Bonaparte, soon after his return to Cairo, finding that the Turks, seriously bent upon the re-capture of Egypt, had anchored in Aboukir Bay a fleet of a hundred sail, and soon after landed ten thousand men, had taken the castle of Aboukir, and were daily augmenting their force, he determined to attack them, and accordingly set out from Cairo on the 16th of July, and on the 26th was prepared to give them battle; the engagement was severe, but short; ten thousand Turks were slain or driven into the sea, and the fort of Aboukir did not fire a gun, so terrified were they at the vigour of the French; having, however, received reinforcements from the fleet, the next day they regained their spirits and refused to capitulate; but shortly after, that communication being cut off, and seeing no means of relief or defence, they offered to lay down their arms, and the French French immediately entered the fort which they had so lately possessed. This was the last exploit of Bonaparte in Egypt, for the news he had received of the dissensions at home, of the defeat of the French armies abroad, and the renewed vigour of the coalition, determined him to abandon his troops and take the first opportunity of returning to France, where the pros

pect was now open to him of accomplishing what he had so long intended; accordingly he imparted his design to General Berthier alone, and wrote to Admiral Gantheaume to provide him a frigate, and send him word when the English and Turkish fleets were out of sight; he received this welcome information at six in the evening, August the 18th, and at nine he sent his orders to all whom he intended to take with him, to meet him at an appointed time and place, but not to open their instructions till they arrived there. Having so far obeyed his command, they found they were to go on board immediately; they lost no time, but left their property behind them, and their horses on the beach. Bonaparte also left sealed orders for General Kleber, appointing him to the command of the army, and on the 23rd of August, 1799, he got on board, but was detained by contrary winds in the bay of Aboukir till the 25th, when, after avoiding all the English cruisers, he arrived at Ajaccio, in Corsica, on the 1st of October; at which place the vessel was wind-bound till the 7th, and on the 9th, at ten in the morning, he landed at Frejus, and found himself once more in France, where his presence was urgently required.

VERY reader of history is acquainted with the brilliant episode of the '45, when Prince Charles Edward Stuart made such a daring attempt to recover the throne of his ancestors. We abbreviate from Scott some notices of the after adventures and misfortunes of the prince and his adherents. As to the prince himself, he, on his first arrival in France, with all the éclat of his victories and his sufferings, was very favourably received at court, and obtained considerable advantages for some of his followers. Lochiel and Lord Ogilvie, his companions, were made lieutenant-colonels in the French service, with means of appointing to commissions some of the most distinguished of the exiles who had participated in their fate. The court of France also granted forty thousand livres a-year for the support of such Scottish fugitives as were not provided for in their military

service.

This allowance, however liberal on the part of France, was totally insufficient for the maintenance of so many persons, accustomed not only to the necessaries but comforts of life; and it is not to be wondered at, that many, reduced to exile and indigence in his cause, murmured, though perhaps with injustice, against the prince, whose power of alleviating their distresses they might conclude to be greater than it really was.

An incident which followed, evinced the same intractability of temper which seems to have characterised this young man in his attempt to regain the throne

of his ancestors. When the French Government, in the winter of 1748, were disposed to accede to a peace with England, it was an indispensable stipulation, that the young Pretender, as he was styled, should not be permitted to reside within the French territories. The king and ministers of France felt the necessity of acceding to this condition if they would obtain peace; but they were desirous to do so with all the attention possible to the interest and feelings of Charles Edward. With this purpose, they suggested to him that he should retreat to Friburg, in Switzerland, where they proposed to assure him an asylum, with a company of guards, a large pension, and the nominal rank and title of Prince of Wales.

It is not easy to say with what possible views Charles rejected these offers, or from what motive, saving the impulse of momentary spleen, he positively refused to leave France. He was in a kingdom, however, where little ceremony was then used upon such occasions. One evening as he went to the opera, he was seized by a party of the French guards, bound hand and foot, and conveyed first to the state prison of Vincennes, and from thence to the town of Avignon, which belonged to the Pope, where he was set at liberty.

To this unnecessary disgrace Charles appears to have subjected himself from feelings of obstinacy alone; and of course a line of conduct so irrational was little qualified to recommend him as a pleasant guest to other states.

He went first to Venice with a single attendant; but upon a warning from the Senate, he returned to Flanders.

