the vassals grinned the pleasure they felt from the allegorical language of the chief and the bladier.

The preparations at the castle were great, that the approaching welcome might be as truly national as in other parts of the Hebrides, and as became, the race of Dunmorven.

The red deer and the mountain goat, the heifer and the innocent sheep, the kappercailzie, the grous, and the domestic poultry, were killed; and fish from the banks between Tirree and Iona, were fished for the dinner of that day: many of the vassals were put in requisition, and many more looked to be employed whose services were not wanted.

When the day arrived, the chieftain Mactorloisk, attended by a vast retinue in the full dress of the plaid and quelt, the bonnet and the hose, the sword and the dirk, arrived at Dunmorven castle; and the ceremony of introduc

ing St. Clyde to the baron, was attended with all the parade of congees, and shaking of hands, and gibberish amongst the lower orders of the clan, for which primitive manners and antiquated patriarchal fashions were so famous.

Dunmorven and Mactorloisk were each attended by his hanchman, and the principal officers of the respective households whom we have named; and as Mactorloisk was a very elegant young bachelor, the Miss Dunmorvens shared between him and Captain St. Clyde all the agreeable qualities, the affliction they had not yet shaken off, and the dignity of their sex and rank, bade them exhibit to welcome guests; and the clan got an opportunity to show St. Clyde their incorruptible fidelity, and the chiefs exhibited their particular brotherhood.

The clan of Dunmorven was divided

!

into its tribes, and Mactorloisk was at the head of the most powerful branch of that clan, for under him were four branches of eighty males each; and these, though they deduced their original from Dunmorven, considered themselves the immediate protectors and defenders of Mactorloisk, who, on his part, viewed Dunmorven as the chief whom, next to his sovereign, his right arm might defend.

On an occasion that called forth their most sublime degree of virtue and love to the chief, this multifarous crowd of vassals were willing to show, that though kings can, for the most part, only exalt or degrade, every duty, every moral and political principle, every affection of the heart, all the adherence and reverence which the

"The Highlands of Scotland are probably more redundant in population than any other part of Great Britain." MALTHUS ON POPULATION.

kindness of consanguinity, and the obligations of patriarchal authority, could command, were absorbed in their idol, their chief, in Oil Roi Dunmorven : and the extensive obligation operated with a force scarcely credible; for Dunmorven and the chieftain Mactorloisk, drawing their dirks from their belts, and thrusting them in the smooth lawn before the castle, all the vassals present, knowing well that it was by Dunmorven's nod they knew who were friends and who were enemies, what kings they should obey, and what religion they should profess, sheathed to the hilt their dirks in their mother earth; and the example of Dunmorven, with his claymore, caused the hall of his castle to glitter with the massive heads of their broad swords.

This precaution was, perhaps, not necessary; but there had been bickerings among some of the subdivisions

of his clan, and Dunmorven, who studied the human heart, gave them an example which none would offer to oppose. When they got into the hall of the castle, the head of the table was occupied by the chief himself, on his right and left were his wife and daughters, and Thegn Mactorloisk and St. Clyde.

But Dunmorven, in the true spirit of the times, welcomed his chieftain Mactorloisk with a rummer of claret and another of sherry-sack. The chieftain's vassals were severally presented with a large queigh full of ale, or a horn of whiskey.

The chief, his family, and visitors, being seated at the head of the table, the elders of the clan, the wadsetters and the taxmen set themselves next in rank; the sons and nephews and the foster brothers were next in order; beneath them were the officers of Dun