THERE are few things more interesting than a visit to an old battle-field. The very circumstance impresses indelibly on your mind the history connected with it. It awakes a more lively interest about the deeds done there, than the mere meeting with them in a book can. It kindles a curiosity about all the persons and the events that once passed over it; and when you have inquired, the living knowledge which you have gained of the place and its localities, fixes the facts for ever in your

memories.

Besides that, old traditions linger about the field and its vicinity, which in the excitement of the main transaction never found their way into the record. There are passages and glimpses of personages, that the historian did not learn, or did not deign to place on his page, which have nevertheless a vivid effect on the heart and the imagination of him who wanders and muses there in after time. You see, even long ages afterwards, evidences of the wrath and ravages of the moment of contention, and touching traces of those human sufferings, which, though they make the mass of instant misery and the most fruitful subject of subsequent reflection, are lost in the glare of worldly glory, and the din of drums and trumpets. You see where the fierce agency of fire and artillery have left marks of their rage-where they have shivered rocks and shattered towers, laid waste dwellings and blown up the massy fortresses of the feudal ages. Nature, with all her healing and restoring care, does not totally erase or conceal these. There are grey crumbling walls, weed-grown heaps, grassy mounds shrouding vast ruins; and even at times, of the slaughtered hosts, still

The graves are green; they may be seen.

Of the battle-fields in this country, I know none which have more interested my imagination than those of Flodden and Culloden. Both were peculiarly disastrous to Scotland: in one the king was slain with nearly all his nobility, in the other the regal hopes of his unfortunate descendants were

extinguished for ever. These circumstances have made them both themes of poetry and romance of the highest quality which Scotland has produced. No one can read the pathetic ballad—

The flowers of the forest are all wede away,

without feeling a strong interest in Flodden; and the vast influence which the battle of Culloden has had on the fortunes of this country, render the spot on which it was fought one of peculiar note to Englishmen. It was there that the fate of the Stuart dynasty was sealed. It was there that it was demonstrated beyond dispute, that any chance of that family -so unfortunately attached to principles of government and religion which the bulk of the empire rejected and abjured, -to regain the throne of these kingdoms, was gone for ever. It was there that popery and regal despotism, as regnant powers in Great Britain, were destroyed. It was there that not only was Protestantism made triumphant, but that the empire was consolidated far more than by the formal Act of Union itself. While the Highlands continued the stronghold of Jacobitism, there was a weak place in the kingdom which France and Spain were only too well acquainted with; and on any recurrence of hostility with them, we were threatened with invasion and insurrection at once. The course of the rebellion of 1745, which was terminated at Culloden, by shewing the hopelessness of such attempts, put an end to them. It was found that the Highlanders alone, out of the immense population of the realm, could be roused to assert the claims

of the old dynasty, and the battle of Culloden laid the Highlands at the feet of the conquerors, and they were crushed into passive obedience. Henceforward all parties, English and Scotch, highlanders and lowlanders, have felt so vitally the advantages of union; of one common empire, and one common interest; and such has been the manifest progress in wealth, and power, and knowledge, of Britain-sound, and whole, and healthy in all its members, and with the same political and commercial advantages accessible to all its children, that every one must rejoice in the course which events have taken. Instead of internal divisions and squabbles about the crown, laying her open to attacks from without, Britain by her union has advanced to an eminence amongst the nations, most glorious in itself, and to a prospect of political dominion and moral influence that have no parallel, and that are too vast even for the strongest imagination to embrace.

On the other hand, putting out of view these considerations and consequences, history has few things so striking as the transactions that terminated at Culloden. We see an ancient dynasty driven from the throne of a splendid empire, striving to regain it, and that particular race from which it sprang, adhering with inviolable devotion to its fortunes; and ready, in the face of millions, and the vast resources of England, to stand to the death for its claims. Nothing can be more picturesque and heroic than the Highlanders, as seen in this history. Their magnificent mountain-land, their peculiar costume, their clanship, their whole life and character, so different to those of the rest of the empire