In one of our battles in Calabria, a bagpiper of the 78th Highland
regiment, when the light infantry charged the French, posted himself on
the right, and remained in his solitary situation during the whole of
the battle, encouraging the men with a famous Highland charging tune;
and actually upon the retreat and complete rout of the French changed it
to another, equally celebrated in Scotland, upon the retreat of and
victory over an enemy. His next-hand neighbour guarded him so well that
he escaped unhurt. This was the spirit of the "Last Minstrel," who
infused courage among his countrymen, by possessing it in so animated a
degree, and in so venerable a character.

MINUTE WRITING.

The Iliad of Homer in a nutshell, which Pliny says that Cicero once saw,
it is pretended might have been a fact, however to some it may appear
impossible. AElian notices an artist who wrote a distich in letters of
gold, which he enclosed in the rind of a grain of corn.

Antiquity and modern times record many such penmen, whose glory
consisted in writing in so small a hand that the writing could not be
legible to the naked eye. Menage mentions, he saw whole sentences which
were not perceptible to the eye without the microscope; pictures and
portraits which appeared at first to be lines and scratches thrown down
at random; one formed the face of the Dauphiness with the most correct
resemblance. He read an Italian poem, in praise of this princess,
containing some thousand verses, written by an officer, in a space of a
foot and a half. This species of curious idleness has not been lost in
our own country, where this minute writing has equalled any on record.
Peter Bales, a celebrated caligrapher in the reign of Elizabeth,
astonished the eyes of beholders by showing them what they could not
see; for in the Harleian MSS. 530, we have a narrative of "a rare piece
of work brought to pass by Peter Bales, an Englishman, and a clerk of
the chancery;" it seems by the description to have been the whole Bible
"in an English walnut no bigger than a hen's egg. The nut holdeth the
book: there are as many leaves in his little book as the great Bible,
and he hath written as much in one of his little leaves as a great leaf
of the Bible." We are told that this wonderfully unreadable copy of the
Bible was "seen by many thousands." There is a drawing of the head of
Charles I. in the library of St. John's College, at Oxford, wholly
composed of minute writ