The peaceful banner of the cross unfurled,
That those who dwell beneath its holy shade,
Taught by its vision, may exemplify

What true obedience to such rule is paid,
And lead all nations with their own to vie
In due submission to the powers that be,
And to repay the boons their kings afford.
But, oh, thou island mistress of the sea!
Let not that noble land—that Christian lord,
Bereave thy brow of one invalued gem,
Whose brilliancy has caused thy fair renown.

Guard well possession of that diadem

Which raised thee high, whose loss would cast thee down!

Know'st thou not, oh my country! what its name?
Such is thy PROTESTANT, most holy creed ;
Such is thy truly great-thy glorious name!
To shield and shelter in the hour of need,
Those who in every clime of foreign land
Hold the "like precious faith" thy sons profess,
And suffer 'neath proud Rome's revengeful hand,
If they One only Saviour dare confess!

Such is the honoured badge thou long hast worn,
Thou stronghold of that Bible, whose pure light,
From ages hid, by darkness over borne,

Flooded thy land, and made thy pathway bright;
Since then three hundred years have rolled away
And mingled with the past eternity:

Yet Rome still longs to grasp the unwary prey,
And plots that we may rest no longer free.

Oh, fair Victoria! like the Prussian king,
Well mayst thou prize such light, and ever shield

Our country from those toils the man of sin
Weaves with such wily art, to make us yield
Our Christian citadel to Papal foe.

England, lead forward! Prussia onward move!
Join,-join your ranks, and bid your children know
Your's is the holy rivalry of love.

With sacred weapons fight the cause of God,
Seek to be foremost in the peaceful strife,

And conquering, through the cross of Christ your Lord,
Spread far the gospel of eternal life :

Let two great nations which adore the truth
Advance the dawn of its millennial sway,
Led on by England's monarch in her youth,
And Prussia's sovereign in his manhood's day.

E.

THE CHURCHYARD OF BALQUIDDER.

MY DEAR N

I HAVE been lately spending a week with a friend in the Highlands, who is residing for a time in the parish of Balquidder, near Callendar, the burial-place of Rob Roy McGregor. The house is pleasantly situated upon the borders of Loch Voil, and is well sheltered by wood, through which you obtain glimpses of the water and the hills that course its margin. Though the lake is by no means one of the largest in Scotland, it claims notice, from the beauty of the surrounding scenery, the retired character of the locality, and that kind of interest which attaches to scenes associated with one whose story is in every body's mouth, which interest, if, in this instance, it deserves not the name of classical or historical, is yet akin to both.

At the upper end of the lake is the small village of Balquidder, consisting of a few huts, with the usual appendages of turf-stacks and sheds. One of these is pointed out as having been the dwelling-place of Rob Roy's mother, and another, of his son. He himself lived at the other end of the lake. A garden of cabbages is shewn where he fought his last fight, in which, being arrested, he flung his sword into the lake, where it still lies at the service of any virtuoso who has a mind to fish it up. A rustic bridge over the course of a mountain-torrent leads to the village;

and upon a gentle eminence above, is the little church, destitute, indeed, of the ecclesiastical accompaniments of tower or steeple, but forming, with its neat belfry, no unsightly object. To the right is the glebe-house, prettily situated amid a few trees under a precipitous rock, which forms a huge wall, fringed with wood, on the face of the hill behind. The churchyard is wild and uninviting; an unclosed gap in the wall serving for entrance; the graves heaped up without care, disposed without order, and indicated by stones of all shapes and characters, most of them in the rough state in which they were brought from the hills. Here were buried the mortal remains of Rob Roy. Over the grave is a rude stone with as rude a carving, representing, beside the broad-sword and shears, which abound upon the tombs, the figure of the freebooter himself, with dogs, but without an inscription. On his right and left lie two of his sons, the grave of the one marked by a stone with a broad-sword rudely carved upon it; that of the other by one of greater pretensions, with an inscription, and the family coat and motto, Even do, and spare not.

Having examined these tombs, we asked the schoolmaster of the village, an intelligent man, if there were any in the place with inscriptions deserving notice: he said, there was one which he had with difficulty decyphered some time ago, which, if we could read, he thought would repay the trouble. He then shewed us a slab partially covered with moss and earth, and, having cleared it away, we proceeded to make out the inscription. As, with no little pains, we brought it forth word by word, we were much struck with its point and elegance, the more so from the date, 1680,

and the rude character of the locality. It is for the sake of transmitting you this, that I have scribbled these lines. Certainly I should not have taken the trouble merely to draw your attention to the history of a robber, whose memory, the very reverse of that of the just which is blessed, serves only to confuse the minds of his descendants, as to their notions of right and wrong. So high is the estimation in which Rob's character is held in Balquidder, that his clansmen are always inclined to defend his acts of rapine and plunder as justifiable.

Sir Walter Scott, in some place, speaks of a Mr. Robert Kirk, who was the minister of Balquidder, and afterwards moved to Aberfoil, where he died. It seems that this Mr. Kirk, whose name was John, not Robert, lost his wife at the early age of 25 years; she was buried in Balquidder church-yard, and this stone, the inscription of which we had been decyphering, covered her remains. There can be no doubt who wrote it. It is inscribed to Isabella, spouse of Mr. John Kirk, Minister, who died Dec. 25, 1680.

'Stones weep, though eyes were dry;

Choicest flowers soonest die;

Their sun oft sets at noon,

Whose fruit is ripe in June;

Then tears of joy be thine,
Since earth must soon resign

To heaven what is divine.

Nasci est ægrotare vivere est sæpe mori, et mori est vivere.'

We seemed now to have got to the close of the inscription, and yet the lower part of the stone appeared still a little sunk in the earth. We therefore cut away the grass, when the words appeared:

'Love and live!'

J. A. L.