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any resistance, and having levied a contribution on Glasgow, he called a Parliament to meet in that town in the name of the King. But his dazzling success rendered only more conspicuous the fatal defects in the system of warfare he was pursuing. He had formed no body of spearmen on whom he could depend to stand the charge of effective horse, and victory was, as at first, the signal for the Highlanders to quit the ranks and return to their hills. The victory of Kilsyth had been fertile in plunder, and the season of harvest was now near; both circumstances tended to thin the following of Montrcse. While King Charles was hoping that his irresistible Lieutenant would lead an army across the border to his deliverance, and sending Sir Robert Spottiswood with a new commission and new orders, the Royal army dwindled away, and Montrose found himself at the head of no larger a body of troops than had at first gathered round him in the wilds of Athol. It may, as was formerly said, have been impossible for him to change the habits of the Highlanders, but he ought to have been alive to the extreme peril to which those habits exposed him in the low country. He knew that the Scottish army in England was well supplied with cavalry. A perfectly organized system of intelligence, keeping him informed as to the state of the country within twenty miles of his camp, especially in the direction of England, was to him an absolute condition of existence. He had a sufficient force of cavalry to enable him to organize such a system, and this essential part of the duty of a commander was well understood in that age. Oliver Cromwell, had he been in the place of Montrose, would have known within a few hours everything that took place in the Scottish camp in England. Montrose's first thought, after the battle of Kilsyth, ought to have been," Argyle and his friends are beaten in Scotland, and infuriated beyond all bounds; their next thought will be to strike a blow from England." How often have great men fallen by oversights which small men would not have committed! "O negligence, fit for a fool to fall by!" says Shakespeare's Wolsey; and even Shakespeare, may have known by experience the bitterness of Wolsey's pang. Montrose crept gradually southward with his diminished army, and in the second week of September was stationed

at Selkirk, his cavalry being quartered with himself in the town, while the infantry occupied an elevated plateau called Philiphaugh, on the north. Between Philiphaugh and Selkirk flows the Ettrick; the infantry were on the left bank, the cavalry on the right. This disposition of the Royal forces has been pronounced faulty, but we must recollect that in the first half of September Scottish rivers are generally low, and that, if the Ettrick could be easily forded, a few minutes' trot would bring cavalry lying in Selkirk upon the plain of Philiphaugh. On the night between the 12th and 13th of September, 1645, General David Leslie, next to Montrose the most energetic and capable commander contributed by Scotland to the civil war, having by a swift march from Newcastle along the East Coast and then southward from Edinburgh, reached the vicinity, placed his men, principally horse, and numbering five or six thousand, in and about Melrose. The Royalists were but four miles away, and we realize the intense hatred with which they were regarded in the district when we learn that not a whisper of the presence of Leslie's army reached the Royal camp. Mr. Napier tells us that more than once in the night the scouts came in and reported all safe. Commanding only a few hundred cavalry, and a mere skeleton of his Highland host, Montrose, had he been apprized of Leslie's approach, would doubtless have attempted to escape by one of his extraordinary marches. Had his army been as large as before the battle of Kilsyth, he might, in spite of his surprise, have defeated Leslie; for the Highlanders, nimble as leopards, were formidable to cavalry, and his own inventiveness and dexterity in battle might have wrought one of the miracles which are possible to genius. But with his diminished force he had no chance. Leslie's horsemen, emerging from the white mist of a September morning, crashed in upon both his wings at once. Montrose was immediately in the field and disputed the matter for some time, but his little army was cut to pieces. At the head of about thirty troopers, he made good his retreat to the Highlands.

Before the battle of Kilsyth the Royal cause in England had been hopelessly lost. Royalism, pure and simple, as professed by the English Cavaliers, perished on the field of Naseby. Had Montrose succeeded, after Kilsyth, in penetrating

into England, he would have found the fragments of Charles's army too shattered to reunite, and would have encountered a force of English and Scots in the Parliamentary interest numbering at least fifty thousand men. After uselessly protracting hostilities for some time in the Highlands, he was commanded by the King to lay down his arms. He retired in disguise to Norway, and thence proceeded to join Prince Charles who, from various stations on the Continent, was watching the course of events in England.

