370 coast; and if any frigats from France | stayed behind to live in good hopes, and should appear for the purpose of carreing that he expected to see us soon with such him, I to goe aboard till he could be a force as would enable him to reembures found dead or alive, and that Glenaladil us for our losses and troubles; so that is the person to be employed for procure- he ended as he began. ing him, the Glenmorison lads to return home with his promise, If ever in his power he would make satisfaction for there losses and gratitue; so that very night I and John Glenaladil's brother made of for the west coast, and arrived there two days after, and found all left behind us in the greatest distress for want of all necessarys of life, or houses to shelter us from the inclemency of the weather. A fourtnight thereafter, in September, two frigats appeared coming to the harbour at Borrodil under English colours. My father and brother Ranald and I immediately hade recourse to the muirs, to avoid being apprehended, and appointed one Donald M'Donald in whom we hade great confidence, to wait there landing; and after nightfall, twelve french, with two officers at their hade, came to a smal hut we repaired some time before that for our own reception, as all our houses before that were all burned; the names of the officers were jung Sheridan and Capn ONeil, who at there arrival, enquired for us all, as they knew us weel formerly, and wished much to have some us. disscourse of consequence with Upon our being informed of this, we appeared, and after a long conversation, were convinced of there sincerity, and oblidged them to produce their credentials from France before we revealed any parte of our secrets to them. Next day I went aboord one of the frigats; and my brother, accompanied by the two french officer, went to Glenaladil to acquaint him of there errand. After a night's rest, they were desired by Glenaladil to return to there ships, and that he would goe in serch of the person they wanted, which he accordingly did, and in eight days returned with him to Borrodil, where he first landed; and after refreshing himself weel, directly went aboord, and with a fair wind set sail next morning for France, and left us all in a worse state than he found us. Locheil, his Brother Doctor Cameron, John Roy Stuart, the two first mentioned french officers, with one hundred more persons of some distinction, accompanied him, and took there passage alongst with him; he then seemed to be in good spirit, and addressed himself to such as One material circumstances I cannot omit acquainting you of; that is, the battle fought between three British frigats and two french ones on the 3d of May after Cullodden batle. The french frigats landed the latter end of April fourty thousand Louisdors, with some stand of arms and amunition, at the farm of Borradil; government being informed of the same, despatched three of there own frigats to the place mentioned, in order to capture the Frenchman; present Lord Howe, then captn of the Grayhound frigate, was commodore of that smal squadron. They appeared in seight about four in the morning by the point of Ardmuchan, from whence they then visibly saw the french frigats; they were favoured with a favourable wind directly after them, and before the french hade time to rise there ankors, Captn Howe sliped in between the two french frigats, and gave a broadside to each of them with very great execution. The largest of the french frigats was disabled by breaken her ruder, and was oblidged to lay by till seven o'clock in the afternoon and the smal french frigate, after several attempts of bourding her, fairly escaped till then, and when soon the largest of them repaired the damage, Captn Howe went to her assistance. haveing run out of ammunition, sheered of about nightfall, and the french persued them for a leage, when they thought adviseable to return to there former situation. At two o'clock next morning they steered away for Barra head with a fair wind; the Ducke of Perth, and several other gentlemen, such as Lord John Drumond, Lockard of Carnwath, and many more took there passage to France. The battle leasted twelve hours, and we found on our shores fefteen frenchmen dead, not one Englishman in the number, as they threew none overboard of them till they came the lenth of the point of Ardmurchan. After that the gold was by a partie conveyed to Lochaber, and parte of the arms, by orders of secretar Morrow, and were then determined to gather and randevou there friends and weelwishers, which happened since, nor by all appearance will. never tiality of the narrative is further consid ered, the very number of the dead who were washed on shore being recorded, and the unexpected fact that they were all Frenchmen—a fact which the rumour of the country seems to have satisfactorily accounted for. SUCH is John Macdonald's narrative. It has been printed with all its irregularities and peculiarities of style and spelling, so that it now appears just as it left the hands of its author. It does not perhaps contain much that is new, but the romantic character of the adventures narrated, and the honest and unadorned It may not be uninteresting to give a language in which they are told, cannot moment's attention to the subsequent fail to give it a deep and painful interest. fortunes of those attendants of Prince It brings out, in a striking degree, the Charles who are especially