228 EDITOR. 



by the winds ; there was a broken pike beside it ; and, stuck fast in 

 the naked scull, which had rolled to the bottom of the rampart, the 

 rusty fragment of a sword. The space behind resembled the floor of a 

 charnel-house, bindwood and ground-ivy lay matted over heaps of 

 bones ; and on the top of the hugest heap of all, a scull seemed as if 

 grinning at the sky from amid the tattered fragments of a cap of liberty. 

 Bones lay thick around the shattered vehicles, a trail of skeletons 

 dotted the descending bank, and stretched far into a neighbouring 

 field ; and from amid the green rankness that shot up around them, I 

 could see soiled and tattered patches of the British scarlet. A little 

 farther on there was another wide gap in the rails. I marked beside 

 the ruins of a neighbouring hovel, a huge pile of rusty bars, and there 

 lay inside the fragments of an uncouth cannon, marred in the casting. 



I wandered on in unhappiness, oppressed by that feeling of terror 

 ,and disconsolateness so peculiar to one's more frightful dreams. The 

 country seemed everywhere a desert. The fields were roughened 

 with tufts of furze and broom ; hedgerows had shot up into lines of 

 stunted trees, with wide gaps interposed ; cottage and manor-house 

 had alike sunk into ruins ; here the windows still retained their shat- 

 tered frames, and the roof-tree lay rotting, amid the dank vegetation of 

 the floor, yonder the blackness of fire had left its mark, and there re- 

 mained but reddened and mouldering stone. Wild animals and doleful 

 creatures had everywhere increased. The toad puffed out its freckled 

 sides on hearths, whose fires had been long extinguished, the fox 

 rustled among the bushes, the masterless dog howled from the thicket, 

 the hawk screamed shrill and sharp as it fluttered overhead. I passed 

 what had been once the policies of a titled proprietor. The trees lay 

 rotting and blackened among the damp grass, all except one huge 

 giant of the forest, that girdled by the axe half a man's height from the 

 ground, and scorched by fire, stretched out its long dead arms towards 

 the sky. In the midst of this wilderness of desolation, lay broken 

 masses, widely scattered, of what had been once the mansion-house. 

 A shapeless hollow, half filled with stagnant water, occupied its imme- 

 diate site ; and the earth was all around torn up, as if battered with 

 cannon. The building had too obviously owed its destruction to the 

 irresistible force of gunpowder. 



There was a parish church on the neighbouring eminence, and it, 

 too, was roofless and a ruin. ' Alas,' I exclaimed, as I drew aside the 

 rank stalks of nightshade and hemlock that hedged up the breach in 

 the wall through which I passed into the interior, ' alas ! have the 

 churches of Scotland also perished ! ' The inscription of a mutilated 

 tombstone that lay outside caught my eye, and I paused for a moment's 

 space in the gap, to peruse it. It was an old memorial of the times 

 of the Covenant, and the legend was more than half defaced. I suc- 

 ceeded in deciphering merely a few half-sentences, ' killing time,' 

 1 faithful martyr,' ' bloody Prelates ;' and beneath there was a frag- 

 mentary portion of the solemn text, * How long, Lord, holy and true, 

 dost thou not judge and avenge our blood ?' I stepped into the in- 