Until the death of the King, Argyle and his party in Scotland maintained their alliance with the English Puritan leaders. Shortly before that event, Cromwell, having destroyed Hamilton's army, marched to Edinburgh, and was received with many honors and civilities." The death of the King at last overcame the profound reluctance of Argyle to quarrel with the English Parliament. Negotiations commenced between the Estates of Scotland and Charles II. Montrose, feeling that Montrose, feeling that there could be no real reconciliation between him and Argyle, and conscious of an invincible repugnance to the hollowness of a league between Charles II. and the austerely moral Covenanters, advised the young King to attempt no arrangement with the latter. Charles, perfectly false and perfectly heartless, gave Montrose a commission to land in Scotland in arms, but did not discontinue negotiations with his antagonist. A few hundred German mercenaries, a body of unwarlike fishermen whom he forced to join his standard in Orkney, and a considerable party of Royalist officers, among them his old opponent Colonel Urry, constituted the force with which Montrose made a descent upon Scotland in the spring of 1650. He was suddenly attacked, on the borders of Ross-shire, by Colonel Strahan, a Covenanter of the straitest sect. The Germans surrendered; the Orkney fishermen made little resistance; the Scottish companies of Montrose were overpowered.

Soon after the battle, he was taken and led in triumph to Edinburgh. The Estates of Scotland, avoiding question as to the legality of the expedition in which, under commission of that Charless II. whose title they were then undertaking to vindicate, he had been last engaged, treated him as already condemned to die under sentence of attainder passed against him

whilst ravaging the territory of Argyle in 1644.

His bearing in presence of the Parliament was as calmly dauntless as on the battlefield in the moment of victory. He exulted in his loyalty. It had indeed been with him a pure and lofty feeling, and by rare good fortune he never knew Charles I. well enough to be disenchanted. "I never had passion on earth," he wrote to Charless II., "so great as that to do the king your father service." He asserted the faithfulness of his adherence to the National Covenant, and avowed that he had neither taken nor approved of the Solemn League and Covenant. He indignantly denied that he had countenanced acts of military violence. "He had never spilt the blood of a prisoner, even in retaliation of the cold-blooded murder of his officers and friends-nay, he had spared the lives of thousands in the very shock of battle."

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His sentence was that he should be hanged on a gallows thirty feet high, his head fixed upon the tolbooth of Edinburgh, his limbs placed over the gates of four Scottish towns. On the night before his execution he wrote with a diamond upon the window of his prison those well-known lines which, in their pathetic dignity, attest, if nothing else, a composure of feeling, a serenity of intellectual consciousness, a perfect self-possession, remarkable in the immediate nearness of a cruel death. "Let them bestow on every airt* a limb, Then open all my veins that I may swim To thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake; Then place my parboiled head upon a stake; Scatter my ashes, strew them in the air: Lord! since thou knowest where all those atoms are,

I'm hopeful thou'lt recover once my dust, And confident thou'lt raise me with the just."

The majesty of his demeanor, both while being drawn into Edinburgh on a cart, and as he walked in scarlet cloak trimmed with gold lace to the place of execution, so impressed the multitude, that not a taunt was uttered, and many an eye was wet. All that is told of him when in prison tends to exalt our conception of his character. When the clergy remind him that he has been excommunicated, and urge him to repent in order that the Church may remove her censures, he answers that the thought of his excommunication causes

*Point of the compass.

him pain, and that he would gladly have it removed by confessing his sins as a man, but that he has nothing to repent of in his conduct to his king and his country. He can more sharply check the officiousness of the non-professional zealot. Johnston of Warriston finds him, the day before his death, combing out his beautiful locks of hair, and murmurs some suggestion that the hour is too solemn for such work. "I will arrange my head as I please today while it is still my own," answers

Montrose; "to-morrow it will be yours, and you may deal with it as you list.' He is not a Pagan, proud and self-centred ; but neither is he quite a Puritan. He rises into a more genial atmosphere, he approaches a higher Christian type, than those of his age. He does not crouch before his Maker; he stands erect; not arrogantly, not in mean terror and abject self-depreciation, but in reverent affection and trust: as a man ought to stand.Contemporary Review.

IN THE VINEYARDS OF TOURAINE.

THE trials of tourists wandering from one uncomfortable hotel to another, and experiencing the vicissitudes of wind and weather which all traveliers are heir to, and the apparently equal trials of those who expose themselves to ridicule by quietly remaining in their houses, were eloquently put before us when the last holiday season set in. It is satisfactory to reflect that a third course is still open, and that it is possible to find the golden mean between the two extremes of perpetual motion and "masterly inactivity." Instead of running restlessly to and fro from picture galleries in one town to churches and palaces in another, from canals in Holland to sunrises at the top of the Righi, why not come quietly to anchor at once in some pleasant spot combining beauty of landscape with an agreeable climate, a fresh scene with an entirely new entourage, and thus spend the yearly holiday; for to have a holiday in autumn nowa-days is as much a necessary of life to a grown man as vacations at Christmas and mid-summer were in his boyhood.