mentioned in devoted affection of these loyal High-John Macdonald's narrative. The merlanders for their unfortunate Prince- of ciless severity with which the troops of whom it has been often remarked, that the Government ravaged the territories with a price of £30,000 on his head, and whilst the place of his concealment was more than once known to at least one hundred men at the same time, not one of them should ever have thought of securing what would have been affluence to himself, at the expense of treachery to the fugitive. A farther remark is suggested by this narrative. It exhibits in a remarkable way the humble respect and obedience which was felt by these devoted men towards the Prince, even at the lowest ebb of his fortunes. His Highland attendants never allowed them selves to be raised above the position of subjects and counsellors, although it could not have been thought unnatural had the circumstances led them to do so. From their knowledge both of the country and of the people, they must have known much better than he could how to evade the dangers to which he was exposed, and to elude the strict watch that was kept for him by the patrolling parties of the Government; yet it is plain that he was not only nominally, but actually, the leader of the party. They gave him the fullest information and the best advice they could, but they obeyed his orders whatever they might be. The only incident of importance in the narrative of which the historians of the period seem to have taken little if any notice is the naval action between Lord Howe's squadron and the two French men-of-war. Such a collision was indeed inevitable in the circumstances, when any of the British vessels which were cruising off the West Highlands to prevent the Prince's escape, fell in with any of the French ships, which were there to facilitate it. That the incidents of the action itself are correctly reported, can hardly be doubted, when it is remembered that the whole took place in the immediate neighbourhood of the residence of the family, who were probably eyewitnesses; and when the circumstan of the insurgent clans after the defeat at Culloden, is a matter of history; and it can excite no surprise that this was especially the case with the lands of the Clan Ronald. Where the houses of the gentry were situated near the sea-shore, they were destroyed by the cannon of the men-of-war; where they were not accessible in this way, they were burnt by the troops who patrolled the country. The cattle and other property of the inhabitants were carried off, and they themselves were driven to the moors and mountains, to find subsistence if they could, and, if they could not, to perish. The house of Borradale was burnt; all the cattle and corn, and everything eatable, was carried off, and the family were compelled to fly to the woods, where they subsisted on nuts, and anything else they could find; and it is still remembered that they even tried to grind the nuts into a kind of meal, that they might at least have something like the oat-cakes and porridge they were accustomed to. It is further related that John Macdonald's mother, who was a daughter of Macgregor of Glengyle, in the course of the flight of the family from Borradale, was seized by the soldiers, and the wedding-ring torn off her finger. John Macdonald himself, the author of the narrative now published, married Catherine, a daughter of Macdonell of Barrisdale, a cadet of the family of Glengarry. The Macdonells of Barrisdale suffered as much from the Government as their neighbours. Their house at Glenmeddle was the first house in that neighbourhood battered down by the shot from the war-ships. John Macdonald's wife used afterwards to relate that she recollected on this occasion looking from her place of shelter in the woods, and seeing the soldiers kill all the geese and fowls about the place, and carry them off, driving off at the same time all the cows; but that the dairymaid ran after the party and entreated the officer in command to have mercy on the innocent children at least, and to leave one cow to give milk for them. This he did, and that cow was ever after known by the nickname of "The Trooper." The family of Barrisdale took refuge in a hut built of wattles; and here they were roused early one morning by seeing the muzzles of several muskets projecting through their wattled walls. A party of soldiers immediately entered, who, after searching the hut for the Prince, commanded the family to follow them. In a short time, however, they seemed to see the uselessness of encumbering themselves with prisoners, and allowed the Macdonells to return to their shelter. John Macdonald was not only considered the most learned man in his clan; he was also reported to possess an unusual amount of energy and cleverness, qualities which he is said to have exhibited in a remarkable manner, by first risking his life many times in attempting to dethrone George II., and subsequently inducing the Government to pay his wife's portion out of her father's sequestrated estate. Macdonald of Glenaladale, so often mentioned in the narrative, was succeeded at his death by his son John, who, with all his tenants, emigrated to Prince Edward Island, where they, or their descendants, still remain. Before his emigration, this John Macdonald sold his Highland property to his own near cousin, Alexander Macdonald, who had realized a large fortune in