their weapons at the charge, defy the attack of a squadron of cavalry. He posted those armed miscellaneously, in the centre, and then took his station on the right wing, armed with a half-pike, which was then esteemed the "queen of weapons." His address to his men was short and pithy:

SOLDIERS,-That you have few weapons, and that your enemies have plenty, is true; but as there are plenty of stones apon this muir, my advice is, that each one arm himself with as large a one as he can manage, rush up to the first Covenanter he sees, and beat out his brains!" A skirmish ensued between a small body of Highlanders and some Covenanting troopers, whom they drove back in confusion upon their own lines. Montrose seized the opportunity, and ordered his whole line to advance, and, with a wild, Highland skraigh, they rushed forward, and, in a moment, were upon the enemy. The musketeers reserved their fire until within a yard of the opposing line, and, after pouring in a volley, threw away their firelocks as useless, and fell on with the broadsword. The axemen hewed wide paths for themselves, while the Irish, almost frantic with excitement, did marvelous execution with clubs and stones. Such was the fury of the onslaught, that in five minutes the field was won, and the bodies of two thousand Covenanters strewed the plain. The casualties of Montrose amountel to one man killed, and several wounded.

Time and space do not allow me to give an account of his subsequent career. I can merely mention his defeat of Lord Burleigh, at Aberdeen, and his repulse of the Covenanters, three thousand seven hundred strong, at Fyvie. In the dead of winter he penetrated the country of the Earl of Argyle, which was before deemed inaccessible at that season, from the depth of snow in the glens, and laid the whole region waste with fire and sword. He encountered that nobleman, or rather his Lieutenant, at Inverlochy; for Argyle himself was so chary of his carcass, that he got into a boat, and was rowed to the middle of the lake, whence he could view the battle at a safe distance. Montrose

routed his army, and Argyle fled, leaving fifteen hundred of his men--a number equal to the whole army of the Marquis and fourteen barons, of his own name, dead upon the field. A detailed account of all this is given in the Memoirs of Montrose, by Mr. Grant. Then followed the battles of Auldern, Alford, and Kylsythe. I cannot refrain from giving an instance of his acuteness in the last. His men were drawn up on a grassy elope, from which they could see the steel clad musketeers of the enemy, and as they deployed into line, he saw that there was a muttering among his troops, at the complete equipment of the foe, who exceeded them by two thousand in number :

Gentlemen and comrades," he exclaimed, pointing with his long rapier to the opposing ranks, "you see these cowardly rascals whom you beat at Tippermuir, at Auldern, and Alford? I assure you, that their officers have found it impossible to bring them before us again, without first casing them in complete coats of mail; but, to show them our contempt, we will, if you please, fight them in our shirts." And doffing his cloak and cuirass, the Great Marquis rode in his shirt-sleeves, swore in hand, down the line, waving his plumed beaver. A wild shout rose from his followers, and throwing off plaid and doublet, the clansmen, with nothing to defend their almost naked bodies, but the light targes braced upon their left arms, drove the Covenanters from the field, with the exception of about six thousand out of the eight, who remained till next day-to be buried. This victory made the Marquis master of Scotland, and if Charles could have sent him a few thousand, well disciplined troops, he would have driven the remaining armies of the Covenant into the sea; not but that the Highlanders were brave enough, for in valor they have never been surpassed, as the victories of Tippermuir, Auldern, Alford, and Kylsythe, and many a bloody field since has proved; but the Marquis could never depend for two days together upon his muster roll, after a victory, on account of the custom of the Highlanders, going home after every battle to bestow their spoil. In ad

dition to this, they now went home to get in their harvest. By this, and by the desertion of the Lowland gentry, who had no stomach for long marches and hard fighting, his army was reduced to one thousand foot, and five hundred horse. Notwithstanding this, he began his march to England, to aid Charles in making head against the forces of the Parliament, and encamped on the 12th September, 1645, on the plain of Philiphaugh, in Selkirkshire. Here, for the first time in his life, he committed to another the duty of placing his outposts, and retired to his quarters to finish his dispatches to Charles. The event was disastrous, as the sequel

will show.

