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story, was so close and hot about that his horse was killed under him, and his groom by his side. This address was an honour Ned was not a little fond of, and promised to do his best;" and thus began the most wonderful tale of adventure, privation, absolute trust, and unequalled fidelity that our records or those of any country have ever known.

The little party seems at this time to have consisted of two of the Irish gentlemen whom Charles had brought with him, Lord Elcho, and an aide-de-camp called Macleod. For several days they wandered sadly, but not entirely without hope, finding refuge in the houses of the lairds, most of whom, like themselves, were fugitives, if not slain on the fieldhouses where shelter was to be had, if nothing else. But this life was too luxurious to last. Some ten days after, having worked their way northward, the forlorn party took boat and set out for the isles. Here another heroic Highlander, Donald Macleod, of Gualtergill, in Skye, came to the aid of the little company. He was their guide by sea as Burke was by land. His clan was one of those which had held aloof; his chief was (in words at least) an active enemy of Charles; and he himself was an old man, beyond the impulses of youth. But all these deterring influences did not hold him back. He met the Prince "in a wood all alone," and his heart swelled within him. “You see, Donald, I am in distress," said the Chevalier, with his old grace; "I throw myself into your bosom: I know you are an honest man, and fit to be trusted." "When Donald was giving me this part of his narrative,” says Bishop Forbes, "he grat sore; the tears came running down his cheeks, and he said, Wha deil could help greeting when speaking on sic a sad subject?"

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that befalls, uttering no plaint and refusing no human sympathy, that appears before us. He makes merry, like the valiant gentleman he was, over his privations. When no better fare is to be had, he swallows the Highland drammock, oatmeal mixed with wateron this occasion sea-water- and calls it "no bad food." Nothing daunted him in this last chapter of his wondrous adventures. When his poor followers were sinking under fatigue and want, he sang them songs to keep up their hearts sometimes their native Gaelic songs-sometimes, doubtless, God help him! the soft Italian strains he had sung in the Palazzo Muti, with gaping English spectators looking on, and a hundred impatient ignorant hopes in his heart. Never once do we find him flagging from his wonderful patience. From wild isle to isle, from tempest to tempest, now almost within prick of the bayonets sent out against him, now tossed on waves that threatened every moment to swallow his poor boat, a ruined, destitute, forsaken wanderer, his high spirit never failed him. A price of £30,000 was set upon his head, and every island and bay swarmed with soldiers eager to win that reward. Yet the Prince went fearless from cabin to cabin, from guide to guide, trusting everybody, and never trusting in vain. The extraordinary fidelity of the crowd of lowly mountaineers, who might have betrayed him, has been celebrated to the echo; never was there a more wonderful instance of popular honour and devotion. But the man who trusted so fully should not go without his share of honour. He was afraid of no man, chief, vassal, or robber; he threw himself upon them with a generous confidence. Perhaps a forlorn hope that he might yet find himself at bay and sell his life dearly, may have crossed the mind of No eloquence can surpass these words. Charles. But whatever it might be that With this faithful pilot at the helm, the for- buoyed him up, the fact is clear, and it is a lorn party coasted the barren isles, putting noble one, that never word or murmur in now and then for rest or food, encounter-broke from him amid all his hardships. ing all the storms of that wild sea, drenched His playful talk, his jests, the songs he sung with its frequent rain, sometimes hungry, to his poor followers, the smiling, patient always weary, outcasts of the land and sea. Yet, strange to tell, in these miserable wanderings, the reader, with a lump in his throat, finds again the gallant young Chevalier of Glenfinnan and Holyrood. He of We cannot linger even on that romantic the retreat, petulant, complaining, reproach- episode of Flora Macdonald, which has ful, came to an end in the last catastrophe proved so attractive to all romancers. The which completed his ruin. In the toilsome brief bit of heroism has writ the name of the mountain-paths, in the huts he had to creep Highland girl on the immortal page of hisinto on hands and knees, in the boat storm-tory, higher than many that have taken a far tossed upon that melancholy sea, it is no greater place in the world's eye. Even at sullen fugitive, but a noble, cheerful, gal- this saddest strait of Charles's fortunes there lant soul, making the best of everything is that gleam of humour in the gloom which

front with which he met all his sorrows, form another picture as touching, as noble, and as melancholy as ever was made by man.