To go abroad unhampered by the incubus of English servants, to stay in one place for a couple of months and there live the life of the country, waited on by the servants of the country, and associating exclusively with its people, is to put yourself in the way of obtaining an accurate knowledge of both country and people to be had in no other manner, whilst, as a hygienic proceeding, the cheerful villa in which these weeks or months may be passed will probably be found more satisfactory than a dismal lodging-house at a second-rate watering place, where the tenant is not unlikely to be favored with the reversion of a scarlet or typhus fever.

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVIII, No. 4

We have such a villa in our own mind close to the beautiful city of Tours, a little French country-house just the size for comfort, looking down over the luxuriant meadows and valley of the Chosille, a situation so healthy that it is known as the sanitarium of Tours, unvisited even by cholera when that frightful scourge was an epidemic elsewhere. The house is built in the style of architecture prevalent in France more than a century ago, and stands in the midst of fruitful vineyards, the soil being so dry that five minutes after a torrent of rain the garden walks retain no traces of it. The complete absence of damp can be recognised by the present condition of a pictorial paper on the walls of the drawing-room-which paper was put on more than a hundred years ago, and not a morsel of it has peeled off.

In this retreat we have ourselves passed more than one delightful season, and if we could persuade any of our readers to follow our example and spend next autumn among the vineyards of Touraine, we are confident they would acknowledge themselves our debtors for the introduction.

Most civilized countries, whether in ancient or modern times, have possessed their own particular Elysian fields, the favorite spot where it is the ambition of the inhabitants at some period of their lives to have a niche wherein to build their Now, in the imagination of every Frenchman terrestrial paradise is the Touraine; "le jardin de la France" is his Eden, and if even a Parisian indulges in a dream of country life it is always in Touraine that his château en Espagne is reared. An outsider cannot comprehend the magic charm which attaches the French so strongly to this province. As far as scenery is

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concerned prettier landscapes are to be found in France, and although a great wine country, better wine is made on the Garonne than on the Loire, whilst to chance visitors, who cannot judge of the weather all the year round, the climate appears almost tropical from the sudden and violent changes from heat to cold, sun to storm-and such storms occasionally as to compare with nothing short of an Indian monsoon. All this is true, and still there hangs a charm over the Touraine which in our opinion entitles it to the high place it holds in the affections of Frenchmen.

As regards climate, though the temperature is unequal, both heat and cold are less severe than in the southern or more northern provinces. An average winter would commence towards the middle of November, when for three weeks or a month the glass might perhaps fall lower than in the midland counties of England during any part of the winter; but these bad weeks over, a month of mild, damp weather ensues, and then February bursts upon the scene clothed in all the beauty of spring, the air soft and balmy, and the weather sufficiently warm to admit of sitting in the open air for hours together. The great test of climate is vegetation, and not only does the pomegranate thrive, but even the olive grows on many of the hill sides.

A February day in Touraine is in temperature exactly like the cold weather in Upper India, the mornings being sharp; but the sun well up, the external warmth admitting of fires being dispensed with till sunset. It must be confessed that a very mauvais quart d'heure has to be endured among the March winds, but April is usually absolutely hot, whilst in ordinary years May is so delicious that all the poetry exhausted upon that month from Chaucer to our own time might have had its inspiration in Touraine. Then for the fruit. Pomona must have deserted for a while her enclosure to bestow undivided attention to the Garden of France, as nowhere else that we are acquainted with is there such a shower of summer fruit.

This part of France is unusually rich in historical remains and associations. During the seventh and eighth centuries it was almost exclusively governed by its bishops, receiving thus early an ecclesiastical bias, the traces of which still survive.

The train of kings who held their court there have left historical monuments of every kind of their presence, and these are for the most part well preserved. It was in the cathedral of Tours that Richard Coeur de Lion received the insignia of a crusader; Touraine was the dowry of Mary Stuart; at Chénonceaux the bedroom of Catherine de Medici is almost intact, and the wonderful picture gallery she threw over Diane de Poitier's bridge still forms one of the most striking points of the castle. After many changes of fortune the Château de Chénonceaux has passed into the hands of Madame Pelouse, the widow of a celebrated maker of dyes, particularly the Magenta dye, and a man of considerable wealth. Madame Pelouse and her brother, Mr. Wilson, a naturalized Frenchman, and one of the deputies of the National Assembly, have made it their home, and restored it with the most minute care, at enormous expense, and with such consummate judgment and taste that Chénonceaux embodies the most faithful and interesting record of the past extant, whether in stone or parchment.

