VISIT TO THE FIELD OF CULLODEN.

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 gray 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 ever 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 showing the hoplessness 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 High. lands 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, all add their effect to that romantic valour which,

on the appearance of Prince Charles, burst forth over the vales of England, struck terror into the heart of the metropolis, and then, as suddenly retreating, expired in one melancholy blaze on the Field of Culloden.

It is no wonder that the struggles of the exiled Stuarts, and the exploits of the Highlanders, have produced such a multitude of Jacobite songs, and such romances as those of Scott; and, as thousands of our countrymen and countrywomen now traverse every summer the very scenes inhabited by these heroic clans, and where the principal events of the last rebellion took place, it may be as well, before describing the visit to Culloden, to take a hasty glance at the events that so fatally terminated there.

The moment that our summer tourists enter the great Caledonian Canal, one of the most magnificent, and now one of the most accessible routes which they can take, they are in the very cradle of the rebellion of forty-five. Right and left of those beautiful lochs over which they sail, in the glens and recesses of the wild hills around them, dwell the clans that carried such alarm into England. The fastnesses of Lochabar, Moidart, and Badenoch, sent forth their mountaineers at the first summons of their Prince. Not a splintered mountain towers in view, nor a glen pours its waters into the Glen More nan Albin, or Great Glen of Scotland, but bears on it some trace or tradition of those times. Fort William, Fort Augustus, the shattered holds of Inverlochy, Invergary, Glen Moriston, all call them to your remembrances. It was here that Lochiel called them around the standard of Charles; it was here they gathered in their strength, and drove out every Saxon, except the garrison of Fort William; and it was here that the troops of the bloody Duke of Cumberland came at his command, and blasted the whole region with fire and sword. It is wonderful how nature, in ninety years, can so completely have reclothed the valleys with wood, and turned once more that black

region of the shadow of death into so smiling a paradise. When you ascend to the justly celebrated Fall of Foyers, you are again reminded of forty-five, by passing the house of Frazer of Foyers; and as you approach Inverness, you only get nearer to the startling catastrophe of the drama. Your whole course has been through the haunts of the Camerons, the Macdonalds, the Grants, the Macphersons, and Frazers, the rebel clans of forty-five, and it leads you, as it did them, to the Muir of Culloden.

From the first commencement of the troubles of the house of Stuart to the last effort in their behalf, the Highlanders were their firm, and it may be said almost their only friends. The Lowland Scots, incensed at the attempt of Charles I. to impose the English liturgy upon them, were amongst the earliest to proclaim the solemn league and covenant, and to join the English Parliament against him; but the Highlanders, under Montrose, rose in his cause, and created a powerful diversion in his favour. Again, when Charles the II. attempted a similar measure and aroused a similar spirit in the lowlands, the Highlanders, under the celebrated Claverhouse, maintained the royal ordinance; and again, under the same commander, fought for James II. against his successful rival William III. In George II.'s reign, in 1715, they once more, under the Earl of Mar, set up the standard of the Pretender, part of them marching as far as Preston in Lancashire, where they were compelled to lay down their arms, while the remainder were defeated by the Duke of Argyle. Finally, they made their most brilliant, but ultimately fatal attempt, in 1745, under Prince Charles Edward. Thus, for upwards of a hundred years they maintained their attachment, and were ready to shed their blood, for the fallen race of their ancient kings. So desperate, as it regarded all other aid, was become the Stuart cause, that Charles, when he landed on the west coast of Scotland in 1745, was attended only by seven men. If the hand of Providence was ever revealed against the success of any