"I do

to say, when we advanced to the charge, not ask you, my lads, to go before, but merely to follow me!" a very energetic harangue, admirably calculated to excite the ardour of the Highlanders; but which would sometimes have had a better effect in the mouth of the Prince. He slept little, was continually occupied with all manner of details, and was altogether most indefatigable, combining and directing alone all our operations; in a word, he was the only person capable of conducting our army. His colleague, the Duke of Perth, though brave, even to excess, every way honourable, and possessed of a mild and gentle disposition, was of very limited abilities, and interfered with nothing. Lord George was vigilant, active, and diligent; his. plans were always judiciously formed, and he carried them promptly and vigorously into execution. However with an infinity of good qualities, he was not without his defects: proud, haughty, blunt, and imperious, he wished to have the exclusive ordering of every thing; and feeling his superiority, he would listen to no advice. There were few persons, it is true, in our army sufficiently versed in military affairs to be capable of advising him as to the conducting of his operations. The Highland chiefs, like their vassals, possessed the most heroic courage; but they knew no other manoeuvre, than that of rushing upon the enemy sword in hand, as soon as they saw them, without order and without discipline. Lord George could receive still less

assistance from the subaltern Irish officers, who, with the exception of Mr. Sullivan, possessed no other knowledge than that which usually forms the whole stock of subalterns, namely, the knowing how to mount and quit guard. We can hardly, therefore, be astonished that Lord George, possessing so many qualities requisite to form a general, should have gained the hearts of the Highlanders; and a general who has the confidence of his soldiers may perform wonders. Hence, possessing the art of employing men to advantage, without having had time to discipline them, but taking them merely as they came from the plough, he made them perform prodigies of valour against various English armies, always greatly superior in number to that of the Prince, though the English troops are allowed to be the best in Europe. Nature had formed him for a great warrior; he did not require the accidental advantage of birth." - Charles was the nominal head of the enterprise, and his presence was necessary to it; but the remaining with his army seems to have constituted his only merit; and to attribute to him the successes at Gladsmuir, Clifton, and Falkirk, does not seem a whit more reasonable than to attribute the victory of Blenheim to Queen Anne, or that of Waterloo to George the Fourth. It is repeatedly stated in these Memoirs, and has been stated by other authorities entitled to credit, that the Irishmen, who enjoyed his confidence, and whose counsels the Prince followed on all occasions, were, with

one exception perhaps, men of the most limited capacity; a circumstance which, of itself, proves that he could not have possessed any of the qualifications of a good commander. Not that great princes have not been sometimes fond of low and worthless companions; but it is one thing to be fond of the society of such men, and another to be guided by their advice in matters of importance.

Then as to his patience, resolution, and fortitude. If we are to believe the reports of those who shared his intimacy, so far from showing fortitude, he was quite unmanned whenever he experienced the least opposition or contradiction. "Charles," says John Hay, his occasional secretary, "who had marched a-foot at the head of the men all the way, was obliged (in the retreat from Derby) to get on horseback, for he could not walk and hardly stand, as was always the case with him when he was cruelly used." It is in adversity that patience, resolution, and fortitude, can be displayed; and there is ample proof in these Memoirs, that if he had possessed these qualities in an ordinary degree, he would not have abandoned the Highlanders as he did, when his cause was by no means hopeless. "All that we can say," observes the author of these Memoirs, " is, that this Prince entered on his expedition rashly, and without foreseeing the personal dangers to which he was about to expose himself; that, in carrying it on, he always took care not to expose his person to the fire of

the enemy; and that he abandoned it at a time when he had a thousand times more reason to hope for success than when he left Paris to undertake it."

He persisted in urging the night-attack, at Nairn, when no hope of success remained; he refused, while it was yet time, to abandon Inverness, and take a strong ground on the other side of the water of Nairn, though Clunie Macpherson was expected every moment on that side, merely because his Irish and French friends disliked the hardships of a hill-warfare; he exposed himself, under every possible disadvantage, to the attack of a superior enemy; and, the first moment that fortune declared against him, he allowed his tutor to lay hold of the bridle of his horse and turn him about, and abandoned his cause without the least effort to retrieve his fortunes, or making his appearance among his followers, who entreated, nay implored him not to desert them. He fell; but he certainly did not fall with honour. His character, as was observed by Hume, exhibited "an unaccountable mixture of temerity and timidity." In the notes to the following Memoirs, enough is stated to show, that Charles Edward was not the generous and heroic youth his deluded followers fondly conceived him to be; a delusion the author of Waverley has exerted his talents to perpetuate. "Lord Marischal," says David Hume, "thought there was no vice so mean or atrocious, of which he was not capable;" and

Lord Marischal is well known to have been a man of the highest honour and integrity. Helvetius, a generous and honourable man, also described him to Hume, from personal knowledge, as "the most unworthy of all mortals." Dr. King, who says he "had some long conversations with him here, and, for some years after, held a constant correspondence with him, not indeed by letters, but by messengers, (gentlemen of fortune, honour, and veracity, on whose relations he could entirely depend,) who were occasionally dispatched to him," - and that he was as "well qualified as any man in England to draw a just character of him,"-gives a portrait which completely agrees with the accounts of Lord Marischal and Helvetius. Alfieri, who reluctantly speaks of him or his brother, "laudare non li potendo, nè li volendo biasimare," is, however, obliged, in accounting for the dreadful situation to which he had reduced an amiable wife, to state circumstances which it is unnecessary here to repeat, and which prove him to have been an odious and brutal monster. To balance all these testimonies, there has not been produced the slightest tittle of respectable evidence. He is said to have possessed great powers of dissimulation, and he may have for a time succeeded in concealing his vices and defects; but we must abandon all the rules by which character is estimated, before we can conceive him to have possessed virtue or talents.

History should be just. The young Pre