morven's household, and next to them those of Mactorloisk's household, and last of all sat the vassals. The dishes of the long oakén táble were ranged according to the quality of the guests; and thus was preserved due respect to economy, in the carving of the venison, the game, the fowls, and the fish. But those who were regaled on the lawn relished well the broth, the beef, the fragments of the fish and the game, and every one feasted on the broken venison.

The claret, the Peau-de-vie, and the good old Jamaica, were excellent; and the guests in the hall did ample honour to the well-filled goblets as they circled round. On the lawn, the whiskey was plied about in horns that had measured the potency of their owners on Sky and on Isla, in Jura and Colonsa, at Icolumkill and at Barra.

Dunmorven could not let this op

portunity slip of declaring before St. Clyde, how high the love of a Highland chief might rise in the breast of a vassal, and related accordingly the following anecdote:

"At the battle of Glenshiel, in the year 19, when the Highlanders at Stra chell destroyed the king's forces by rolling down stones upon them from the heights, Monro of Culcraine was dangerously wounded in the thigh, and when he was down, the fire from a party posted on the declivity of a mountain, might have made holes in his body. Finding they were resolved to dispatch him, he bid his servant, who was by, get out of the danger, for he might lose his life, but could be of no service to him; but the Highlander burst into tears, and asking

how he thought he could leave him in that condition?' set himself down on his hands and knees over his mas

ter, and received several wounds to shield him from further danger; till one of the clan, who acted as a sergeant, after having taken an oath upon his dirk, that he would do it,' with a small party dislodged the enemy: and this brave man Monro of Culcraine has now to wait at his table, but otherwise he treats him more as a friend than as a servant."

Dunmorven was not a declaimer: his oratory lay chiefly in anecdotes, tales of other times, the politics of the years fifteen and forty-five; and pa

rental laconic lectures he sometimes read the refractory, the lazy, and the busy-bodies of his clan. He now called aloud for" the tongue of joy, and the breath that healed the widowed heart."

The bairdh was not now dignified with a harp, the instrument had long been disused; and the piper was the

only musician now retained in the family, save that young and old of the islesmen could wind a bugle horn, till the linn of Correivreiken would shriek back that she heard them. In these comparatively peaceful days, when the energy of his clan was more seldom to be roused, the bard was less frequently employed in spirit-stirring lays; his general employment was to drink with old Dunmorven, and on particular family festivals to recall some tale of other years, as if still to keep alive the declining patriarchal bond, and the unabated family pride. He was a white-haired venerable looking man, and, but that his countenance partook of the general gloom and affliction of Dunmorven castle, St. Clyde thought he perceived it full of lightning and spirit.

The fragments of the dinner had scarcely disappeared, when, from a

seat on one side of the hall, the bard began in Erse to invoke the spirits of northern song, and the chiefs of Dunmorven of old; the guests paid a mournful attention, and the chief wrapped his face in his plaid as the hoary minstrel related the genealogy of Dunmorven's family, and the famous warlike actions of the successive heads of that family, with a peculiar and discriminative store of imagery, and the most capricious principles of ratiocination, that accorded well as an opiate to the chief, to Thegn Mactorloisk from the glen, and to the vassals from the mountains: it was a history, which, if it had all been translated to our readers, might have swelled our pages with northern poesy, and afforded an impressive and instructive series of occurrences to the city novel hunters, whom existing originals, feudal chivalry in the mountains, vulgar fanati