and friendly disposition. Dr. William Somerville died recently, having attained a greater age than his father; and his widow is a lady distinguished alike for her feminine accomplishments, and for her successes in the loftiest fields of science.

These clerical Memoirs possess a double interest, in the picture of Scotland which they present, and in the occasional glimpses of London life as it appeared to the eyes of highly-cultivated Scotchmen. It is in the former point of view that we are at present concerned with them.

From the Revolution to the Union, the Government, it is well known, was harshly and not very honestly administered by the Privy Council. From the Union to 'the '45' Scotland was slowly advancing, under an unsympathising and indifferent rule, which yet was more impartial than that of the Privy Council. More than a century before the Revolution, Scotland had sent forth a swarm of learned men, who taught science and letters in every school of Europe.* Colonel Stewart informs us, we believe with entire accuracy, that at and even before the beginning of the 18th century the middle and higher orders in the Highlands were as well educated as the youth of any part of Great Britain. The gentlemen-farmers and tacksmen were certainly better classical scholars than those holding the same rank and occupation in society farther south. There were eminent grammarschools in Inverness, Fortrose, or Chanonry, Dunkeld, &c. From these different seminaries young men were sent to the colleges of Aberdeen and St. Andrews, and many to Leyden and Douay. The armies of Sweden, Holland, and France gave employment to the younger sons of the gentry who were educated abroad :

of these returned with a full knowledge of modern languages, added to their classical education; often speaking Latin with more purity than Scotch, which these Highlanders sometimes learned after leaving their native homes, where nothing but Gaelic was spoken. When the Hessian troops were quartered in Athol in 1745, the commanding officers, who were accomplished gentlemen, found a ready communication in Latin at every inn. At Dunkeld, Inver, Blair Athol, Taybridge, &c., every landlord spoke that language. Colonel Stewart himself knew four of these respectable innkeepers. But it was in the remotest district of the kingdom-the Isle of Skye, and other islands that classical education was most general. There the learning of the gentry was quite singular. It was remarked that for a considerable period the clergymen of the sixteen parishes of Skye and Harris were men of good families, great learning,

* Innes, p. 280.

and

and consequent influence; their example, therefore, might diffuse and * this classical taste. preserve

The society which Dr. Carlyle describes in writing of his early experiences, if not brilliant, is essentially modern and civilized. There were plenty of books in the houses of his relations; there were able and eminent men among the professors at Edinburgh and also at Glasgow, where he studied for two sessions, and where he found the young men of a more studious turn than in Edinburgh, though not possessing in an equal degree that knowledge of the world, or, as he calls it, a certain manner and address that can only be acquired in the capital.' To the existence of the Highlands he scarcely alludes in any part of his Memoirs.

But now the Prince is in Edinburgh, and it is truly a proud thing,' writes the Duke of Perth, 'to see our Prince in the palace of his fathers, with all the best blood of Scotland around him. He is much beloved of all sorts, and we cannot fail to make that pestilent England smoke for it.' Hear Dr. Carlyle :-

'As Prince Charles had issued a proclamation allowing all the Volunteers of Edinburgh three weeks, during which they might pay their court to him at the Abbey, and receive a free pardon, I went twice down to the Abbey Court with my friend about twelve o'clock, to wait till the Prince should come out of the Palace and mount his horse to ride to the east side of Arthur Seat to visit his army. I had the good fortune to see him both days, one of which I was close by him when he walked through the guard. He was a good-looking man, of about five feet ten inches; his hair was dark red, and his eyes black. His features were regular, his visage long, much sunburnt and freckled, and his countenance thoughtful and melancholy. He mounted his horse and rode off through St. Ann's Yards and tho Duke's Walk to his army. There was no crowd after him-about three or four hundred each day. By that time curiosity had been satisfied.

. . . . The court at the Abbey was dull and sombre-the Prince was melancholy; he seemed to have no confidence in anybody, not even in the ladies, who were much his friends; far less had he the spirit' [this seems a very strange suggestion] to venture to the High Church of Edinburgh and take the sacrament, as his great uncle Charles II. had done the Covenant, which would have secured him the low-country commons, as he already had the Highlanders by attachment. But besides that his army wanted clothing and necessaries, the victory at Preston put an end to his authority. He

Sketches of the Character, Manners, and present State of the Highlanders of Scotland; with Details of the Military Service of the Highland Regiments.' By Colonel David Stewart. Two vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1822. See vol. ii., App., pp. xxviii-xxxi.

had

had not a mind fit for command at any time, far less to rule the Highland chiefs in prosperity.'*

This does not accord with the general belief as to the personal appearance of the young Chevalier, the 'yellow-haired laddie,' who was the darling of the romantic ladies of Scotland. The Prince's hair was undoubtedly of a golden tint. On the subject of his demeanour to ladies, Mr. Dennistoun says:t

'It is generally supposed that the drama of loyalty thus enacted was not less acceptable to its hero than to the minor performers-at all events that his gallantry was quite as formidable to the Hanoverian dynasty as his kingcraft. Thus, an Edinburgh matron, whose politics were proof against romance, wrote to her daughter in London: "The young gentleman that we have got amongst us busses the ladies so that he gains their hearts. We must certainly have the Duke of Cumberland to kiss the ladies and fight these dogs, or there will be no living here for honest people." Lord Elcho, on the other hand, in his unpublished "History of the Rebellion," in my possession, says that on the night of the Prince's arrival in the metropolis, "there came a great many ladies of fashion to kiss his hand, but his behaviour to them was very cool. He had not been much used to women's company, and was always much embarrassed while he was with them." Lord Elcho's pen was often dipped in gall when Charles Edward was in question. In this instance, however, he is borne out by a pasquinade favourably contrasting the Duke of Cumberland with the Prince, in the "Glasgow Courant" of May 5, 1746, which, among various inuendos against the latter, reflecting on his disinclination to gallantries, assures us that "William was celebrated for his bravery, Charles for his chastity: that Charles loved the men better than the women; and yet, which is wonderful, the less he courted them the faster they followed him."'‡

