g
up to a small station house. Nothing to be seen there but broad, silent
meadows, through which the burn wimples its way. Here was the very
Marathon of Scotland. I suppose we know more about it from the "Scots
wha ha' wi' Wallace bled," than we do from history; yet the real scene,
as narrated by the historian, has a moral grandeur in it.

The chronicler tells us, that when on this occasion the Scots formed
their line of battle, and a venerable abbot passed along, holding up the
cross before them, the whole army fell upon their knees.

"These Scots will not fight," said Edward, who was reconnoitring at a
distance. "See! they are all on their knees now to beg for mercy."

"They kneel," said a lord who stood by, "but it is to God alone; trust
me, those men will win or die."

The bold lyric of Burns is but an inspired kind of version of the real
address which Bruce is said to have made to his followers; and whoever
reads it will see that its power lies not in appeal to brute force, but
to the highest elements of our nature, the love of justice, the sense of
honor, and to disinterestedness, self-sacrifice, courage unto death.

These things will live and form high and imperishable elements of our
nature, when mankind have learned to develop them in other spheres than
that of physical force. Burns's lyric, therefore, has in it an element
which may rouse the heart to noble endurance and devotion, even when the
world shall learn war no more.

We passed through the town of Stirling, whose castle, magnificently
seated on a rocky throne, looks right worthy to have been the seat of
Scotland's court, as it was for many years. It brought to our minds all
the last scenes of the Lady of the Lake, which are laid here with a
minuteness of local description and allusion characteristic of Scott.

According to our guide book, one might find there the visible
counterpart of every thing which he has woven into his beautiful
fiction--"the Lady's Rock, which rang to the applause of the multitude;"
"the Franciscan steeple, which pealed the merry festival;" "the sad and
fatal mound," apostrophized by Douglas,--

"That oft has heard the death-axe sound
As on the noblest of the land,
Fell the stern headsman's bloody hand;"--

the room in the castle, where "a Douglas by his sovereign bled;" and not
far off the ruins of Cambuskenneth Abbey. One could not but think of the
old days Scott has described.

"The castle gates were open f