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Bruce. The incidents in his history,-the escape he made from English bondage to rescue his country from the same yoke; his rise refulgent from the stroke which, in the cloisters of the Gray Friars, Dumfries, laid the Red Comyn low; his daring to be crowned at Scone; his frequent defeats; his lion-like retreat to the Hebrides, accompanied by one or two friends, his wife meanwhile having been carried captive, three of his brothers hanged, and himself supposed to be dead; the romantic perils he survived, and the victories he gained amidst the mountains where the deep waters of the river Awe are still telling of his name, and the echoes of Ben Cruachan repeating the immortal sound; his sudden reappearance on the west coast of Scotland, where, as he shook his Carrick spear,' his country rose, kindling around him like heather on flame; the awful suspense of the hour when it was announced that Edward I., the tyrant of the Ragman's Roll, the murderer of Wallace, was approaching with a mighty army to crush the revolt; the electrifying news that he had died at Sark, as if struck by the breath of the fatal Border, which he had reached, but could not overpass; the bloody summer's day of Bannockburn, in which Edward II. was repelled, and the gallant army of his father annihilated; the energy and wisdom of the Bruce's civil administration after the victory; the less famous, but noble battle of Byland, nine years after Bannockburn, in which he again smote the foes of his country; and the recognition which at last he procured, on the accession of Edward III., of the independence of Scotland in 1329, himself dying the same year, his work done and his glory for ever secured,-not to speak of the beautiful legends which have clustered round his history like ivy round an ancestral tower-of the spider on the wall, teaching him the lesson of perseverance, as he lay in the barn sad and desponding in heart-of the strange signal-light upon the shore near his maternal castle of Turnberry, which led him to land, while

'Dark red the heaven above it glow'd,
Dark red the sea beneath it flow'd,
Red rose the rocks on ocean's brim,
In blood-red light her islets swim,

Wild screams the dazzled sea-fowl gave,
Dropp'd from their crags a plashing wave,
The deer to distant covert drew,

The blackcock deem'd it day, and crew;'

and last, not least, the adventures of his gallant, unquenchable heart, when, in the hand of Douglas,-meet casket for such a gem!—it marched onwards, as it was wont to do, in conquering power, toward the Holy Land;-all this has woven a garland round the brow of Bruce which every civilised nation has delighted to honour, and given him besides a share in the affections and the pride of his own land, with the joy of which 'no stranger can intermeddle.'

Bruce has been fortunate in his laureates, consisting of three of Scotland's greatest poets,-Barbour, Scott, and Burns. The last of these has given us a glimpse of the patriot-king, revealing him on the brow of Bannockburn as by a single flash of lightning. The second has, in 'The Lord of the Isles,' seized and sung a few of the more romantic passages of his history. But Barbour has, with unwearied fidelity and no small force, described the whole incidents of Bruce's career, and reared to his memory, not an insulated column, but a broad and deep-set temple of poetry.

Barbour's poem has always been admired for its strict accuracy of statement, to which Bower, Wynton, Hailes, Pinkerton, Jamieson, and Sir Walter Scott all bear testimony; for the picturesque force of its natural descriptions; for its insight into character, and the lifelike spirit of its individual sketches; for the martial vigour of its battle-pictures; for the enthusiasm which he feels, and makes his reader feel, for the valiant and wise, the sagacious and persevering, the bold, merciful, and religious character of its hero, and for the piety which pervades it, and proves that the author was not merely a churchman in profession, but a Christian at heart. Its defects of rude rhythm, irregular constructions, and obsolete phraseology, are those of its age; but its beauties, its unflagging interest, and its fine poetic spirit, are characteristic of the writer's own genius.

APOSTROPHE TO FREEDOM.

Ah! freedom is a noble thing!
Freedom makes man to have liking!
Freedom all solace to man gives:
He lives at ease that freely lives!
A noble heart may have none ease,
Nor nought else that may him please,
If freedom fail; for free liking
Is yearned o'er all other thing.
Nay, he that aye has lived free,
May not know well the property,
The anger, nor the wretched doom,
That is coupled to foul thirldom.
But if he had assayed it,

Then all perquier1 he should it wit:
And should think freedom more to prize
Than all the gold in world that is.

DEATH OF SIR HENRY DE BOHUN.

And when the king wist that they were

In hale2 battle, coming so near,
His battle gart he well array.
He rode upon a little palfrey,
Laughed and jolly, arrayand
His battle, with an axe in hand.
And on his bassinet he bare
A hat of tyre above aye where;
And, thereupon, into tok'ning,
An high crown, that he was king.
And when Gloster and Hereford were
With their battle approaching near,

1 'Perquier:' perfectly.-2 Hale:' whole.- Gart:' caused.

Before them all there came ridand,
With helm on head and spear in hand,
Sir Henry the Bohun, the worthy,
That was a wight knight, and a hardy,
And to the Earl of Hereford cousin;
Armed in armis good and fine;
Came on a steed a bowshot near,
Before all other that there were:
And knew the king, for that he saw
Him so range his men on raw,1
And by the crown that was set
Also upon his bassinet.

And toward him he went in hy.2
And the king so apertly3

Saw him come, forouth all his feres,5
In hy till him the horse he steers.
And when Sir Henry saw the king
Come on, forouten abasing,
To him he rode in full great hy.

He thought that he should well lightly
Win him, and have him at his will,
Since he him horsed saw so ill.

Sprent they samen into a lyng;7
Sir Henry miss'd the noble king;
And he that in his stirrups stood,
With the axe, that was hard and good,
With so great main, raucht him a dint,
That neither hat nor helm might stint
The heavy dush that he him gave,
The head near to the harns9 he clave.
The hand-axe shaft frushit 10 in two;

'Raw:' row.-2 Hy:' haste.-3 Apertly:' openly, clearly.- Forouth:' be yond-Feres:' companions.- Forouten:' without.-Sprent they samen into a lyng:' they sprang forward at once, against each other, in a line.-8 Raucht:' reached.-Harns:' brains.-10 Frushit:' broke.

And he down to the yird1 'gan go
All flatlings, for him failed might.
This was the first stroke of the fight,
That was performed doughtily.
And when the king's men so stoutly
Saw him, right at the first meeting,
Forouten doubt or abasing,

Have slain a knight so at a straik,
Such hardment thereat 'gan they take,
That they come on right hardily.
When Englishmen saw them so stoutly
Come on, they had great abasing;
And specially for that the king
So smartly that good knight has slain,
That they withdrew them everilk ane,
And durst not one abide to fight:
So dread they for the king his might.
When that the king repaired was,
That gart his men all leave the chase,
The lordis of his company

Blamed him, as they durst, greatumly,
That he him put in aventure,

To meet so stith2 a knight, and stour,
In such point as he then was seen.
For they said, well it might have been
Cause of their tynsal3 everilk ane.
The king answer has made them nane,
But mainit his hand-axe shaft so

Was with the stroke broken in two.

1 'Yird:' earth.- 'Stith:' strong.—3 Tynsal:' destruction.” ‘Mainit:' lamented.