the West Indies. This Alexander Macdonald of Glenaladale was succeeded on his death by his son, also named Alexander, who has perpetuated his memory in the Highlands by erecting the monument to Prince Charles still to be seen in Glenfinnan. On his death without issue, the succession to his estates opened to the Borrodale branch of the family. The descendants of the elder son of old Angus Macdonald of Borradale added Glenaladale and Glenfinnan to Borradale, which they already possessed; whilst Archibald, the son of his second son, John, the author of the narrative, got Dalilea on Loch Shiel. This property has now passed into the possession of Lord Howard; but the descendants of John Macdonald still inhabit the house of Dalilea, and it is through their kind permission that their grandfather's narrative has now been given to the public. From Saint Pauls. MR. TENNYSON AS A BOTANIST. WORDSWORTH, in the supplementary preface contained in the second volume of his works, asserts in the most emphatic way the deplorable ignorance of "the most obvious and important phenomena❞ of nature which characterizes the poetical literature of the period intervening between the publication of the "Paradise Lost" and the "Seasons." It is to be feared that his opinion is, to a large extent, justified by the facts of the case. A very cursory examination of the productions of the poets who flourished during the seventy years referred to will suffice to show how little they were affected by the manifold beauty and grandeur of the visible universe everywhere around them. In this respect they contrast unfavourably, not only with their successors of the present century, which might have been expected, but with those of the two preceding centuries as well. The latter, whose works embrace a period dating back a hundred years from Milton, display, generally, a much more accurate acquaintance with the appearances and phenomena of the natural world, and spontaneousness in the expression of it, than the school of Dryden and Pope, who may be regarded as the most conspicuous examples of Wordsworth's strictures. Of Pope, particularly, it might almost be said that from his writings it could scarcely be inferred that there was much else in existence than courts, and fashion, and scandal-not much, at all events, that was worth caring for. He excelled in the representation of the modish life of the day its fine ladies with their patches, its fine gentlemen with their periwigs, and its general artificiality. Of nature in its endless continuity, and variety, and mysteriousness, which has stirred the hearts of men in every age and kindled many smaller poets into enthusiasm, he knew and cared little, and the trim alleys and botanical distortions of Versailles which he has characteristically described, may be taken as typical of his own inspiration on the matter. It may be worth while mentioning, as a pertinent illustration of these comments, that in his poem of "Windsor Forest," with exception of a semi-patriotic allusion to the oak, in connection with shipbuilding, there is not a reference to a single forest tree, not even to any of those famous historical oaks which abound in the locality. Nature, and simplicity, in truth, had gone out of fashion and were not much in vogue again | poets of nature. Shakespeare, Spenser, till far on in the century. Darwin, a mere poetaster compared with the genius of Twickenham, is a wellknown instance of the opposite defect of the absence of poetic fire rather than of a taste for the delights of the country. His "Botanic Garden" is a dreary mechanical affair, several degrees worse and more unreadable than Cowley's "Plants," a century earlier. Both are constructed on an altogether erroneous principle. Science is science, and poetry is poetry, and while, as is well illustrated in "The Princess" and "In Memoriam," the scientific spirit may be distinctly present, yet anything like a formal didactic attempt at amalgamation is certain to prove a failure. Although belonging to an earlier date than the sterile period referred to, George Herbert might also be quoted here as a case of poetic talent of a very genuine kind, yet unaccompanied by much perception of natural beauty or picturesque ness. He has sometimes been likened to Keble, a brother churchman and clergyman, but between the two in their feeling and apprehension of the wonders of creation, the difference is singular and complete. Herbert's strong point was spiritual anatomy. His probing and exposure of the deceits and vanities of the human heart, and his setting forth of the dangers of the world to spirituality of mind, is at once quaint and incisive. But of any love or special knowledge of the physical world there is scarcely a trace.