The cry was heard. Torfoot sprang forth
To save the banner, or to die;
The ensign still held fast the staff,
And firmly bore it up on high.

But round it thronged the troopers fierce, Who strove to seize the fluttering prize. "The trophy's mine," cried Halliday;

"The man who dares to thwart me dies!"

"The blue and scarlet," cried Torfoot,

"Shall ne'er be soiled by touch of thine;"
And with the word he clove him down,
And seized himself the sacred sign,

And bore it streaming on the breeze

At sword's point from the fatal field.
His charger falls-the banner sinks-
Torfoot must die, or he must yield!

But Torfoot will not yield; he throws
The precious rag to Hamilton;
Then turns at bay, and dares to stay,

And stand the brunt-himself-alone.

They swept him down; stunned with the shock
Torfoot became an easy prey.

They spared his life. Why did they so?
To make him die more shamefully.

But who shall count the bloody deeds

Were done throughout that fearful fray?
Let the recording-angel tell

Upon the final judgment-day.

After the crushing overthrow at Bothwell Brig-occasioned more by faction among their own ranks than by the superior valour or strategy of the royal troops-the Covenanters were never able to appear again in armed force. Small bands of the more resolute and enthusiastic still held together among the wild moorlands of the western counties, sustained and cheered amidst their sufferings by the ministrations of such noble-minded men as Cargill and Cameron; but their numbers were too few to make any effective demonstration against the tyrannical government of the day, though sufficient to keep that government in continual alarm. In the meantime, with or without pretext, the blood of the saints was shed unsparingly by the hired ruffians of government. Claverhouse who, as we have seen, gained unenviable notoriety on the fatal field of Bothwell, now scoured the western counties at the head of his troopers, perpetrating the most outrageous atrocities upon innocent and defenceless men and women. His murder of John Brown of Priesthill, not to mention other enormities, is sufficient to stamp his memory with everlasting infamy. Mr.

Macpherson has given a graphic description of this tragical incident. Our readers will thank us for transcribing it.

JOHN BROWN,

THE CARRIER OF PRIESTHILL.

Behold, where toils the carrier of Priesthill
Upon the moorland lea; the breezy morn
Is full of joyful sounds, the carrier's heart,
Fresh with the morning incense offered up
Upon the family altar, joyous too;
Nay, his great gladness welleth from his heart,
And bursteth from his lips in Zion's strains.
His family, from whom he hath but gone
A short half hour, wend in and out their cot
Engaged in household duties, but anon

They stop and listen up the moor, from whence,
At intervals, is borne their father's psalm.
Ah! sacred fire of Poesy divine,

Drawn from on high by David's heavenly power,
Thou canst transfigure unto man the curse
That wreathes his brow, into a golden crown
Of purest blessing! Toil is, then, a joy!
The air rings vocal with the holy strains.
Alas! brave warbler, even now the hawk
Makes thy bright voice a sign to track thee by:
Beyond yon hill that checks thy wary eye,

Graham, and his hell-brood, swoop down on their prey.
Ah, now they crest the hill, and now they dash
Upon their quarry.

Down to the good man's cot they take their way—-
Brown, marching like a leader, at their front-

Though he was led, and knew the lead was death!
His dear wife, Isabel, stood near the door
As they drew near, her baby at her breast.
"Cheer up, my Isabel; the day has come,
The prophet warned us, should come soon or late,
When that good man joined both our hands in one,
(And soon or late to us, is God's own time.)
Remember God is Providence, dear wife;

I only go before, you follow soon;

Through death to life our way is still the same."
A yearning kiss-a fond embrace-farewell!

And then he turned him face to face with Graham,
And calmly said: "One boon I ask from you-
A space to pray unto Almighty God,

To whose dread presence you do send me hence."

'Quick, then, to prayer," the Graham in answer said;

"And waste no time: the king's work must not wait."

Then down the good man fell upon his knees,

And through his lips flowed such a stream of pray'r,
The soldiers quailed and softened into men.
Meanwhile o'erhead, a lark sung sweetly down;

Invisible with light, it seemed the voice

From heaven that clove of yore the sacred cloud

When God said unto John, in Jordan's wave,

"This is my beloved Son in whom I am

Well pleased." Sing on, sweet warbling bird, and chaunt
A requiem for the sainted soul that soon

Will pass you swiftly on its way to hearen!

Sudden the Graham dispelled the holy calm,
As the hoarse croak of corbie on the moor
Startles the rest of quiet-couching sleep:

"Ho! soldiers to your work-cut short this prayer;
'Tis long enough i' faith to reach to heaven!
What! heard ye not my word? pale-livered loons!
We'll have ye praying next, and snivelling psalms."
With that he drew his holster-pistol forth,

And murdered man and prayer. Then turning round
To Isabel, he growled, "What think'st thou now
Of thy good man?" With eye as bold she met
The butcher-look of Graham, and calm replied,
"I loved him well, but never more than now."

""Twere well," cried he, "to make thee share his bed."
"It cannot but be well alive or dead,"

Cried she; "But thou hast shed enough of blood
Without the added guilt of shedding mine.
Yet doubtless, thou would'st murder even me;
But God protects me. Lie there, my orphan babe,
While in my plaid I wrap thy father's bones.
Father, which art in heaven, thy will be done!
No father now on earth my children have;
Be thou their stay, and mine! O husband, dear,
We yet shall meet, a family, in heaven!"