During the evening, he was informed by some troopers that they had been attacked by a party of the enemy, and several of their number slain; but as they were all in a high state of intoxication, he imagined that they had been engaged in some drunken brawl. However, he sent out a party to ascertain the truth of the report. They patrolled the adjacent country, and returning, assured him that there was no enemy within ten miles. This, they said, they had learned from the country people, who, they afterwards found, were in the Covenanting interest, and had deceived them. About half an hour before daybreak, as the Marquis was still intent on his dispatches, he was startled by a confused discharge of musketry. Springing from the table, he rushed down the stair, threw himself upon a horse, and rode in full speed to the field. Here he found the troops endeavoring to form, but in confusion. A heavy mist had shrouded the approach of the enemy, and they were within a few yards of the outposts before the alarm was given. The presence of the Marquis restored some degree of order, but it was in vain. Lesley charged him in front with two thousand cavalry, with four more in the flank, and at the same time a thousand foot assailed him in the rear. The half-formed line was thrown into confusion, and nearly all were either captured or slain. Finding that his endeavors to turn the tide of battle were futile, he placed himself at the head of forty cavaliers, and, with the royal stand

ard still flying above them, they resolved to sell their lives, as dearly as possible. Montrose seemed endowed with superhuman strength. His white plumes were seen dancing in the thickest of the fray, and trooper after trooper who encountered him, fell, cloven to the teeth, upon the ground. He was at length entreated, by the Marquis of Douglas, to remember that this battle involved but a small portion of the King's cause in Scotland, and that they soon would again be able to stem the tide of fortune. Montrose listened to this advice, and, at the head of a few cavaliers, cut a path through the enemy, and escaped. All the prisoners captured by the Covenar ters, among whom were three hundred women and children, were inhumanly butchered by them; and, when the massacre was finishe, the blood of the victims stood ankle deep in the court yard! After this reverse, the Marquis retired to the Highlands, where he collected his scattered forces; but before he could again enter the field, he received an order from the king to disband his army. He did this with a heavy heart, and being unable to remain in Scotland, he took ship to Norway; thence he proceeded to France, where his talents were held in such high esteem, that he was offered, by Cardinal Mazarin, the rank of Lieutenant General of France, a Captaincy in the Gendarmerie, with a pension of 12,000 crowns yearly besides his pay, the promise of a company in the King's Guard, and the baton of a Marshal of France. These splendid offers, the income of which would have amounted to nearly $100,000 a year, he rejected, much to the astonishment of the prelate. He devoted himself to his king only.

In 1649, he sailed from Gottenburg, for the Orkneys, with a few followers, and a small quantity of arms and amunition. On landing, he levied a small force among the islesmen; but these troops were wholly deficient in the enthusiastic spirit of loyalty which burned in the breasts of the Highlanders of the preceding campaign. The clansmen were inured to their harness, and never, for a moment, permitted their arms leave their sides, while many of these men, who were fish

ers, now, for the first time in their lives, felt the weight of a helmet upon their brows, and the encumbrance of a buffcoat about their shoulders. The rest were mercenary soldiers, who, for the hope of a few pence a day, were willing to allow themselves to be shot at. With such troops as these, was Montrose, by circumstances which I have not time to narrate, obliged to give battle to the Covenanters at Invercarron, still called in the language of the country," the rock of lamentation." At the first fire of the enemy, the islesmen turned and fled. Montrose, unable to rally them, placed himself at the head of the remainder, and endeavored to retrieve the fortune of the day, but in vain. Conspicuous by his rich dress, he became the mark of many a bullet and rapier. Numbers of those who encountered him, paid the price of their temerity with their lives. But even his arm became weary of continual slaughter, and fainting from loss of blood, he was at length dragged from the press by the Viscount Frendraught, who placed him upon his own horse, and besought him to fly "for the sake of God, and the king's good cause." Cutting a path through the foe, the Marquis made his escape. On reaching the river Kyle, he abandoned his horse, and, after swiming across, exchanged clothes with a peasant whom he met. For four days and three nights did he wander among the fastnesses of Assynt, with his wounds undressed, and with no other sustenance than a cup of milk which he obtained from an old woman. At the end of this time, the pangs of hunger became so intense, that he strove to allay them by devouring his leather gloves. Even his frame, iron as it was, at last gave way under these continued privations; and meeting with the laird of Assynt, who had, in times past, been one of his followers, he delivered himself into his hands, thinking he had now found a man who would prove himself a friend in his need; but the villain, disregarding former favors, delivered him to the tender mercies of the Covenant, for the paltry reward of 400 bolls of meal. Montrose earnestly besought him to plunge his sword into his breast, that he might be spared the ignominy of the death which

