rfax
and Manchester, enabled the Parliamentary forces to besiege York, and to
fight the desperate action of Long-Marston Moor, in which Prince Rupert
and the Marquis of Newcastle were defeated. The Scottish auxiliaries,
indeed, had less of the glory of this victory than their countrymen
could desire. David Leslie, with their cavalry, fought bravely, and to
them, as well as to Cromwell's brigade of Independents, the honour of
the day belonged; but the old Earl of Leven, the covenanting general,
was driven out of the field by the impetuous charge of Prince Rupert,
and was thirty miles distant, in full flight towards Scotland, when he
was overtaken by the news that his party had gained a complete victory.

The absence of these auxiliary troops, upon this crusade for the
establishment of Presbyterianism in England, had considerably diminished
the power of the Convention of Estates in Scotland, and had given rise
to those agitations among the anti-covenanters, which we have noticed at
the beginning of this chapter.

CHAPTER II.

His mother could for him as cradle set
Her husband's rusty iron corselet;
Whose jangling sound could hush her babe to rest,
That never plain'd of his uneasy nest;
Then did he dream of dreary wars at hand,
And woke, and fought, and won, ere he could stand.--HALL'S SATIRES

It was towards the close of a summer's evening, during the anxious
period which we have commemorated, that a young gentleman of quality,
well mounted and armed, and accompanied by two servants, one of whom led
a sumpter horse, rode slowly up one of those steep passes, by which the
Highlands are accessible from the Lowlands of Perthshire. [The beautiful
pass of Leny, near Callander, in Monteith, would, in some respects,
answer this description.] Their course had lain for some time along the
banks of a lake, whose deep waters reflected the crimson beams of the
western sun. The broken path which they pursued with some difficulty,
was in some places shaded by ancient birches and oak-trees, and in
others overhung by fragments of huge rock. Elsewhere, the hill, which
formed the northern side of this beautiful sheet of water, arose in
steep, but less precipitous acclivity, and was arrayed in heath of the
darkest purple. In the present times, a scene so romantic would have
been judged to possess the highest charms for the traveller; but
those who journey in days of doubt and dread, pay little attention