6 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [III. 



honours of his own heirless house round the coronet of his 

 slain foeman's descendant ; — how Sir Neill at Bannockburn 

 fought side by side with the Bruce whose sister he had 

 married ; how Colin, the first Earl, wooed and won the Lady 

 Isabel, sprung from the race of Somerled, Lord of the Isles, 

 thus adding the galleys of Lorn to the blazonry of Argyll ; — 

 how the next Earl died at Flodden, and his successor fought 

 not less disastrously at Pinkie ; — how Archibald, fifth Earl, 

 whose wife was at supper with the Queen, her half-sister, 

 w T hen Rizzio was murdered, fell on the field of Langside, 

 smitten not by the hand of the enemy, but by the finger of 

 God ; how Colin, Earl and boy-General at fifteen, was 

 dragged away by force, with tears in his eyes, from the un- 

 happy skirmish at Glenlivit, where his brave Highlanders 

 were being swept down by the artillery of Huntley and Errol, — 

 destined to regild his spurs in future years on the soil of Spain. 

 Then I told him of the Great Rebellion, and how, amid 

 the tumult of the next fifty years, the Grim Marquis — 

 Gillespie Grumach, as his squint caused him to be called — 

 Montrose's fatal foe, staked life and fortunes in the deadly 

 game engaged in by the fierce spirits of that generation, and 

 losing, paid the forfeit with his head, as calmly as became a 

 brave and noble gentleman, leaving an example, which his 

 son — already twice rescued from the scaffold, once by a 

 daughter of the ever-gallant house of Lindsay, again a pri- 

 soner, and a rebel, 'because four years too soon to be a 

 patriot — as nobly imitated ; — how, at last, the clouds of mis- 

 fortune cleared away, and honours clustered where only 

 merit had been before ; the martyr's aureole, almost become 

 hereditary, being replaced in the next generation by a ducal 

 coronet, itself to be regilt in its turn with a less sinister 

 lustre by him — 



" The State's whole thunder bom to wield, 

 And shake alike the senate and the field ; " 



who baffled Walpole in the cabinet, and conquered with 

 Marlborough at Ramilies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet ; — 

 and, last, — how at that present moment, even while we were 



