Tinto drew of the patriot hero of Scotland for the front of the Wallace Inn, all stern, and grim, and warlike. deed, the lights in which they appear, and the scenes in which they are engaged, do not admit of much softer drawing. But the cruelty and bitterness of hatred which was the result of the mortal feud betwixt the families of Montrose and Argyle, are here shown in their darkest colours, not such as they existed in the period brought under review, but such as was produced by the exasperation of the calamitous scene of which this was the opening.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of this author is, that milk of human kindness which mingles with his ink in the description of the most faulty and even culpable of his dramatis personæ. The goodness of his temper and the kindness of his heart is evident in the indulgent views he gives of our fellow nature in all its varieties. The impious and profligate Bothwell, though hardened in wickedness, and brutal in insolence, asserts