But we pause. The form and pressure of this book may be judged of by the copious extracts we have furnished. It contains much precious substance. It is interlaced with rich veins of genuine poesy. Ever and anon its flashes of lyrical genius cause the pulse of the reader to throb with quickened measure.

Some

of its lines are equal to anything in Campbell or Scott. But there must be abatement of unqualified praise. The work is richer in promise than performance. It reminds us of Milton's lion, pawing to extricate his hinder parts from the bondage of earth. Noble thoughts are sometimes imperfectly expressed. Occasionally the rhyme is harsh and halting. Prosaic accretions dim the beauty and sully the purity of poetic sentiment. Nevertheless the work as a whole is deserving of high praise. It overflows with manly utterances, lofty aspirations, and tender sensibilities.

ART. VII. THE USES OF HISTORY TO THE
PREACHER.

THE

HERE is in facts this two-fold strength, that they both establish principles and incite men to use them. Rienzi, when he had matured a conspiracy among the Romans, summoned them for a last appeal to the church of St. John Lateran. In the choir of that church the curious traveller may still see affixed to the wall a copper tablet, in whose blurred inscription he may recognise a senatus consultum of the days of the empire. It was a decree framed to enlarge the imperial prerogative of Vespasian; and des

tined after the decline of fourteen centuries to furnish the last of the tribunes with a text. The golden age of the empire-the renown of the Cæsars-the outward march of the legions—the conquest of nations-the revenue from province and colony-the homage of allies-the influx of visitors the public works-the military roads the temples-the suburban villas-the harboursthe commerce the opulence and luxury-of those elder days; these were the departed glories of the Rome Vespasian ruled, emblazoned by the fervid orator in bitter contrast with the degeneracy of the present. His watchword was the "restoration of the good estate." It caught like wild-fire from heart to heart and from tongue to tongue. There was soon raging one of those political conflagrations which Rome has so often endured herself, and has so often kindled elsewhere.

To what magic shall we ascribe this result? The presence of the ill-fated Rienzi threw a spell over the facile crowd; his rhetoric was bold, his enthusiasm contagious. Yet we are to look for the secret of his power rather in his appeal to history. He made facts his pleaders. He unsealed the mute lips of the past; and inflamed the nerveless sons with the deeds of their sires. It was not the force of argument that put the tribune at the head of the mob, and the mob at the head of the state; but his rehearsal of the splendid story of the national life. Without demonstrating what ought to be, he told what had been. He painted the fame of earlier days; and every stroke was a plea that the Rome of the future might rival the Rome of the past.

The last of the tribunes is but one example among many. The first of the Bonapartes may serve us for another. He, too, was accustomed to make history speak for him. Those troops that so often baffled the combinations of the Allies, had been inspirited beforehand by some bugle-note from the soldiers of old.

"The Persians," cried Napoleon, dreaming of conquest in the East, "have blocked up the route of Tamerlane, but I will open another."

"Hannibal forced the Alps-we have turned them," were the words commemorating the first exploit of the Italian campaign.

On the advance into Austria, his general orders roused the flagging columns with the memory of Alexander, near whose native Macedon their line of march lay.

The expedition into Egypt was quickened by recounting the deeds of Roman legions on the plains before Carthage.

When the bloody action of Eylau was approaching, this allusion to the deeds and hardships of earlier heroes on the same ground, rung like a trumpet call through every corps d'armée: "The brave and unfortunate Pole, on seeing you, will dream that he beholds

the legions of Sobieski returning from their memorable expedition."

Even his generals caught the infection of their master's reverence for historic example: "Sire," said Marshal Davoust, after the fields of Jena and Auerstadt, "the soldiers of the third corps will always be to you what the tenth legion was to Cæsar."

The impulse from earlier times thus transmitted through bulletins of war, has made itself felt also in the employments of peace. Literature, oratory, and art have constructed their chief monuments with historic material. The best tragedies have been historical; not moving the heart with fictitious catastrophe, but with actual sorrows; with dire events, which have first been enacted in earnest by living men, before ever transmitted into milder scenes for the stage. The best pictures have been historical; the subject, chosen from the deeds and characters that were famous long ago; the painter, inspired by long converse with the relics of ancient art. Even the common utensils of life have taken upon themselves the classic elegance of antiquity. Wedgewood resuscitated the long buried materials and forgotten models of Grecian ware. Flaxman designed for him after the purest historic forms. The Barberini vase and the vases of Etruria and Herculaneum have repeated their fame; after long oblivion they have risen into a new dispensation, and exhibit their grace again, all the world over.

The highest samples of eloquence bear the marks of a similar influence. Take the oration "On the Crown." No reader of that masterpiece of argument and invective, can fail to observe the character of the whole fabric. Its very structure is historic; the occasion of it, a crisis in the national life; the aim of it, to vindicate the measures with which the administration encountered that crisis. The speaker rehearsed the acts which had been called in question; this gave the argument its texture. A living scholar has pointed out that the reasoning of the oration consists not so much in discussing propositions, as in detailing events: "Demosthenes' arguments are Demosthenes' facts." And those facts were not selected merely from the brief score of years embraced in the vindication. He led the assembly back among the examples of a more distant past; spoke to them of Salamis, and Platea, and Marathon. His most triumphant climax ends with a passionate adjuration which derives all its power from the historic names it employs, and which the orator well knew were sacred to the heart of the Greeks.

The political addresses of our times abound with the same trait. They are historical, not scholastic, not argumentative. A principle, once announced, is not left on a basis of theory, but substantiated upon experimental fact. The practical working of an idea