heaps of spoil, and to complete the great work of the day; and Dundee was no more.

At the beginning of the action he had taken his place in front of his little band of cavalry. He bid them follow him, and rode forward. But it seemed to be decreed that, on that day, the Lowland Scotch should in both armies appear to disadvantage. The horse hesitated. Dundee turned round, stood up in his stirrups, and, waving his hat, invited them to come on. As he lifted his arm, his cuirass rose, and exposed the lower part of his left side. A musket-ball struck him; his horse sprung forward and plunged into a cloud of smoke and dust, which hid from both armies the fall of the victorious general. A person named Johnstone was near him, and caught him as he sunk down from the saddle. "llow goes the day?" said Dundee. "Well for King James,” answered Johnstone: "but I am sorry for your lordship." "If it is well for him," answered the dying man, "it matters the less for me." He never spoke again but when, half an hour later, Lord Dunfermline and some other friends came to the spot, they thought that they could still discern some faint remains of life. The body, wrapped in two plaids, was carried to the Castle of Blair.

The news of Dundee's victory was everywhere speedily followed by the news of his death; and it is a strong proof of the extent and vigor of his faculties that his death seems everywhere to have been regarded as a complete set-off against his victory. Hamilton,(') before he adjourned the Estates, informed them that he had good tidings for them, that Dundee was certainly dead, and that therefore the rebels had, on the whole, sustained a defeat. In several letters written at that conjuncture by able and experienced politicians a similar opinion is expressed. The messenger who rode with the news of the battle to the English capital was fast followed by another who carried a dispatch for the king, and, not finding His Majesty at St. James's, galloped to Hampton Court. Nobody in the capital ventured to break the scal; but, fortunate

(') The Duke of Hamilton was then Lord High Commissioner of Scotland.

ly, after the letter had been closed, some friendly hand had hastily written on the outside a few words of comfort: "Dundee is killed. Mackay has got to Stirling:" and these words seem to have quieted the minds of the Londoners.

From the pass of Killiecrankie the Highlanders had retired, proud of their victory and laden with spoil, to the Castle of Blair. They boasted that the field of battle was covered with heaps of Saxon soldiers, and that the appearance of the corpses bore ample testimony to the power of a good Gaelic broadsword in a good Gaelic right hand. Heads were found cloven down to the throat, and skulls struck clean off just above the ears. The conquerors, however, had bought their victory dear. While they were advancing they had been much galled by the musketry of the enemy; and, even after the decisive charge, Hastings's Englishmen and some of Leven's Borderers had continued to keep up a steady fire. A hundred and twenty Camerons had been slain; the loss of the Macdonalds had been still greater; and several gentlemen of birth and note had fallen.

Dundee was buried in the church of Blair Athol; but no monument was erected over his grave; and the church itself has long disappeared. A rude stone on the field of battle marks, if local tradition can be trusted, the place where he fell.

THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE. 1690.

[History of England, Chapter XVI.]

WILLIAM was all himself again. IIis spirits, depressed by eighteen months passed in dull state, amidst factions and intrigues which he but half understood, rose high as soon as he was surrounded by tents and standards. It was strange to see how rapidly this man, so unpopular at Westminster, obtained complete mastery over the hearts of his brethren in arms. They observed with delight that, infirm as he was, he took his share of every hardship which they underwent; that he

thought more of their comfort than of his own; that he sharply reprimanded some officers, who were so anxious to procure luxuries for his table as to forget the wants of the common soldiers; that he never once, from the day on which he took the field, lodged in a house, but, even in the neighborhood of cities and palaces, slept in his small traveling-hut of wood; that no solicitations could induce him, on a hot day and in a high wind, to move out of the choking cloud of dust which overhung the line of march, and which severely tried lungs less delicate than his. Every man under his command became familiar with his looks and with his voice; for there was not a regiment which he did not inspect with minute attention. His pleasant looks and sayings were long remembered. One brave soldier has recorded in his journal the kind and courteous manner in which a basket of the first cherries of the year was accepted from him by the king, and the sprightliness with which His Majesty conversed at supper with those who stood round the table.

