ART. IV.-Lives of Simon Lord Lovat, and Duncan Forbes of Culloden. From original Sources. By JOHN HILL BURTON, Advocate, Author of "The Life of David Hume." London, 1847.

WE lately had occasion in this Journal, to consider at some length the more prominent features of the Jacobitism of the last age. Our remarks were confined chiefly to the effects produced by the commotions arising out of the downfall of an ancient dynasty, on the general interests of the country, rather than on the destiny of individuals. The generalities with which, with such an object, we were obliged to deal, compelled us to disregard many of those picturesque details of individual biogra phy, which constitute the most interesting part of this branch of Scottish history; and it is therefore with much gratification, that we are now enabled to fill up blanks that were unavoidable, by a rapid sketch of the story of one of the leading Jacobites, and of one of the few prominent Royalists whose name has descended to us untarnished by incapacity or cruelty.

When we glance over the history of the Jacobites, even in their most fortunate and happy moments, we are amazed to find how little of real ability they displayed; and how, instead of conduct rising with the occasion, they wasted themselves in a fondness of transient applause-courted by vanity, given by flattéry, and vanishing in show, like the qualities which acquired it. Such were Mar and all the leaders of the first rebellion; and if there was more self-sacrifice in the Jacobites of the '45, they have little claim to respect on the score of energy in improving victory or remedying defeat. There was one exception to the mediocrity, which would, ere this, have covered them with oblivion, were it not for the heroism of their deaths; and he who organized, and as often betrayed their schemes, who crushed the first rebellion, and was himself overwhelmed in the second, deserves notice as well from the historical importance he has thus obtained, as from the extraordinary exhibition of character he has left us, and the extraordinary adventures of which he was the hero. In Lovat's life will be found a better insight into the social, and therefore real condition of the people of the north of Scotland, in the transition-time in which he lived, than can be found any where out of the Waverley Novels.

He joins together the old age of feudal misrule, and that of settled government connecting the reigns of the last Stuarts with the era of Hume and Robertson, and the kindred spirits who threw so bright a light on the commencement of our literary

Lovat at the University of Aberdeen.

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history. His biography has thus a charm in illustrating both epochs by his own example. The feudal tyrant in the wilds of Stratherick-a law unto himself-exercising unbounded power over the lives and fortunes of a numerous vassalage, is found united in the person of the same man who shone as a courtier in the palace of Louis le Grand-who was the correspondent and friend of literary men, and devoted much of his leisure to writing pious letters to the pious. There is too, so much of the bandit in this man's history, that no fictitious narrative of border feud can exceed it in interest. We read it now with far livelier feelings than it would have produced in his own age; for, in proportion to the maturity of our civilization, is our interest in the portraiture of ruder times-the novelty of the descriptions being aided in producing this effect, by a latent contrast in favour of present comforts. Since then-a century has passed away-dynasties have been extinguished;-Europe has been revolutionized, and its social condition has undergone a change, more complete than had been felt in all the previous ages since the Crusades..

Lovat was born in the year 1676, in the reign of Charles the Second. He was the second son of the peer of Lovat, and was early sent to the University of Aberdeen, at which he appears to have been diligent. He acquired there the extensive acquaintance with the precepts of morality, scattered through the ancient classics, and which he applied with much facility and tact in the exigencies of his subsequent career. Is there any man who accuses him of treachery, which at the particular moment it did not suit his purpose to disclose, he cites you from Virgil the picture of a good man, the victim of the world's slander, and the object of divine commiseration ;-is he anxious to condole with one whose father or brother he has hurried to his account, he brings from Seneca solemn reflections on mortality; and if he wishes to describe a patriot's death, he applies to himself the language of Horace, as to the beatific rapture consequent on dying for one's country.

After leaving the University, his first act was to induce his cousin, the then Lord Lovat, to endeavour to disinherit his only child, a daughter, and to call to the succession, to the honours and estates, Simon's father and himself, as the nearest male-heirs. The cousin died in the year 1696, and then began a long struggle, which occupied about thirty years, between Lovat on the one hand, and the heiress and her friends on the other, in regard to the succession. Her uncle, the Marquis of Athole, was at that time influential with the Government; and from that influence, and the violence of his opponent, he was enabled to direct against Loyat the whole artillery of the law, with which indeed, the latter had a stand-up fight until the day of his death. Athole first at

tempted to soothe his ambition or work upon his fears; but the terms offered were either insufficient in value or in security, and they were rejected; and as Lovat is the sole historian of the transaction, they were rejected with the indignation becoming a virtuous man insulted,—

"I do not know what hinders me, knave from running my sword through your body.

and coward as you are, You are well known for

a poltroon; and if you had one grain of courage," &c. &c.

These were the brave words put together in the security of after years, when, in a fit of Jacobitism, he composed what he jocosely terms "Memoirs of his life;" and in which all his powers of imagination as to facts are well illustrated. If there was one characteristic of the man, it was the hypocrisy with which he rubbed gently down any victim on whom he had designs-the words of eastern adulation with which he plied his vanity, and the patience with which he suppressed the appearance of his halfrobber, half-savage ferocity-covering its outbreaks, by bewailing it always as the indiscreet zeal of an unruly clan.

Being somewhat diffident as to the result of a litigation with the Marquis of Athole, acting for his niece, he devised and executed, far away among his Highland hills, a scheme worthy of his genius, and direct and speedy in its results. In after life, when experience had sharpened his capacity, we find specific foresights and preparations for all contingencies, until success had made him presumptuous, and the relaxation of age had unstrung his vigour; but in his eager pursuit of the inheritance, his caution overleaped itself, and he fell on the other side, into a number of difficulties, for which he was obliged to endure, many a year, a vagabond life of wandering. An unsuccessful attempt to marry the heiress was followed by the next best thing-a successful one to marry her mother. This lady was at the time living at Castle Dounie, the old seat of the Frasers; and without any warning, she one morning received a visit from Lovat, who carried her, screaming for mercy, to an inaccessible retreat used by him in his more recondite schemes.