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makes the story more pathetic than any out- for a valiant spirit to yield and acknowledge cry of sorrow. When Flora and Lady Clan- itself beaten, or if some desperate hope of ranald went to dress the fugitive in the better things waxing stronger as his circumwoman's dress he was to wear, it was not stances grew worse, sustained him, it is imwithout some mirth and raillery passing possible to tell. He went through a hundred amid all their distress and perplexity, and a deaths, and survived them all. There are mixture of tears and smiles." When he even some indications that this terrible inparted with the brave girl, whom he called terval was bitter-sweet to him, full as it was with tender grace our lady, a momentary of friendship and devotion. And the obgleam again came upon the anxious faces of server feels that here he should have died. the spectators at the scandalised looks of Death would have made the story completeanother lady's-maid, who described Miss an epic beyond all competition of poetry; Flora's attendant as "the most impudent- but death under such circumstances must looking woman she had ever seen." They be a crown too splendid for the exigencies call you a Pretender," said good Kingsburgh, of common humanity. It does not come into whose hands he fell next, still in those when its presence would complete and pertroublesome garments which he did not fect the round of life. Charles lived as know how to manage, "but you are the Napoleon lived, as men live every day after worst of your trade I ever saw." In Kings- existence is over for them; surviving to burgh's homely house, while all the inhabi- add some vulgar or pitiful postscript to the tants were thrown into wild anxiety for his tragedy which might have been completed safety, he himself, glad as a wanderer only so grandly—a postscript more tragically incould be of the night's rest and comfort, structive, perhaps more painful and appalplayfully struggled with his host for a sec-ling, than that brief and solemn dropping of ond bowl of punch, and "laughed heartily" the curtain which follows a well-timed as he put on again his feminine gear. His death.

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long walks, now with one guide, now with And accordingly Charles survived. He another, are full of a simple human fellow-lived to get back to France, to reign the ship which goes straight to the heart; though hero of the moment in Paris until the time the reader at the same moment perceives came when France and England swore peace. with a thrill of pitiful emotion, in the snatches of rude conviviality which now and then break in upon the gravity of the record, one of the germs of ultimate ruin. Be it Malcolm Macleod, or Donald Roy, or any other of his many conductors, the heart of the wanderer unfolds itself to the humble friend by his side with a brotherly openness. When his anxious companion proposes with Highland brevity to shoot a suspicious wanderer who may chance to be a spy, the generous Prince at once interferes. "God forbid that any poor man should suffer for us, if we can but keep ourselves any way safe!" he cries. "He used to say that the fatigues and distresses he underwent signified nothing at all, because he was only a single person; but when he reflected upon the many brave fellows who suffered in his cause, that, he behoved to own, did strike him to the heart." When he dozed in his weariness, he would wake with a start, crying, "Oh, poor England! poor England!" yet the next moment, when his boatmen were struggling with the waves," to divert the men from thinking of the danger, he sung them a merry Highland Song." Thus cheerful, sorrowful, resolute, and all-enduring, Charles Stuart struggled through six months of such hardship as would have killed any ordinary man. If it was the mere instinct of life which kept him afloat, the mere necessity which makes it impossible

A year after his return from Scotland, such hopes as might have preserved a feverish life within him were crushed to the earth by the news that his young brother Henry had become an ecclesiastic, and received the Cardinal's hat an act which was nothing less than rolling the stone to the door of the sepulchre in which hope was buried. Nevertheless he went and came, to Spain, to the French Court, wherever he could get a hearing, to seek help for a new expedition, with a longing after England which is more touching than mere ambition. It is like the effort of the drowning man to snatch at a straw which might preserve him from the cold waters of death in which he felt himself sinking. But nobody held out a hand to the lost soul. One vain last struggle he made, not to be sent out of France, resisting foolishly, with something of the petulance he had shown on his retreat, the power against which he could not stand. But fate was against him in all his struggles. Against his will, in spite of a mad resistance, the deadly quiet of Rome sucked him back. Shipwrecked, weary of life, shamed by his knowledge of bitter things, consumed by vain longing for a real existence such as never could be his, the Chevalier sank as, God help us! so many sink, into the awful abyss. To forget his misery, to deaden the smart of his ruin, what matters what he did?