Unable to endure the glance of the Marquis, Gillespie Grumach, as he was called by the Highlanders on account of his squinting, crept in at the window, upon which, a cavalier in the crowd cried out that he did well, for, for seven long years he had not dared to look him in the face. When in confinement, he was continually pestered by the Covenanting clergy, one of whom, coming into his cell on the morning of his execution, found him arranging his luxuriant hair, and rebuked him.

"While my head is my own," said the Marquis, "I will dress it as I have been wont; when it is yours, you may treat it as you please.'

After breakfasting on a piece of bread, he received the summons to set forth. He had been provided by his friends, while in prison, with a dress befitting his rank, and as he emerged from the gate of the Tolbooth, a murmur of admiration at his noble presence, mingled with horror at the barbarities about to ensue, arose from the multitudes.

The gallows was placed in the centre of the high street; and, in mockery, had been built thirty feet high. To add still further to the brutality of his punishment, a table was placed at one end of the scaffold, on which the axes, knives, and.

other instruments, by which he was to be quartered, lay glittering in the noonday sun. Ascending the platform, he surveyed the multitude for some minutes, hat in hand. He asked to be allowed to address them, but this privilege, which was not denied to the vilest malefactor, was refused him; yet, having foreseen this, he threw his last address into the hands of a boy who was waiting to receive it. Those who wish, will find it in the " Life and Times of Montrose," by Mark Napier; or in his Memoirs by Grant.

Then he knelt down; and, following the example of Christ, prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers. Rising, he turned to the executioner, and asked"How long shall I hang there?" "Three hours," said the man, bursting into tears; for even this man, brutalized as he must have been by his occupation, was overcome by the majesty and gentleness of this martyr of loyalty. He requested to be allowed to keep on his hat; it was denied. Then to have the privilege of wearing his cloak, and this also was refused. Then taking one last look of the people, he ascended the ladder, and as the clock of St. Giles struck three, the soul of the Great Marquis went up to God:

After remaining three hours suspended, the body was cut down, and the head and limbs were severed from the trunk. Lord Lorn, the son of Argyle, mounting the scaffold, gloated over this scene," exulting in every stroke of the executioner's

axe.

He did not foresee, that in a few years both he and his father would deservedly meet the same fate; and while the name of Montrose would be venerated by the good and noble of all time, his own would be remembered only with abhor

rence.

The head was placed on the Tolbooth, and the limbs were distributed among the The principal cities of the kingdom. trunk was placed in a square deal box, and interred in the Borough Muir, among the remains of criminals; but thence Lady Napier obtained possession of his heart, which he had bequeathed her, and which she enclosed in a steel casket made of the blade of his sword. In this casket it is still preserved.

On the night before his execution, he inscribed these celebrated lines on his window:

Then open all my veins, that I may swim
To Thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake!
Then place my parboiled head upon a stake,
Scatter my ashes-strew them in the air,
Lord' since thou know'st where all these atoms
are,

"Let them bestow on every *airth a limb,

I'm hopeful Thou'lt recover once my dust, And confident Thou'lt raise me with the just."

