PRINCE CHARLES AND THE LONG ISLAND. 465 



House, the residence of Sir Alexander Macdonald, and it 

 was then that the pluck and diplomacy of Flora Mac- 

 donald were subjected to a severe strain. How she proved 

 equal to the task which she was called upon to perform, is 

 matter of history, and need not be repeated here. Nor is 

 it necessary to follow the Prince in his further adventures, 

 which are equally well-known. After a series of exciting 

 episodes in Skye, Raasay, and the mainland, Charles sailed 

 from Loch nan Uamh in a French privateer, the Happy 

 (an appropriate name), on ipth September, and his enemies 

 were finally baulked in their efforts to secure him. Well 

 would it have been for his reputation had his career ended, 

 as it virtually commenced, at Loch nan Uamh. Over the 

 later years of his life, it could be wished that it were possible 

 to draw the veil of silence ; for the picture which they dis- 

 close of a prince no longer either " bonnie " or brave, is one 

 of the saddest in history. 



To the dispassionate critic, who judges men as he would 

 judge prize bullocks, and professes to be proof against the 

 influence of illusions, the devotion of the Jacobite High- 

 landers towards Charles Edward is perhaps incompre- 

 hensible. It is plain that the attachment centred, not so 

 much on the dynasty which Charles represented, as on the 

 person of the Prince himself. Otherwise, it is difficult to 

 understand the different emotions which the presence of 

 the Old Chevalier aroused when he arrived at Perth in 

 1716. The father was received with an entire absence 

 of enthusiasm, if not with positive disapproval, and his 

 personal bearing depressed, instead of inspiring, his 

 adherents. Thirty years later, the son, who had less solid, 

 if more showy, qualities than the father, carried the hearts 

 of the Highlanders by storm. Had James, instead of 

 Charles, come to Scotland in La Doutelle, it is probably 

 not too much to say that there would have been no " forty- 

 five" to chronicle. Yet, apart from his handsome ap- 

 pearance, his charming manners, his sunny disposition, his 

 undoubted bravery, and his conspicuous moderation in the 

 hour of victory, Charles Edward showed none of those out- 