* Keble's poetry, on the other hand, quite as unworldly as that of the author of "The Temple," is redolent everywhere of the sights and sounds of nature. The seasons with their endless changes, the motions of the heavenly bodies, the fragrance of the field, trees, river, mountains, and all material things, are assimilated, so to speak, into the very essence of his verse. That very world which to Herbert was only base and utterly indifferent, seemed to Keble, to use his own words, "ennobled and glorified," and awakened in his soul poetical emotions of the highest and purest kind. It is unnecessary to enter into much detail in order to show, how much more truly than himself Pope's predecessors, and especially those of the Elizabethan era, were entitled to the designation of One of his biographers has discovered a solitary verse, on the faith of which he complacently assumes that Herbert "was thoroughly alive to the sweet influences of nature." the two Fletchers, Milton, and many others, might adduced in confirmation. With reference to botany, it is evident that the greatest of the tribe, in his universality of knowledge, flowing over into every region of human research, was well acquainted with the subject in its two-fold aspect- trees and flowers. Many beautiful floral descriptions occur in the plays, and although the arboricultural allusions are less frequent, they are sufficiently numerous to justify the belief that his knowledge was both extensive and accurate. Perhaps the most important passage of the kind is where Cranmer, "dilating on a wind of prophecy," portrays, under the figure of a "mountain cedar," the future glories of the reigns of Elizabeth and her successor.* Milton has many striking and appropriate images borrowed from trees. His artistic use of the pine as a simile for Satan's spear, to equal which the tallest pine, Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were but a wand; and the comparison of the rebel host to blasted pines, are fine examples of the poetical transmutation of botanical knowledge. Still finer is the exquisite description in "Lycidas" of the vernal flowers strewn on the hearse of his lamented friend. And, not to multiply quotations further, the vale of Vallombrosa has been immortalized forever by three lines in "Paradise Lost."† In later poetry, not of the present contury, Shenstone and Cowper were both genuine lovers of nature, and their works abound with passages relating to rural pleasures and scenery. Cowper, indeed, might be styled par excellence the poet of the country. No one ever believed more thoroughly than himself in his own epigrammatic line, God made the country, and man made the town. blance to Mr. Tennyson's famous song, of fancy sketches, and the distinguishing "Come into the garden, Maud." We quote eight lines to be found in the piece designated a "Pastoral Ballad, in Four Parts; features are given incidentally in the course of the narrative. Where, again, particular trees are referred to, it is almost invariably with a phrase or an epithet clinching the description as precise From the plains, from the woodlands and ly as a paragraph from Evelyn or Lou groves, What strains of wild melody flow! How the nightingales warble their loves From thickets of roses that blow! Then the lily no longer is white; Then the rose is deprived of its bloom; Then the violets die with despite, And the woodbines give up their perfume. The ring and manner of this is very similar to Mr. Tennyson's composition, and although the measure is a little different, these verses might be interpolated in the modern song without in the least impairing its harmony, or affecting its verisi militude. The most distinguished names in the list of the natural poets of the present century are undoubtedly Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and Mr. Tennyson. Of the two former it may be said in passing that they have probably done more than anybody else to foster the modern idea of nature, and the love of wild and picturesque scenery. Our business, however, is more particularly with Mr. Tennyson, and with the evidences of botanical knowledge to be found in his works, that part of botany at least relating to trees. These allusions, we apprehend, are more numerous, and show more insight, and acquaintance with the forms, and processes, and changes characteris tic of the inhabitants of the forest than those of any other modern author. His verse in this respect differs from other descriptive poetry chiefly in this, that his notices are not general appellations or similitudes applicable equally to any or all trees, but are specific, exact, and true only in the particular case. Thomson, for example, in the "Seasons," is, in general, curiously vague in his descriptions. He generalizes constantly, and presents his readers with broad effects sketched en masse, instead of individual details. Such phrases as "sylvan glades," "vocal groves," "umbrageous shades," and the like, frequently occur, doing duty in place of more minute representations. Mr. Tennyson, on the other hand, and Sir Walter and Wordsworth may also be included, pursues. exactly the contrary method. His descriptions are, nearly always, pictures of particular places instead don. And, as poetry, these casual, accidental bits of descriptive writing are infinitely more effective than any amount of versified disquisition of the Darwin sort, on the processes of vegetation. Slight, too, though in many cases they are, they indicate a deep appreciation of the results and tendencies of modern science. In what remains of this paper it is proposed, a little in detail, to adduce evidence from Mr. Tennyson's poems in support of the views we have expressed. It will not be necessary to go over the whole field, and we shall therefore select a few of the more important trees, and see to what extent his notices of them are corroborative of these preliminary remarks. The ash will be the first example, and the reference in the lines quoted below is to the proverbial lateness of this tree in developing its foliage. It forms part of the Prince's song in the "Princess; " |