He lost, in shame, in oblivion, and painful | Cheshire' suggested the description of new decay, the phantasm which was life no longer, ground to those adventurous enough to try with other fantastic shadows-ill-chosen it. "The Wilds of Norfolk" are even wife, ill-governed household, faithless and more striking than those of Cheshire. In foolish favourites, a staring silly spectator- many parts of Great Britain there are spots crowd-flitting across the tragic mist. A resembling the latter; but Norfolk stands merciful tear springs to the eye, obscuring the fatal outlines of that last sad picture. There sank a man in wreck and ruin who was a noble Prince when the days were. If he fell into degradation at the last, he was once as gallant, as tender, as spotless a gentleman as ever breathed English air or trod Scottish heather. And when the spectator stands by Canova's marble in the great Basilica, in the fated land where, with all the Cæsars, Charles Edward has slept for nearly a century, it is not the silver trumpets in the choir, nor the matchless voices in their Agnus Dei, that haunt the ear in the silence; but some rude long-drawn pibroch note wailing over land and sea wailing to earth and heaven-for a lost cause, a perished house, and, most of all, for the darkening and shipwreck and ruin of a gracious and princely soul.

From Saint Paul's.

THE NORFOLK BROADS.

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alone in the character of its "Broad" scenery. Walter White, in his pleasant, gossiping volumes, has dwelt upon it enthusiastically; but it is necessary for a man to live in Norfolk thoroughly to enjoy the topography of the Broad district. Wilkie Collins, in his " Armadale," has given a slight but graphic sketch of one of these Broads, but his picture does not lie on the canvas long enough to be sufficiently enjoyed. In his own way, also, Charles Kingsley has adverted to many of the salient features of the Fens, in "Hereward." The district, however, I am about to describe lies more inland t that which this well-known writer has 1 down as the scene of his hero's exploits. One or two local works have recently directed attention towards the Broads, such as Stevenson's "Birds of Norfolk," and Lubbock's "Fauna" of the same county. In both these, and more particularly in the former, there are several good bits of word painting, sufficient to induce a man who is careless about the fashionable reputation of his holiday THERE are more localities in Great Brit-placed, to see the Ñolk Broads for himain unacquainted with the footsteps of the tourist than otherwise; for but few take a The "Broad Distric." proper is included walk from "John O'Groat's to the Land's within an almost equilateral triangle, having End." Here and there, sparsely scattered the sea-coast for its base, and its two sides through the length and breadth of the coun- drawn from Lowestoft to Norwich, and from try, are places of historical or traditional Norwich to Happisb. h. Within this area attraction, and on these the interest of the there are no fewer than fourteen large holiday-seeker is usually concentrated. We Broads, besides groups of smaller ones. Englishmen like to have these spots chosen The principal of these natural sheets of wafor us, and are conservative enough to es- ter are Surlingh Pay a Breydon, teem it as unfashionable to visit out-of-the- Filby, Ormesby, rossed the mind or way localities, as it would be for a Belgra- ton, Irstead, and it might be that vian to canter through Whitechapel. Gene- the exception of is clear, and it is a rally speaking, we require an old ruin, a parts of the cour word or murmur mineral spring, or a long track of dazzling flat. Formerly all his hardships. yellow sea-sand, as a peg to hang our visit der water that th the songs he sung upon. Whilst we are asking, "Where livers now flow me smiling, peat shall we go this autumn?" the usual tracks then are metalled. In most of travel, from Dan to Beersheba, are so of th er picture grass is pulled up. worn and beaten that we are forced to empty ells are found adhering cry, "It is all barren!" Holidays are spent to the roots. All the rivers have a very in going over old grounds which possess as low fall, and consequently meander about much interest for us as travelling through a the country before they find an outlet into railway cutting. True, some of our more the sea. The tidal wave enters their adventurous spirits have mapped out fresh mouths and comes up for a great distance. fields of recreative research, and the wilds' causing the fresh water to back up," so of Norway, Canada, and even Africa, are that ebb and flood tide are felt many miles not unacquainted with the ring of merry beyond where the water has ceased to be English voices. brackish. Were any of these geological changes of which we have heard so much to

The recent article on "The Wilds of

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occur here, and Norfolk to settle down a dozen feet or so, by far its greater portion would be submerged. Here and there, where the land lies lower than usual, the rivers all but stagnate. Their waters spread out into natural sheets or lakes, and are vernacularly termed "Broads." These are the "Wilds "I have chosen to treat upon. They resemble each other so much, that a description of the principal features of one would almost serve for the rest.