On the 24th of June, the tenth day after William's landing, he marched southward from Loughbrickland with all his forces. He was fully determined to take the first opportunity of fighting. Schomberg and several other officers recommended caution and delay. But the king answered that he had not come to Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet. The event seems to prove that he judged rightly as a general. That he judged rightly as a statesman can not be doubted. He knew that the English nation was discontented with the way in which the war had hitherto been conducted, that nothing but rapid and splendid success could revive the enthusiasm of his friends and quell the spirit of his enemies, and that a defeat could scarcely be more injurious to his fame and to his interests than a languid and indecisive campaign.

The country through which he advanced had, during eightcen months, been fearfully wasted both by soldiers and by Rapparecs. The cattle had been slaughtered; the plantations had been cut down; the fences and houses were in ruins. Not a human being was to be found near the road, except a few naked and meagre wretches who had no food but the

husks of oats, and who were seen picking those husks, like chickens, from amidst dust and cinders. Yet, even under such disadvantages, the natural fertility of the country, the rich green of the earth, the bays and rivers so admirably fitted for trade, could not but strike the king's observant eye. Perhaps he thought how different an aspect that unhappy region would have presented if it had been blessed with such a government and such a religion as had made his native Holland the wonder of the world; how endless a succession of pleasurehouses, tulip-gardens, and dairy-farms would have lined the road from Lisburn to Belfast; how many hundreds of barges would have been constantly passing up and down the Laggan; what a forest of masts would have bristled in the desolate port of Newry; and what vast warehouses and stately mansions would have covered the space occupied by the noisome alleys of Dundalk. "The country," he was heard to say, "is worth fighting for."

The original intention of James seems to have been to try the chances of a pitched field on the border between Leinster and Ulster. But this design was abandoned. James, though resolved not to give up Dublin without a battle, consented to retreat till he should reach some spot where he might have the vantage of ground. When, therefore, William's advanced guard reached Dundalk, nothing was to be seen of the Irish army, except a great cloud of dust which was slowly rolling southward toward Ardee. The English halted one night near the ground on which Schomberg's camp had been pitched in the preceding year; and many sad recollections were awakened by the sight of that dreary marsh, the sepulchre of thousands of brave men.()

Still William continued to push forward, and still the Irish receded before him, till on the morning of Monday, the 30th of June, his army, marching in three columns, reached the summit of a rising ground near the southern frontier of the county of Louth. Beneath lay a valley, now so rich and so

(') The English army, under the command of the Duke of Schomberg, had suffered terribly from sickness during the Irish campaign of 1689.

cheerful that the Englishman who gazes on it may imagine himself to be in one of the most highly favored parts of his own highly favored country. Fields of wheat, woodlands, meadows bright with daisies and clover, slope gently down to the edge of the Boyne. That bright and tranquil stream, the boundary of Louth and Meath, having flowed many miles between green banks crowned by modern palaces, and by the ruined keeps of old Norman barons of the Pale, is here about to mingle with the sea. Five miles to the west of the place from which William looked down on the river, now stands, on a verdant bank amidst noble woods, Slane Castle, the mansion of the Marquess of Conyngham. Two miles to the east, a cloud of smoke from factories and steam vessels overhangs the busy town and port of Drogheda. On the Meath side of the Boyne, the ground, still all corn, grass, flowers, and foliage, rises with a gentle swell to an eminence surmounted by a conspicuous tuft of ash-trees which overshades the ruined church and desolate grave-yard of Donore.

In the seventeenth century the landscape presented a very different aspect. The traces of art and industry were few. Scarcely a vessel was on the river except those rude coracles of wicker-work covered with the skins of horses, in which the Celtic peasantry fished for trout and salmon. Drogheda, now peopled by twenty thousand industrious inhabitants, was a small knot of narrow, crooked, and filthy lanes, encircled by a ditch and a mound. The houses were built of wood with high gables and projecting upper stories. Without the walls of the town, scarcely a dwelling was to be seen except at a place called Oldbridge. At Oldbridge the river was fordable; and on the south of the ford were a few mud cabins, and a single house built of more solid materials.

When William caught sight of the valley of the Boyne, he could not suppress an exclamation and gesture of delight. He had been apprehensive that the enemy would avoid a decisive action, and would protract the war till the autumnal rains should return with pestilence in their train. He was now at ease. It was plain that the contest would be sharp and short. The pavilion of James was pitched on the emi