and corn around them, that we have a difficulty in realizing to ourselves that these are actually the sites of those great actions that stand so prominently in our annals. Even Flodden is a corn-field; and the hill on which James V. posted himself, is at present fast disappearing to mend the roads. But Culloden is every thing that the poet or the antiquary would wish it to be. It is solemn and melancholy as the imagination of the most sympathetic visiter can desire: and who does not sympathise with the fate of so many brave men, who had burst forth in so romantic an enterprise for the restoration of their fallen kings, and had done such extraordinary deeds in it? Who can avoid sympathising in the last vain efforts of a high-spirited people to maintain their independence against a nation of such overwhelming power as England, notwithstanding the misgovernment of the Stuarts, and the clear demonstration, from that day to this, that their removal from the throne was one of the most auspicious events that ever happened to this kingdom?

Though ninety years have passed since the battle of Culloden, the field is covered with the marks of that day. The moment you set foot on the scene of action, you recognise every position of the contending armies, and the objects which surrounded them. The night before the battle, Prince Charles and his officers lodged in Culloden House. There stands Culloden, restored and beautified since then, but occupying the same site and surrounded by the same wood. The battle took place between this house and an extensive inclosure on the Moor, the north wall of which screened the right flank of the Highland

F

army. This wall the English troops partly pulled down, and raked the flank of the rebels with such a murderous fire of artillery as cut down almost every man, and caused the almost instantaneous rout of the right wing. The mouldering remains of that old and shattered wall still stretch across the Moor in the very course laid down in the original plans of the battle. In the centre of the place of action the ground was hollow and boggy. The ground is now sound, but you see plainly the hollow extent of the morass.

To the south-west stood, at that day, a large farm-house, called Balvraid; to this house the right wing of the rebels retreated; here great numbers of their comrades gathered to them, and in a body made good, and indeed without pursuit, their way into Badenoch. The house stands there yet. On the northern edge of the battle field, near the extremity of the left wing, is marked the site of a hut: this was unquestionably the hut of a blacksmith, the only house then standing precisely on the battle field. This smith, so says the current tradition of the place, was a stalwart fellow, but not at all desirous to take part in the fray, but the Highlanders compelled every man that they found in the vicinity to come forth to their help. Their numbers were diminished by absence, and their strength by starvation and excessive fatigue; they needed all aid that they could command, and they insisted on the jolly smith taking arms. The smith was very loath and very dogged, but, snatching up the shaft of a cart that was reared against the wall of his smithy, he took his post beside them. When, however, he saw

the havoc made by the English cavalry amongst his countrymen, his blood was up, and rushing into the thickest of the fray, he laid about him with his tremendous weapon, knocking down the troopers from their horses, and levelling all that he came near.

The exploits of this son of Vulcan turning the attention of the cavalry on him, he was beset by overwhelming numbers, and after performing prodigies of valour, and laying low many with his cart shaft, he was at length compelled to fly. He took the road towards Inverness, the direction which the greater number of the fugitives were taking, and after turning repeatedly on his pursuers, and bringing down several of them, he was at length killed, not far from the mill, about a mile from Inverness, where the last bodies were found. The country people yet tell the spot where the sturdy blacksmith dropped. His smithy stood from year to year on the fatal field, deserted and gradually

falling to decay. It remained a heap of smouldering ruin till within these few years, when several fresh huts springing up on the Moor not far off, the people gradually conveyed away the stones of the walls to construct their own habitations. It is said that the forge, the tools, and heaps of rusty iron, were found beneath the ruins of the roof, which had fallen in. Such had been the horror connected with that fatal field, that none had cared to carry them away. When we saw the place every stone was grubbed up to the bottom of the foundations, and a pool of water nearly filled the hollow; but you had only to turn up any part of the floor which was bare, and you found it to consist of the cinders and smithy-slack of the brave old blacksmith's forge.

A road has been cut across the Moor since the battle, which passes right through the centre of the scene of action, and runs close past the site of the smith's forge; and it passes, too, amid what are the most striking and conspicuous objects on the field -the graves of the slaughtered soldiers. Nothing can be more impressive than these graves. The whole Moor besides is one black waste of heath but these graves are grassy mounds of clear green, the only green spot within the whole compass of the melancholy Moor. They lie right and left of the road, but principally on the south side. The road, as we have observed, having been cut across the heath since the battle, and passing directly across the place of graves, has no doubt covered some of them for ever from our view, but has brought the remainder under the very eye of all that travel through Culloden. Burns

once looked on these green hillocks in his northern ramble, and described his own and the popular feeling in

THE LOVELY LASS OF INVERNESS.

The lovely lass o' Inverness,

Na joy nor pleasure can she see;
For e'en and morn she cries alas!
And ay the saut tear blins her e'e:-

"Drumossie Moor,* Drumossie day,
A waefu' day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear,
My father dear and brethren three.

"Their winding-sheet the bloody clay,
Their graves are growing green to see;
And by them lies the dearest lad
That ever blest a woman's e'e!

"Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord,

A bloody man I trow thou be;

For many a heart thou hast made sair,

That ne'er did wrang to thine or thee."

That we might not miss any information connected with the spot, we entered a hut not very far from the old smith's forge, and to our great satisfaction found a family that could speak English. They were, a widow of the name of Mackenzie, and her son and daughter, both grown up. They appeared very intelligent, and took a warm interest in every thing relating to the field of battle. They told us that some of their family had lived on this spot from the day of the contest. That, besides the smith's hut, this was the only one in the

Drumossie was the old name of Culloden.