The old castle is now in ruins. The victors of Culloden, after their labours on the field were ended, devoted themselves to the destruction of the strongholds of the rebel chiefs; and Castle Dounie was among the number. In the vaults of this pile, Lovat kept the victims on whom he meant to operate; but when clamant reasons of expediency demanded it, he furnished to them a more secure retreat from worldly distractions. An island of the name of Aigas, in the midst of the rapid Beauly, which bubbles and rushes past it with resistless violence, formed an excellent natural prison, to which the Dowager-Peeress was immediately conducted.

Forced Marriage of the Dowager-Peeress.

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The account of the marriage has been taken from the records of the judicial proceedings, immediately instituted by her infuriated family.

"The said Captain Simon Fraser takes up the most mad and villanous resolution that ever was heard of; for, all in a sudden, he and his said accomplices make the lady close prisoner under his armed guards, and then come upon her with three or four ruffians in the night time, and having dragged out her maids, he proposes to the lady that she should marry him; and when she fell in lamenting and crying, the great pipe was blown up to drown her cries, and the wicked villains ordered the minister to proceed."

The lady fainted, and bemoaned to the idle winds; "the bagpipe is blown up as formerly, and the foresaid ruffians rent off her clothes, cutting her stays with their dirks, and so thrust her into bed." The succeeding morning displayed her in all the agony of outraged honour, her face swollen, and stupified with grief. "For Christ's sake," she implored one of the witnesses at Lovat's trial, "take me out of this place either dead or alive.” The house at the same time was surrounded by armed ruffians, who played up the bagpipe, when returning consciousness enabled the lady to express her sufferings by her screams.

The Scottish privy council, who, in the absence of the Sovereign, conducted the government of Scotland, found the doings of Lovat to come peculiarly within their jurisdiction. They accordingly debarred the lieges from giving him and his father food or lodging, and commission was given to a commander of troops to enter his domains and seize him, dead or alive. The army in Scotland at that period was small enough; but Lovat in his usual grandiloquent style, in his later life, made the most of what he termed "the several regiments of cavalry and dragoons," whom he of course defeated, and whom he laid under the sanction of an oath, when he thought it unnecessary to keep them prisoners:

"They renounced their claims in Jesus Christ, and their hopes of heaven, and delivered themselves to the devil and all the torments of hell, if they ever returned into the territories of Lord Lovat, or occasioned directly or indirectly the smallest mischief to Lord Lovat."

Lovat was tried in the Court of Justiciary, for having assembled in arms, with his followers, and carried off Lord Saltoun, who had gone to the assistance of the heiress. This act, according to the wide sweep of the criminal law of those days, was construed into treason-conviction followed; and his name and honours, with those of his father, were declared for ever extinct, and their lands and possessions forfeited. He was the last man tried in Scotland, where a conviction was obtained, and a sentence pronounced, in the absence of the accused.

In the midst of these difficulties his father died, and he immediately assumed the title. But this increase of rank brought

no cessation to the ceaseless pursuit which followed his conviction, From one fastness to another, from valley to mountain, he was hunted with unrelenting perseverance, deriving from his clan a precarious subsistence. Away in the remote regions of Glen Strathfarar and Stratherick, he kept up a band of devoted desperadoes, by whose ready assistance he carried on the war against the flying parties from Fort-William, Over his own people his influence had no limits.. He once mildly said, that the Highland clans to a man, would regard it as their honour and boast, to cut the throat, or blow out the brains of any one, be he who he would, who should dare to disturb the repose of their laird.be

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The indolence of the Highlanders is proverbial; and they may also be set down as among the dirtiest even of Celts. If it is so in our day, when every motive to exertion exists, in the near community of an active population, it was far more so in that of Lovat, when our civilization was young. What the bravoes were in Italy, the retainers of a Highland chief might be considered here they kept themselves, and paid their rent in the personal services rendered to their Lord Lovat found in the course of a long life of war upon the world, many occasions for unhesitating service. He made it a point of sacred policy, to: keep his vassals in training; and no man of the last age did more to preserve alive the feeling of clanship throughout the half-savage regions of the north-making obedience to the chief be regarded in the light of an honourable duty. If there was some danger in this kind of existence, it had its advantages in its ease and idleness. Their "houseless heads and unfed sides, their looped and windowed raggedness," were matters that their thorough goût de la vie vagabonde made endurable; far more so at least, than the monotonous pursuits of peaceful industry.

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At last, Lovat found that he was unable to cope with the forces sent against him; and having by skilful flattery of Argyle, at that time the dictator of Scottish affairs, obtained his interesti with King William, he hurriedly left Scotland, and presented himself in pursuit of pardon, before that monarch in the Low { Countries. He was so far successful, that he received a qualified t pardon. It remitted all the crimes for which he had been already tried; leaving the outrage on lady Lovat yet unreprieved, to ot The former proceedings being thus quashed, he was cited at the instigation of Athole to stand trial on the 17th February, 1701, for the abduction of the Dowager. Here again he made no appearance at the trial-proceeding coolly to manage his es tates and to keep up a horde of retainers to levy, rents, and to act with as much vigour, as if he had been the undoubted owner of property handed down to him unchallenged through; a long line of ancestors.

He was declared an outlaw, and was again compelled to flee