He was, at all events, very different from his father, who, in 1715, scarcely made a friend, and who, though only twenty-seven years of age, yet with his swollen, bandaged legs and pimpled face, 'played a very poor fiddle' in the opinion of the mad Duke of Douglas, who kicked Lord Perth's shins so that the blood appeared through the white silk stockings, for bringing him to Douglas Castle.§ Charles, whether he deserved them or not, certainly obtained the good graces of the Scotch ladies. Carlyle says that two-thirds of the women were his partisans, even before he reached Edinburgh; and President Forbes writes still more strongly to the same effect. Miss Isabella Lumisden, a damsel of Edinburgh, was not satisfied till she had engaged both her lover

* P. 153. + Vol. i. p. 182. See Quarterly Review,' vol. lxxix. p. 158. § Ramsay, Second Series, p. 194.

and

and her brother in his cause, to the great danger of both and the utter ruin of the latter. The lover was Robert Strange, afterwards the celebrated engraver; who was engaged in preparing a copper-plate for Prince Charles's intended paper currency (notes payable at the Restoration), when the battle of Culloden put an end to the credit of the firm. Strange afterwards ran terrible risks. It is said that on one occasion, 'when hotly pressed, he dashed into a room where the lady, whose zeal had enlisted him in the fatal cause, sat singing at her needlework, and, failing other means of concealment, was indebted for safety to her prompt intervention. As she quickly raised her hooped gown, the affianced lover disappeared beneath its ample contour; where, thanks to her cool demeanour and unfaltering notes, he lay undetected, while the rude and baffled soldiery vainly ransacked the house.'* He got off unscathed in the end, and, notwithstanding his Jacobite politics, was knighted by George III. When Miss Lumisden became Mrs. Strange, and had the education of a little daughter to superintend, she taught the child to 'girn' and make frightful faces whenever she heard the word Whig mentioned, but to kiss her whenever she named the Prince, and to look at his picture. She did not permit herself to take part in any of those gaieties with which the less constant Jacobite ladies consoled themselves after the ruin of the cause. On one occasion she wrote to her brother, 'I have never shook a foot since you saw me, nor been in any public place whatever. For all that,' she adds, 'I hope my dancing days are not done. Heaven forbid they end so!' Down to the days when the unhappy Prince's only pleasures were his glass and his violoncello, Lady Strange never wavered in her devotion.

Mr. Buckle, in his usual slashing style, speaks of the Highlanders as thieves and murderers;' a description the utter folly of which we cannot stop to expose in this place. Of course they liked booty, as all troops do; but we may observe that the account which Dr. Carlyle-no friendly witness-gives of their conduct after the battle of Prestonpans, is creditable to their moderation. About the time of this very battle the Highlanders gave a remarkable proof of self-control. If ever there was an event which might have been expected to arouse an inextinguishable thirst of revenge, it was the Massacre of Glenco. Yet we learn from Colonel Stewart's excellent work, that in 1745, when the rebel army lay at Kirkliston, near the seat of

* Smith's Life of Nollekens, vol. ii. p. 245, cited in Dennistoun, vol. i. p. 66. † Vol. ii. p. 297.

the

the Earl of Stair, whose grandfather was the chief author of that

massacre

'Prince Charles, anxious to save the house and property of Lord Stair, and to remove from his followers all excitement to revenge, but at the same time not comprehending their true character, proposed that the Glenco men should be marched to a distance from Lord Stair's house and parks, lest the remembrance of the share which his grandfather had had in the order for extirpating the whole clan should now excite a spirit of revenge. When the proposal was communicated to the Glenco men, they declared that, if that was the case, they must return home. If they were considered so dishonourable as to take revenge on an innocent man, they were not fit to remain with honourable men, nor to support an honourable cause; and it was not without much explanation, and great persuasion, that they were prevented from marching away the following morning.' If the Highlanders were thieves and murderers' in 1745, they could not have been reclaimed in a moment, and we should naturally expect the calendar of crime to be very heavy when the law was regularly and completely put in force, as it was from the suppression of the Rebellion. But it appears from the statistics given by Colonel Stewart that the proportion of capital convictions to the population in the different districts of the Highlands, from 1747 to 1817-and it must be remembered that at that time almost all serious offences were capital-was extremely small; proving beyond a doubt, if proof were needed, that the population was singularly quiet and orderly.†

6

Carlyle held a certain bursary or studentship, the conditions of which required him to spend one winter at a foreign university. It had been arranged accordingly, before the landing of the Prince, that he was to spend the winter at the University of Leyden; and when the time came, having made his peace with Prince Charles, as we have seen, he set out for Newcastle, just as if no rebellion were on foot. With some difficulty he got shipping to Holland, where he found several Scotch and English students who afterwards became distinguished in different ways; among them John Wilkes, Charles Townshend, and Dr. John Gregory. We have not room for a description of the student-life at Leyden, the chief incident of which was that in the evening about a dozen of them met at one another's rooms in turn, and drank coffee and smoked tobacco, and chatted about politics, and drank claret and supped on bukkam (Dutch red herrings) and eggs and salad. Indeed, we feel ourselves debarred from noticing many of the most interesting parts both of Carlyle and of Somerville, because the scene † Ibid., ii., App., p. xxxix.

*Stewart, i. p. 99, n.