master of the metropolis of Scotland. The King's forces having again united at Dunbar, and being about to advance upon Edinburgh, sustained at Prestonpans one of the most complete defeats recorded in history, their cavalry flying in irretrievable confusion, and all their infantry being killed or made prisoners. Under these auspices, the Highland army, now about five or six thousand strong, advanced into England, although Marshal Wade lay at Newcastle with one army, and the Duke of Cumberland was at the head of another in the centre of the kingdom. They took Carlisle, a walled town, with a castle of considerable strength, and struck a degree of confusion and terror into the public mind, at which those who witnessed and shared it were afterwards surprised and ashamed. London, says a contemporary, writing on the spur of the moment, lies open as a prize to the first comers, whether Scotch or Dutch; and a letter from Gray to Horace Walpole, paints an indifference yet more ominous to the public cause than the general panic:— "The common people in town at least know how to be afraid; but we are such uncommon people here (at Cambridge) as to have no more sense of danger than if the battle had been fought where and when the battle of Cannæ was. I heard three sensible middle-aged men, when the Scotch were said to be at Stamford, and actually were at Derby, talking of hiring a chaise to go to Caxton (a place in the high-road) to see the Pretender and Highlanders as they passed." A further evidence of the feelings un

der which the public laboured during this crisis, is to be found in these papers, in a letter from the well-known Sir Andrew Mitchell to the Lord President.

"If I had not lived long enough in England to know the natural bravery of the people, particularly of the better sort, I should, from their behaviour of late, have had a very false opinion of them; for the least scrap of good news exalts them most absurdly; and the smallest reverse of fortune depresses them meanly."-P. 255.

In fact the alarm was not groundless ;-not that the number of the Chevalier's individual followers ought to have been an object of serious, at least of permanent alarm to so great a kingdom,-but because, in many counties, a great proportion of the landed interest were Jacobitically disposed, although, with the prudence which distinguished the opposite party in 1688, they declined joining the invaders until it should appear whether they could maintain their ground without them. If it had rested with the unfortunate but daring leader of this strange adventure, his courage, though far less supported either by actual strength of numbers or by military experience, was as much "screwed to the sticking-place" as that of the Prince of Orange. The history of the council of war, at Derby, in which Charles Edward's retreat was determined, has never yet been fully explained; it will, however, be one day made known ;-in the mean time, it is proved that no cowardice on his part, no wish to retreat from the desperate adventure in which he was engaged, and to shelter himself from its con

sequences, dictated the movement which was then adopted. Vestigia nulla retrorsum had been his motto from the beginning. When retreat was determined upon, contrary to his arguments, entreaties, and tears, he evidently considered his cause as desperate he seemed, in many respects, an altered man; and from being the leader of his little host, became in appearance, as he was in reality, their reluctant follower. While the Highland army advanced, Charles was always in the van by break of day;-in retreat, his alacrity was gone, and often they were compelled to wait for him ;he lost his spirit, his gaiety, his hardihood, and he never regained them but when battle was spoken of. In later life, when all hopes of his re-establishment were ended, Charles Edward sunk into frailties by which he was debased and dishonoured. But let us be just to the memory of the unfortunate. Without courage, he had never made the attempt without address and military talent, he had never kept together his own desultory bands, or discomfited the more experienced soldiers of his enemy; and finally, without patience, resolution, and fortitude, he could never have supported his cause so long, under successive disappointments, or fallen at last with honour, by an accumulated and overwhelming pressure.

When the resolution of retreat was adopted, it was accomplished with a dexterous celerity, as remarkable as the audacity of the advance. With Ligonier's army on one flank, and Cumberland's in the rear-surrounded by hostile forces,-and

without one hope remaining of countenance or assistance from the Jacobites of England, the Highlanders made their retrograde movement without either fear or loss, and had the advantage at Clifton, near Penrith, in the only skirmish which took place between them and their numerous pursuers. The same good fortune seemed for a time to attend the continuation of the war, when removed once more to Scotland. The Chevalier, at the head of his little army, returned to the north more like a victor than a retreating adventurer. He laid Glasgow under ample contribution, refreshed and collected his scattered troops, and laid siege to Stirling, whose castle guards the principal passage between the Highlands and Lowlands. In the mean while, General Hawley was sent against him; an officer so confident of success, that he declared he would trample the Highland insurgents into dust with only two regiments of dragoons; and whose first order, on entering Edinburgh, was to set up a gibbet in the Grass Market, and another between Leith and Edinburgh. But this commander received from his despised opponents so sharp a defeat, at Falkirk, that, notwithstanding all the colours which could be put upon it, the affair appeared not much more creditable than that of Prestonpans. How Hawley looked upon this occasion, we learn by a letter from General Wight

man.

"General H -y is in much the same situation as General C-e; he was never seen in the field during the battle; and every thing would have gone to wreck, in a worse manner than at ›

Preston, if General Huske had not acted with judgment and courage, and appeared every where. Hy seems to be sensible of his misconduct; for when I was with him on Saturday morning at Linlithgow, he looked most wretchedly; even worse than C-e did a few hours after his scuffle, when I saw him at Fala."-P. 267.

Even when the approach of the Duke of Cumberland, with a predominant force, compelled these adventurers to retreat towards their northern recesses, they were so far from being disheartened that they generally had the advantage in the sort of skirmishing warfare which preceded their final defeat at Culloden. On this occasion, they seem, for the first time, to have laboured under a kind of judicial infatuation. They did not defend the passage of Spey, though broad, deep, rapid, and dangerous; they did not retreat before the duke into the defiles of their own mountains, where regular troops pursuing them could not long have subsisted; they did not even withdraw two leagues, which would have placed them in a position inaccessible to horse and favourable to their own mode of fighting; they did not await their own reinforcements, although three thousand men, a number equal to one half of their army, were within a day's march;—but, on the contrary, they wasted the spirits of their people, already exhausted by hunger and dispirited by retreat, in a forced march, with the purpose of a night attack, which was hastily and rashly adopted, and as inconsiderately abandoned; and at length drew up in an open plain, exposed to the fire of artillery, and protected from the charge of cavalry only by a park wall,