Cardinal de Retz, the friend of both Conde and Turrene, the two great captains of the age, says of, him :-" He was the only man in the world who has ever realized to me the ideas of certain heroes, whom we now discover only in the pages of Plutarch. He sustained, in his own country, the cause of the king, his master, with a greatness of soul that has not found its equsl in our age.'

After the Restoration, his dust was recovered, and Argyle, who was then confined in the Castle of Edinburgh, had the chagrin to see, from his grated window, the bones of his great enemy, interred with most magnificent ceremonies.

Point of the compass.

BLIGHTED.

BY LILLY WATERS.

With skilful hands we plant the vine,
And watch its upward tending;
While fancy brings its purple wine,
And breath like incense, blending
With autumn's dreamy golden air,
A floating sweetness everywhere.

But autumn, with untimely chill, Ends Flora's perfumed breathing: And scars the green of vale and hill, And vines of summer's wreathingNow purple grapes will never fill With necter drawn from mystic rill.

A gossip concerning a strange subject for a woman's pen

BEARDS.

The question "What do you know about war?" is often irreverently put to woman when she ventures to discuss, in straigthforward speech, the all-enquiring topic of the day. With similar impertinence, I have no doubt, some unmanly masculine biped, will blurt out, when he sees the above startling subject, "What do you know about beards?" Indeed, and what don't I know about them? More, perhaps, than I should venture to tell were I disposed, and, fortunately, I am just now enabled to discuss the important matter by proxy, for a fair correspondent, who evidently does "know something about war," has sent a little disquisition on the subject that is so characteristic, and to the point, that I can certainly do nothing better for you or me, than to lay it bodily before you. I do not wish to be understood as exactly vouching for the invincibility of some of the fair writer's positions, wisely leaving a hole, out of which myself to crawl, should the wrath of any of the masculine's be too deeply stirred. Hear, then, what the fair writer says of BEARDS :The question concerning the “final cause of beards, is one of the vexed questions of the world. It has been discussed for six thousand years, and has given rise to more speculations, and greater differences of opinion, than almost any other subject with which pature has furnished philosophers and savans. That relating to "fate and free will," upon which Milton's angels held such high, but unavailing debate, is nothing in comparison with it.

I shall not attempt even a sketch of the history of this discussion. What the ante-diluvians thought upon the subject, is not very well known, though it is beyond controversy that Methuselah must have pondered it a great deal while his own beard was growing so long, and it seems to be pretty well settled, that

beards had much to do with the sins of the Old World, and its final overthrow. Nor need I repeat the opinions of the ancient Chaldeans, Egyptians, Carthagenians, nor even those romancers, the Hindoos and Chinese. The Turks and Romans studied the subject profoundly, and have left their wisdom on record, for the enlightenment of such as please to avail themselves of it.

In more recent times, our physiologists and philosophers have entered into the controversy with equal zeal and science; yet the problem seems no nearer a solution than it was three thousand years ago. One tells us that beards were given men to shield them from the inclemencies of the seasons, to protect the face and neck from the biting frosts and cold norwesters of winter, and thus fit them for the out-door life they were intended to lead. To others, this reasoning has not appeared quite satisfactory; first, because women, in many parts of the world, are fully as much exposed as the nobler sex, and, with a more delicate organization, stand as much in need of protection and safeguards; and, secondly, because some rudely shave or clip this divine shield, and seem unconscious of any loss. Others think that beards are intended for the special use of a few mechanics, to save their lungs from the fatal effects of drilling, grinding, turning, and manifold kinds of handicraft in which men live, in the midst of malignant dust, which. but for beards, would soon give them their quietus. But beards serve as a kind of seive or strainer, much as whalebone, so called, ministers to the use of the great leviathan of the deep. Unfortunately for this theory, we have too many beards for such a meagre purpose. It was hardly necessary to arm half a race with beards, to accommodate a few scissors grinders, or the whole posterity of Tubal-Cain, the workers in brass and iron; besides, if this was the end to be attained, the device has nearly proved a failure, for, say