Such are a few out of the many historical souvenirs of Touraine. To speak of them all would be the work of a volume, of which Amboise alone would occupy a considerable part. It was at Amboise that the Italian artists brought back by Charles VIII. after his ill-advised Italian expedition established themselves; their establishment here, and the impetus they gave to art, being at all events one solid result of an enterprise against which the king's most prudent advisers had protested, and whose forebodings were justified by the event. Close to Amboise Leonardo da Vinci breathed his last in the arms of Francis I., at a place called ClosLucé. The specimens of architecture of the fifteenth century, still to be seen at Clos-Lucé, and even the old paintings in what was once the chapel, are worth a visit, irrespective of the interest otherwise attaching to the " Manoir." But innumerable traditions and memories cling to Amboise, the residence of so many of the kings of France. In one of the massive turrets of the castle the Emperors Charles V. and Francis I. both nearly came to an untimely end; and it was against one of the doors inside the building that Francis II. struck his head so violently that he did not survive the injury, an injury fraught

with momentous consequences to France, Scotland, and Europe itself, delivering as it did the government of France for two successive reigns into the unprincipled hands of Catherine de Medici. The beautiful gardens of the château were the favorite pleasure grounds of Charles VIII., where both he and Louis XII. spent hours together planning with Anne of Bretagne (the "chère Anne" of the latter), the suites of apartments where so many brilliant entertainments were destined to take place. Coming down to our own time, it was within the walls of the Castle of Amboise that Abd-el-Kader and all his followers were confined, and in the small Mussulman cemetery crowded with graves there are melancholy proofs of the effects of the climate, temperate as it is, on these Eastern constitutions.

Any mention of the grand recollections which belong to Touraine, however incomplete, should still include the name of Marmoutier, the ancient abbey founded in the fourth century by the celebrated St. Martin of Tours, and which was the chief of all the monasteries in France, more ancient, indeed, than the monarchy itself the first dynasty dating only from the fifth century. This fact that it was considered the greatest of the convents-is handed down to us in the name it bore of Majus Monasterium, gradually corrupted into Marie-Moutier, and afterwards Marmoutier. St. Martin has been styled the holiest of all the saints of the Gallican Church, and his fame has travelled far beyond the province of which he is the patron and most revered saint.

Dean Stanley, in his " Historical Memorials of Canterbury," tells us that "the venerable church of St. Martin is a memorial of the recollections which Queen Bertha, the wife of Ethelbert, King of Kent, cherished of her native country, Saint Martin of Tours being the most famous of all the Christian saints of whom she had heard before she came to England." The banner of St. Martin, made of a piece of the old blue cloak of the saint, was the Royal Banner of France until the reign of Louis le Gros, who abandoned it and adopted the Oriflamme in its place. Marmoutier is about three miles out of Tours, and commands a magnificent view, extending over the river and the whole valley of the Loire, flanked by the cathedral towers. The property has been pur

chased by the order of the Sacré Coeur, a congregation of cloistered nuns, whose special function is the education of girls; whose houses have the reputation of being the best girls' schools in France.

The number of English and Americans wintering in Tours has sensibly diminished within the last few years. A quarter of a century ago, crowds of strangers from all parts, even as far north as Russia, flocked to Touraine, which enjoyed a considerable reputation as a sanitarium for consumptive patients. Of these strangers by far the greater proportion were English; and how large the influx of our own countrymen must have been can be judged by the fact that the services of the Church of England were performed in two chapels simultaneously. In Balzac's little story of “La Grenadière," a small house still pointed out as the scene of his sketch, on the banks of the Loire, in the Commune of St. Cyr, he speaks of the English who, in his younger days, "had fallen like a swarm of grasshoppers upon Touraine, so that there were no longer houses enough to accommodate them; and little châlets, intended only for the convenience of vineyard proprietors during the vintage, had to be fitted up as campagnes, to be let for the summer season." Balzac, whose love for his native provinces finds its expression in the most exquisite descriptions of its varied charms, declares that the little corner which contains the Grenadière is a small Touraine in itself, where all the beauties of the province are represented in miniature. He says the English would pay 1000 francs for the privilege of inhabiting it during the six summer months (for it is worth noticing that, whereas at that time the English seem to have considered Touraine an agreeable summer retreat, the few who find their way there now invariably go for the winter). But Balzac warns his readers that it is vain to hope to become the possessor of La Grenadière at any price. "La Grenadiere will never be sold. In 1690 it was bought, and afterwards regretfully parted with for 40,000 francs, like some favorite horse abandoned to its fate by the Arab of the desert; it has, however, always remained in the same family, of which it is the pride and heirloom. From the terraces of La Grenadière the eye reaches across three separate valleys, and embraces the Cathedral of Tours, whose graceful towers are sus

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