Notwithstanding the magnitude of the larger Broads, few of them have a greater average depth than eight feet, the majority being even shallower still. They are, for this very reason, exceedingly favourable to the growth of a luxuriant aquatic vegetation, so that a greater area is covered by sedge and bulrush than by water. These form a splendid cover for snipe and innumerable es of aquatic fowl. The Broads, ver, are not what they formerly were. The last hundred years have seen them greatly altered, the agriculturalist will say for the better, the sportsman will say for the worse. Anyhow, the marsh lands bordering them have, in many cases, been drained and turned to good purpose; whilst, since the introduction of the American weed, anacharis, into this country, turf has been forming at a more rapid rate, can the area of the Broads to be greatly roached upon. What will be the result in another century it is difficult to tell, but ineantime I recommend a visit to a locality where so much of the country exists now as it did when the Iceni inhabited it, an where a man may imagine he is no longer in England.

that any poor man if we can but keep ours he cries. "He used t

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The sportsman who has spent a fortnight in fishing and shooting over the Broads, ever afterwards at the There he finds waterdance, snipe of two or and distresses he underwk, mallard, and teal nd twittering at almost at all, because he was o but when he reflected · eir sedgy covert, or o it. Pike of a score who suffered pou be captured, arlordly did striked halfr's play. perch that Bream, roach, weariness, warm the waters, whilst for then hardly be equalled anywhere else in England. In this district it is rare, indeed, to hear anglers speak otherwise of their finny captures than by the stone!

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Not the least important item about these Broads is that they may be visited so cheaply. A flat-bottomed boat, roomy enough to hold a cart and horse, can be hired for a shilling a day. If the visitor care to have a companion who knows every square foot of

the country, he cannot do better than take one of the marshmen with him, who will be glad to accept half-a-crown for his day's services. These men are civil and exceedingly shrewd. They know every phase of local nature, and the habits of every fish, fowl, or four-legged animal in their neighbourhood. Marshmen are a distinct variety of the genus homo, for their general isolation from society, and their habit of spending so much time alone, make them naturally taciturn. They can, if they wish, wile away the hour by many a sporting or poaching adventure, told in the naïve, racy, Norfolk dialect. The visitor, however, must be careful about the way he strikes a fish or knocks over a snipe, for these men are exceedingly critical on these matters, and, although they may not say much, their supreme smile at any discomfiture is not calculated to improve an irritable temper.

I will suppose you, gentle reader, to be the sportsman aforesaid, that you have made all necessary arrangements for an excursion, and that you are about to start from the improvised pier near the marshman's cottage on your expedition. Gun and angling-tackle have been stowed in the boat, and your companion begins to pull through tall thickets of bulrush and sedge, the watery lanes extending through them for miles. Many a shot may be had by the way, for the marshman will row as noiselessly as if he had muffled oars. It may be that the cut on which you are floating has a sudden bend. If so, at the turn you will be certain to see half a dozen coot sporting and frolicking about. Quick! or all that is visible of them will be their white rumps, and a few bubbles indicating where they disappeared! Should you go in the early morning, or late in the evening, wild duck will be feeding. If you lie concealed a short time before, somewhere opposite to good bag. Proceeding on your pleasant the wind, the chances are that you make a voyage, many an uncommon object will arrest your attention. Here and there the stately heron stands like a statue. He rises lazily as you approach, and slowly flaps away over the tall bulrushes, to continue the process of digestion in a quieter spot. The peculiar cry of the bittern is heard from amid the reeds, although this bird, as well as the little grebe, is now becoming very rare. The kingfisher is still abundant, notwithstanding that his attractive colours cause him to be remorselessly shot down. He flits across the channel where you are rowing, his brilliant plumage glittering in the sunshine until he looks like anything but an honest English bird. The reed spar

rows twitter and chirrup, and hang to the sedges, where they are swayed to and fro by the wind. Here and there a black-headed bunting pretends lameness in order to lure you away from its nest. The length of the reedy cut loses its monotony by these various incidents, and presently you see it opening out into a magnificent sheet of water, dotted with swampy islands, and set in a framework of tall sedge and dwarfed alder or willow. The eye readily catches a glimpse of many species of aquatic fowl sporting on the surface, but, strong though the temptation may be to make towards them, the attempt would be perfectly useless.