A few years later than the period last mentioned, a person seems to have been

desirous to obtain Charles's commission to form some interest for him among the North American colonists, who had then commenced their quarrels with the mother country. It was proposed by the adventurer alluded to, to make a party for the prince among the insurgents in a country which contained many Highlanders. But that scheme was entirely without solid foundation, for the Scottish colonists in general joined the party of King George.

Amidst these vain intrigues, excited by new hopes, which were always succeeded by fresh disappointment, Charles, who had supported so much real distress and fatigue with fortitude and firmness, gave way both in mind and body. His domestic uneasiness was increased by an unhappy union with Louisa of Stohlberg, a German princess, which produced happiness to neither party, and some discredit to both. Latterly, after long retaining the title of Prince of Wales, he laid it aside, because, after his father's death in 1760, the courts of Europe would not recognise him as King of Great Britain. He afterwards lived incognito, under the title of the Count D'Albany. Finally, he died at Rome upon the 31st of January, 1788, and was royally interred in the cathedral church of Frescati, of which his brother was bishop.

The merits of this unhappy prince appear to have consisted in a degree of dauntless resolution and enterprise, bordering upon temerity; the power of supporting fatigues and misfortunes, and extremity of every kind, with firmness and magnanimity; and a natural courtesy of manner highly gratifying to his followers, which he could exchange for reserve at his pleasure. Nor, when his campaign in Scotland is considered, can he be denied respectable talents in military affairs. Some of his partisans of higher rank conceived he evinced less gratitude for their services than he ought to have rendered them; but by

far the greater part of those who approached his person were unable to mention him without tears of sorrow.

His faults or errors arose from a course of tuition totally unfit for the situation to which he conceived himself born. His education, intrusted to narrow-minded priests and soldiers of fortune, had been singularly limited and imperfect; so that, instead of being taught to disown or greatly modify the tenets which had made his fathers exiles from their throne and country, he was instructed to cling to those errors as sacred maxims, to which he was bound in honour and conscience to adhere. He left a natural daughter, called Countess of Albany.

The last direct male heir of the line of Stuart, on the death of Charles, was his younger brother, Henry Benedict, whom the Pope had created a cardinal. This prince took no other step for asserting his claim to the British kingdoms, than by striking a beautiful medal, in which he is represented in his cardinal's robes, with the crown, sceptre, and regalia, in the background, bearing the motto, Voluntate dei non desiderio populi, implying a tacit relinquishment of the claims to which, by birth, he might have pretended. He was a prince of a mild and beneficent character, and generally beloved. After the innovations of the French Revolution had destroyed, or greatly diminished, the revenues he derived from the Church, he subsisted, singular to tell, on an annuity of £3,000 a-year, assigned to him by the generosity of King George the Third, and continued by that of his royal successor. In requital of their bounty, and as if acknowledging the House of Hanover to be the legitimate successors of his claims to the crown of Britain, this, the last of the Stuarts, bequeathed to his Britannic Majesty all the crown jewels, some of them of great value, which King James the Second had carried along with him on his retreat to the

Continent in 1688, together with a mass of papers, tending to throw much light on British history.

We must now detail the consequences of the civil war to the prince's most important adherents. Several had been taken prisoners on the field of battle, and many more had been seized in the various excursions made through the country of the rebels by the parties of soldiery. The gaols both in England and Scotland had been filled with these

unfortunate persons, upon whom a severe doom was now to be inflicted. That such was legally incurred, cannot be denied; and, on the other hand, it will hardly be now contradicted, that it was administered with an indiscriminate severity, which counteracted the effects intended, by inspiring horror instead of

awe.

The distinguished persons of the party were with good reason considered as most accountable for its proceedings. It was they who must have obtained power and wealth had the attempt succeeded, and they were justly held most responsible when they failed in their attempt at accomplishing a revolution.

Lord George Murray, who acted so prominent a part in the insurrection, effected his escape to the continent, and died at Madenblinck in Holland, in 1760.

The Earls of Kilmarnock and Cromarty, and Lords Balmerino and Lovat, in Scotland, with Mr. Charles Ratcliffe, in England (brother of the Earl of Derwentwater, attainted and executed in 1715), were the persons most distinguished by birth and title whom the government had within their power, and most of them were put to death for their share in the rebellion. The victims of lesser note were punished in a variety of ways. Of those condemned to death some were allowed to escape with milder punishments, whilst those who were destined for execution underwent the doom of law in its most horrible shape, upon Kennington Common;

where they avowed their political principles, and died firmly.

