Lord Holland illustrated the memorial in the following Latin and English verses: Hanc iterum egregiæ pietatis præmia gemmam, Victori intacta misit ab urbe Pius; Hanc tibi dat meritam Dux, excaptus, et exsul, Quod sola es casus ausa levare suos. THE GENTLE LOCHIEL. Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array! At the time of Queen Anne's death, the aristocracy of England, who have at all times virtually been its rulers, were divided into two parties-the one bent upon bringing back the Stuarts and high-church principles, while the other was no less determined to exclude the old dynasty. So far as the nobles themselves were concerned, the two factions were pretty equal in wealth and numbers, or, if anything, the Jacobites had the advantage, but this was more than made up to the Whigs, by the mass of the people throwing themselves into their side of the scales, and thus giving them an overwhelming preponderance. It was not that the English nation had, or could have, any personal regard for George L, a foreign prince, who could not even speak a syllable of their language, but he was a Protestant, and Protestantism was supposed to be a natural adjunct of political freedom, while the Catholic faith was by the many considered as being incompatible with the liberty of the subject. True it was, that such had been the religion of their forefathers, and equally true was it, that high and low were then, as now, always ready to vouch for the wisdom of the olden times; but in this special instance their wisdom, it would seem, had been no better than folly, and was therefore not only to be eschewed, but to be put down at whatever expense of blood or treasure. Aided by this popular feeling, the Whigs, upon the death of Queen Anne, baffled all the efforts of James to regain his lost throne, and brought over George I. in triumph from Hanover, stoutly maintaining all the while the somewhat inconsistent maxim, that the king could do no wrong. The defeated faction, however, were by no means disposed to submit in quietness to the domination of their successful rivals. In this point the High-churchmen made common cause with the English Roman-catholics; yet even their zeal, when at its utmost, fell infinitely below that of the Highland chiefs and their clans, to whom strife and bloodshed seemed to be the natural state of things, and who, if not in arms against the government, would most assuredly have been fighting with each other. They had, moreover, the same wild ideas of fidelity to the sovereign that their clans evinced towards themselves, besides which they were yet further blinded by some fanciful notions of again erecting Scotland into an independent kingdom, of which James was to be the ruler. The wisdom of their conduct in thus wrapping the whole nation in fear and bloodshed, for a scheme so hopeless, may indeed be doubted; but unless morality be merely conventional, meaning one thing to-day and another to-morrow, it is impossible to deny them the praise of loyalty to their king, and fidelity to their religion. The question assumes a very different shape when we come to consider, as we must presently, the conduct of the exile, who prompted them to such undertakings. Amongst these untameable adherents of James Stuart, none held a more distinguished position than the Camerons of Lochiel. At the date of our present narrative, their chieftain, John Cameron, was an exile in France, whither he had fled for refuge on the disbanding of the Jacobite army, a short time after the battle of Sherriff Muir. With a prudent regard to the chance of forfeiture, not uncommon among the Highland chiefs, he had made over the guidance of his estate, ere he went out, to his son, Donald-the "Gentle Lochiel,” as he was afterwards called-and thus escaped one of the penalties of unsuccessful rebellion, in not entailing utter ruin upon his descendants, which must have been the case but for this precaution. Donald therefore became virtually, though not in name, the head of his clan while his father yet lived, and being equally moderate and sagacious, and one who, "if he loved his king well, loved his country still better," there seemed a fair chance of his not involving the clan by any ill-timed outbreak in favour of the Stuarts. This was now the rather to be expected, as he had reached the middle period of life, a time when the reign of the passions usually ceases, and that of reason begins; he was moreover a happy husband, having been married some years before to a daughter of Sir James Campbell of Auchinbreck, to whom he was tenderly attached, and who was said to be full worthy of his affection. In addition to this, superstition-and what Highlander was ever insensible to superstition?-held out every inducement to him to remain quiet. There was an ancient prophecy, that no Lochiel, who was fair, could ever prosper; and, as Donald laboured under this misfortune, after a long succession of dark complexioned ancestors, it was clearly the wisest thing he could do not to tempt fortune, as she had thus pronounced against him beforehand. Weighty as were these considerations, they were in some measure counterbalanced by others of scarcely less importance. It was a favourite notion with his clan, as indeed it was of all Highlanders, that the whole of Scotland was their lawful inheritance, of which they had been despoiled by a medley of Danes, Saxons, Normans, and English; hence they argued that any deeds of violence they might commit upon the actual holders of the land, were no more than a well deserved smiting of the Philistines, a just retaliation upon the robbers who had possessed themselves of their country by fraud and force, and who, but for such interruptions, would come, at last, to think it really was their own. According to this creed, whatever they could snatch from the Lowlands was, in truth, no more than a compulsory restitution, and any opportunity of obtaining such upon a larger scale than usual, was a thing to be desired. It required all the influence of Donald with his clan to keep turbulent spirits of this kind within the necessary limits; even the usual authority of a chieftain, great as it was, might have failed to do so, had he been less gifted than he appears to have been with the qualities that fit a man for the command of his fellow creatures; but with these he was pre-eminently endowed; his education abroad had made him better acquainted with men and manners than was the case with many of the Highland chieftains, and being possessed of superior intelligence, in addition to the more common qualities of courage and daring, he came to be idolized by all around him as the good and great Lochiel. A yet more dangerous temptation for Donald than the wishes of his clan was to be found in the favour of the royal exile, and the constant exhortations of his own uncle, Allan Cameron, who attended the Chevalier during his residence at Albano. Still, for years, his prudence overmatched any natural longings he might |