any repetition of so undesirable a compliment on the part of Stirling Castle. I must do Balmawhapple, however, the jus tice to say, that he not only kept the rear of his troop, and laboured to maintain some order among them, but in the height of his gallantry answered the fire of the castle by discharging one of his horse-pistols at the battlements; although, the distance being nearly half a mile, I could never learn that this measure of retaliation was attended with any particular effect.

The travellers now passed the memorable field of Bannockburn, and reached the Torwood, a place glorious or terrible to the recollections of the Scottish peasant, as the feats of Wallace, or the cruelties of Wude Willie Grime, predominate in his recollection. At Falkirk, a town formerly famous in Scottish history, and soon to be again distinguished as the scene of military events of importance, Balmawhapple proposed to halt and repose for the evening. This was performed with very little

regard to military discipline, as his worthy quarter-master was chiefly solicitous to discover where the best brandy might be, come at. Sentinels were deemed unnecessary, and the only vigils performed were those of such of the party as could procure liquor. A few resolute men might easily have cut off the detachment; but of the inhabitants some were favourable, many indifferent, and the rest overawed. So nothing memorable occurred in the course of the evening, excepting that Waverley's rest was sorely interrupted by the revellers hallooing forth their Jacobite songs, without remorse or mitigation of voice.

Early in the morning they were again mounted, and on the road to Edinburgh, though the pallid visages of some of the >troop betrayed that they had spent a night of sleepless debauchery. They halted at Linlithgow, distinguished by its ancient palace, which, Sixty Years since, was entire and habitable, but the venerable

ruins of which, not quite Sixty Years since, very narrowly escaped the unworthy fate of being converted into a barrack for French prisoners. May repose and blessings attend the ashes of the patriotic statesman, who, amongst his last services to Scotland, interposed to prevent this profanation!

As they approached the metropolis of Scotland, through a champaign and cultivated country, the sounds of war began to be heard. The distant, yet distinct report of heavy cannon, fired at intervals, apprized Waverley that the work of destruction was going forward. Even Balmaw happle seemed moved to take some precautions, by sending an advanced párty in front of his troop, keeping the main body in tolerable order, and moving steadily forward.

Marching in this manner they speedily reached an eminence, from which they could view Edinburgh stretching along the ridgy hill which slopes eastward from the Castle. The latter, being in a state of

siege, or rather of blockade, by the north ern insurgents, who had already occupied the town for two or three days, fired at intervals upon such parties of Highlanders as exposed themselves, either on the main street, or elsewhere in the vicinity of the fortress. The morning being calm and fair, the effect of this dropping fire was to invest the Castle in wreaths of smoke, the edges of which dissipated slowly in the air, while the central veil was darkened ever and anon by fresh clouds poured forth from the battlements; the whole giving, by the partial concealment, an appearance of grandeur and gloom, rendered more terrific when Waverley reflect ed on the cause by which it was produced, and that each explosion might ring some brave man's knell.

Ere they approached the city, the partial cannonade had wholly ceased. Balmawhapple, however, having in his recol lection the unfriendly greeting which his troop had received from the battery at

Stirling, had apparently no wish to tempt the forbearance of the artillery of the Castle. He therefore left the direct road, and sweeping considerably to the southward, so as to keep out of range of the cannon, approached the ancient palace of Holy-Rood, without having entered the walls of the city. He then drew up his. men in front of this venerable pile, and delivered Waverley to the custody of a guard of Highlanders, whose officer conducted him into the interior of the building,

A long gallery, hung with pictures, pretended to be the portraits of kings, who, if they ever flourished at all, lived seve ral hundred years before the invention of painting in oil colours, served as a sort of guard-chamber, or vestibule, to the apartments which the adventurous Charles Edward now occupied in the palace of his ancestors. Officers, both in the Highland and Lowland garb, passed and re-passed in haste, or loitered in the hall, as if waiting