A melancholy and romantic incident. took place amid the terrors of the executions. A young lady, who had been contracted in marriage to James Dawson, one of the sufferers, had taken the desperate resolution of attending on the horrid ceremonial. She beheld her lover, after having been suspended for a few minutes, but not till death (for such was the barbarous sentence), cut down, embowelled, and mangled by the knife of the executioner. All this she supported with apparent fortitude; but when she saw the last scene finished, by throwing Dawson's heart into the fire, she drew her head within the carriage, repeated his name, and expired on the spot. This melancholy circumstance was made by Mr. Shenstone the theme of a tragic ballad.

The mob of London had hooted these unfortunate gentlemen as they passed to and from their trial, but they witnessed their last sufferings with decency. Three Scottish officers of the party taken at Carlisle were next condemned and executed, in the same manner as the former; others were tried in the like manner, and five were ordered for execution; among these, Sir John Wedderburn, Baronet, was the most distinguished.

At Carlisle no less than three hundred and eighty five prisoners had been. assembled, with the purpose of trying a select number of them at that place, where their guilt had been chiefly manifested. From this mass, one hundred and nineteen were selected for indictment and trial at the principal towns in the north. At York, the Grand Jury found bills against seventy-five insurgents. Upon this occasion, the chaplain preached before the judges on the very significant text (Numbers, xxv. 5), "And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, slay ye every man his man that were joined unto Baalpeor."

At York and Carlisle seventy persons upon the whole received sentence of death; some were acquitted on the plea of having been forced into the rebellion by their chiefs. This recognises a principle which might have been carried much farther; when it is considered how much by education and principle these wretched kerne were at the disposal of their leaders, a similar apology ought, in justice, to have been admitted as an excuse to a much larger extent. The law, which makes allowance for the influence of a husband over a wife, or a father over a son, even when it involves them in guilt, ought unquestionably to have had the same consideration for the clansmen, who were trained up in the most absolute ideas of obedience to their chief, and politically exerted no judgment of their own.

Nine persons were executed at Carlisle on the 18th of October. The list contained one or two names of distinction; as Buchanan of Arnpryor, the chief of his name;

MacDonald of Kinloch

Moidart, one of the first who received the prince on his landing; MacDonald of Tiendriech, who began the war by attacking Captain Scott's detachment when marching to Fort Augustus, and John MacNaughton, a person of little note, unless in so far as he was said, but it is believed erroneously, to have been the individual by whose hand Colonel Gardiner fell at Preston. Six criminals suffered at Brampton; seven were executed at Penrith, and twentytwo at the city of York; eleven more were afterwards executed at Carlisle; nearly eighty in all were sacrificed to the terrors which the insurrection had inspired.

These unfortunate sufferers were of different ages, rank, and habits, both of body and mind; they agreed, however, in their behaviour upon the scaffold. They prayed for the exiled family, expressed their devotion to the cause in

ich they died, and particularly their

admiration of the princely leader whom they had followed, till their attachment conducted them to this dreadful fate. It may be justly questioned, whether the lives of these men, supposing every one of them to have been an apostle of Jacobitism, could have done so much to prolong their doctrines, as the horror and loathing inspired by so many bloody punishments. And when to these are added the merciless slaughter upon the fugitives at Culloden, and the devastation committed in the Highland districts, it might have been expected that the sword of justice would have been weary with executions.

There were still, however, some individuals, upon whom, for personal reasons, vengeance was still desired. One of these was Charles Ratcliffe, brother to the Earl of Derwentwater. This gentleman had been partaker in the earl's treason of 1715, and had been condemned for that crime, but escaped from Newgate. In the latter end of the year 1745 or beginning of 1746, he was taken on board a French ship of war with other officers. The vessel was loaded with arms and warlike stores, bound for the coast of Scotland, for the use of the insurgents. Ratcliffe's case was, therefore, a simple one. He was brought before the King's Bench, where evidence was adduced to show that he was the same Charles Ratcliffe who had been condemned for the earlier rebellion, and who had then made his escape. Upon this being found proved by a jury, he was condemned to die, although, appealing to his French commission, he pleaded that he was not a subject of Britain, and denied himself to be the Charles Ratcliffe to whom the indictment and conviction referred, alleging that he was Charles Earl of Derwentwater.

On the 8th of December, Ratcliffe appeared on the scaffold, where he was admitted, in respect of his birth, to the sad honours of the axe and block. He was richly dressed, and behaved with a