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The boat glides over the Broad to some favourite spot known only to your companion. Here he thrusts down into the mud the two long poles he brought with him, and makes the boat fast to them. Below, in the clear water, you see immense shoals of fish, roach, perch, or bream. No sooner has the gut been wetted than "bob" goes the float, and your capture is separated from you only by the length of your rod and line. This, perhaps, is a part of the Broad which your friend has repeatedly" ground-baited," so that you may confidently reckon upon good sport. The great glory of the Norfolk Broads, however, is their pike. So common are they, that in some places I have known them to be sold for manuring the land! The usual plan of taking them is by "liggering" or trimming," and, destructive though this method is, they do not seem to be less abundant in consequence. There are several kinds of " liggers," but the following is the most common. - Be provided with good store of strong twine, and plenty of pike-hooks attached to gimp. Then take a bait, roach is the best, and pass the gimp by means of a needle just underneath the skin, until the hook is drawn quite close to the head of the fish, The end of the gimp is made fast to the cord. About a foot above the bait is a perforated bullet to sink the line, and three or four feet higher still, according to the depth, the cord is tied round a bunch of dry weeds, so as to represent a huge float. One end of the line is then made fast, and the entire apparatus is thrown into the water. No sooner has the roach returned to his native element than he makes desperate struggles to escape. This attracts the attention of some pike on the look-out for a feed, and, as this fish never scruples to take advantage of his prey being in a pickle, he snaps at it immediately. Down goes the impromptu float, and the pike, finding he is caught, gets to the end of his tether, and there quietly remains.

It is a usual plan for local sportsmen to go out purposely for a day's "liggering." In that case no angling is attempted. Two or three score liggers are put out in various parts of the Broad, and, by the time the last is laid down, it will be necessary to take the first up. The whole day is thus busily spent, and the general average of fish so captured will be at least one-half, if not twothirds of the number of lines laid out. As many as four-score pike have thus been taken in one day. Not unfrequently, when the eager sportsman rows up to a submerged float, and cautiously hauls in his line, his heart palpitates as he beholds a huge pike slowly rolling over and displaying his belly. Just as he draws him to the surface, a pair of enormous jaws are displayed, there is a sudden swirl of the tail, and the monster has disappeared! Instead of the capture reckoned upon, behold a young jack of a couple of pounds! With the ravenous hunger of his tribe, superadded to that of his juvenility, he had taken the roach, and got himself into trouble. Whilst replacing the original bait, he had been swallowed by a cannibal neighbour, out of whose capacious stomach he had been regretfully hauled. The intended capture, disappointed of a meal extracted in so strange a way, has hastened to the weedy depths below, there to meditate with pike-like taciturnity upon the strange experience which has just befallen him! Mr. Cholmondley will lift up holy eyes of horror at this unsportmanlike way of taking the pike. I am, however, but a humble chronicler of actual facts. Even he would find "spinning" at a discount, although on the very deepest Broads. The weeds are so numerous, and the water so shallow, that all his time would be occupied in disentangling the spoon or artificial bait, not from the gorge of the pike, but from the clutches of anacharis and potamageton. True, the navigable streams which usually run through the Broads are kept pretty clear from these entanglements, and here, in the months of September and October, some splendid, and what is more, legitimate sport may be had.

In eel fishing, I am not aware that the laws of angling have laid down any rule, except that famous one of Mrs. Glasse. In this department, at least, it is fair to take your fish any way you can, the only important point being that you do take it. The muddy bottoms of the Broads and the innumerable insect larvæ which feed upon the aquatic vegetation, surround the eel with every favourable circumstance for his physical development. Accordingly, nowhere do we find eels so large and fat as in these lo

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