gaged in this unhappy cause.

"His memory

is still cherished among the Highlanders, by the appellation of the gentle Lochiel, for he was famed for his social virtues as much as for his martial and magnanimous (though mistaken) loyalty."

Before Lochiel had led his followers to the standard of the Pretender, it is related that a Seer forewarned him of the catastrophe which awaited the rebels. This remonstrance is the foundation of Lochiel's Warning. The less informed of the Scots, from time immemorial, have cherished a belief in the gift of second sight or gift of prophecy. The second sight,- say those who believe in it, is an actual perception which the gifted person has of things absent and future, which he can afterwards describe to others, and which usually intimates some important event. Ellen, in the Lady of the Lake, tells the stranger Knight,

"Old Allan-bane foretold your plight,—

A gray-haired sire, whose eye intent,
Was on the visioned future bent."

LOCHIEL'S WARNING.

Wizard. Lochiel! Lochiel, beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array!
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight:
They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown;
Wo, wo to the riders that trample them down!
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.
But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war,
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?
'Tis thine, oh Glenullin! whose bride shall await,
Like a love-lighted watchfire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning; no rider is there ;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep Albin! to death and captivity led!
Oh weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead:
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,
Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave.
Lochiel. Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling

seer!

Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,

Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight

This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.

Wizard. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn! Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn !

Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth,

From his home, in the dark-rolling clouds of the north?
Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode
Companionless, bearing destruction abroad;

But down let him stoop from his havoc on high!
Ah! home let him speed—for the spoiler is nigh.
Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast
Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast?
'Tis the fire-shower of ruin all dreadfully driven
From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of heaven.
Oh, crested Lochiel! the peerless in might,
Whose banners arise on the battlement's height,
Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn;

Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return!

For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.

Lochiel. False Wizard avaunt! I have marshalled my clan :

Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!

They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.
Then welcome is Cumberland's steed to the shock!
Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock!
But wo to his kindred, and wo to his cause,
When Albin her claymore indignantly draws;
When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd,
Clanmanald the dauntless, and Moray the proud;
All plaided and plumed in their tartan array—

Wizard.—Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day!
For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal:
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring
With the bloodhounds, that bark for thy fugitive king.
Lo! anointed by heaven with vials of wrath,
Behold, where he flies on his desolate path!

Now, in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight:
Rise! rise! ye wild tempests and cover his flight

'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors
Culloden is lost, and my country deplores;

But where is the iron-bound prisoner?

Where ?

For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.

Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banished, forlorn?
Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?
Ah no! for a darker departure is near,

The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier!
His death-bell is tolling; oh! mercy dispel
Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Accursed be the fagots, that blaze at his feet,
Where his heart shall be thrown ere it ceases to beat,
With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale-

297

Lochiel-Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale : Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore, Like ocean-weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore, Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,

While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,

Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,

With his back to the field and his feet to the foe!

And leaving in battle no blot on his name,

Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame.

Weep Albin—Scotland, or literally, people of Scotland. Proud bird of the mountain. The Wizard here addresses Lochiel figuratively, and speaks of the ruin which is impending over his house, as a fire shower destined to consume the eyrie or eagle's nest—that signifies the chief's home and his family.

A darker departure is near. The agonizing description given in the lines which follow to the end of the passage refer to a fact. "The brother of Lochiel returned to England ten years after the rebellion, though he acted only as a surgeon in the rebel army, suffered the dreadful fate here predicted, by a sentence which happily has no parallel for needless severity in the modern history of state trials in this humane age."

THE LAST MAN,

All worldly- shapes shall melt in gloom,

The Sun himself must die,

Before this mortal shall assume

Its Immortality!

I saw a vision in my sleep,

That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulf of Time?

I saw the last of human mould.
That shall Creation's death behold,
As Adam saw her prime !

The Sun's eye had a sickly glare,
The Earth with age was wan;
The skeletons of nations were
Around that lonely man!

Some had expired in fight,—the brands
Still rusted in their bony hands;
In plague and famine some!

Earth's cities had no sound nor tread;
And ships were drifting with the dead,
To shores where all was dumb!

Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood,
With dauntless words and high,
That shook the seret leaves from the wood,
As if a storm passed by,

Saying, We are twins in death, proud Sun;
Thy face is cold, thy race is run,
'Tis Mercy bids thee go;
For thou ten thousand thousand years
Hast seen the tide of human tears,
That shall no longer flow.

What though beneath thee man put forth
His pomp, his pride, his skill;
And arts that made fire, flood, and earth,
The vassals of his will;—
Yet mourn I not thy parted sway,
Thou dim, discrowned king of day;
For all those trophied arts

And triumphs that beneath thee sprang,
Healed not a passion or a pang
Entailed on human hearts.

Go,—let oblivion's curtain fall
Upon the stage of men,

Nor with thy rising beams recall
Life's tragedy again.

Its piteous pageants bring not back,
Nor waken flesh, upon the rack
Of pain anew to writhe;
Stretched in disease's shapes abhorred,
Or mown in battle by the sword,
Like grass beneath the scythe.

E'en I am weary in yon skies
To watch thy fading fire;
Test of all sumless agonies,
Behold not me expire.

My lips that speak thy dirge of death,--
Their rounded gasp and gurgling breath
To see, thou shalt not boast.

The Eclipse of Nature spreads my pall,—
The majesty of Darkness shall
Receive my parting ghost!

This spirit shall return to Him

That gave its heavenly spark;
Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim
When thou thyself art dark!
No! it shall live again, and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine :
By Him recalled to breath,
Who captive led Captivity,

Who robbed the grave of victory,-
And took the sting from Death!

Go, Sun, while Mercy holds me up
On Nature's awful waste,

To drink this last and bitter cup

Of grief that man shall taste;
Go, tell the night that hides thy face,
Thou saw'st the last of Adam's race,
On Earth's sepulchral clod,

The darkening universe defy
To quench his Immortality,

Or shake his trust in God!