ted; and the crafty Lovat now adapted his conversation to
his own secret ends. He expatiated to the Highlanders, always greedy of
fame, and vain beyond all parallel of their country, upon the victories
of Montrose on the fields of Killicrankie and Cromdale.

"Such a sword and target," he would say to a listener, "your honest
grandfather wore that day, and with it he forced his way through a
hundred men. Well did I know him; he was my great friend, and an honest
man. Few are like him now-a-days;--you resemble him pretty much."

Then he began to interpret prophecies and dreams, and to relate to his
superstitious listeners the dreams their fathers had before the battle,
in which they fought. He would trace genealogies as far back as the
clansmen pleased, and show their connection with their chieftains. They
were all his "cousins and friends;" for he knew every person that had
lived in the country for years.

Then he spoke of the superiority of the broad-sword and target over the
gun and the bayonet; he sneered at the weakness of an army, after so
many years of peace, commanded by boys; he boasted of the valour of the
Scots in Sweden and France; he even unriddled the prophecies of Bede and
of Merlin. By these methods he prepared the minds of those over whom he
ruled for the Rebellion; but in the event, as it has been truly said,
"the thread of his policy was spun so fine that at last it failed in the
maker's hand."[231]

The shrewdness of Lovat's judgment might indeed be called in question,
when he decided to risk the undisturbed possession of his Highland
property for a dukedom and prospect. But there were many persons of rank
and influence who believed, with Prince Charles Edward, that "the
Hanoverian yoke was severely felt in England, and that now was the time
to shake it off." "The intruders of the family of Hanover," observes a
strenuous Jacobite,[232] "conscious of the lameness of their title and
the precariousness of their tenure, seem to have had nothing in view but
increasing their power, and gratifying their insatiable avarice: by the
former, they proposed to get above the caprice of the people; and by the
latter, they made sure of something, happen what would." "Abundance of
the Tories," he further remarks, "had still a warm side for the family
of Stuart; and as for the old stanch Whigs, their attachment and
aversion to families had no other spring but their love of liberty,
which they saw expiring with the fa