by quick turns and by a rather steep ascent among steep green hills, through very narrow openings.

It is very remarkable that this pass closely resembles that in which Hannibal destroyed the army of the Consul Flaminius at the Lake Thrasymenus, or Trasimenus as it is, I believe, more correctly written. Polybius states that the valley in which the Romans were caught was not the narrow interval between the hills and the lake, but a valley beyond that defile, and running down to the lake; so that the Romans when engaged in it had the lake not on their right flank but in their rear. Similarly an army marching southward when engaged in the pass called Cockburn's Path would have the sea not on their left flank, on which it would be before they turned to ascend, but in their rear. The word valley is perhaps a little ambiguous. There would however be a sort of a valley-though a steep winding hollow way would be the more correct expression, at least for the pass called Cockburn's Path. The military eye of Cromwell at once saw the importance of this pass, but he had not the military genius to turn it to account as Hannibal did the pass of Lake Thrasymenus. If one might presume to criticize, where, as Frederic said, criticism is so easy and art so difficult, it would certainly seem that Cromwell, instead of depending wholly for his success and safety on a blunder of his adversary which he could hardly have looked for, might have taken his measures so as not only to have secured a retreat by this pass, but to have made it a means of destroying his opponent's army. But Cromwell, so full of craft and so fertile in stratagem in his political, does not appear to have possessed the same fertility in his military character. And this distinction is, I apprehend, when closely examined, one of deep significance; since, while in war craft and stratagem are legitimate

weapons, because both parties use them alike, to the best of their ability; in civil and political affairs they are not legitimate weapons, because he who uses them, like a gamester who uses packed cards or loaded dice, takes an unfair advantage of opponents, and he will have some, if not many such, who do not use them.

When Cromwell's scouts first came to the village of Cockburn's Path, they fell in with three Scots, whom they disarmed and took prisoners. These Scots alleged that they were only countrymen, and that their ministers and grandees had given out that the English army would kill man, woman, and child; and indeed had represented the English sectaries, as they called Cromwell's army, to the people as being "the monsters of the world." Cromwell ordered the men's swords and other things taken from them to be restored, and the men to be dismissed.1 One of the English scouts met with one of the enemy, who ran at him with a lance, and broke it against his armour.2 The Scot seeing the English scout had the better, quitted his horse, and plunged, the original dispatch says, down “ a steep hill;" probably one of those deep and precipitous glens or ravines, which characterize that district, probably the glen now called Dunglass Dean, (dean being there used to express what den does in other parts of Scotland), where, adds the English officer who writes the account, "our trooper could not follow him, but seized the horse."

Relation of the Fight at Leith, pp. 206, 207, Captain Hodgson's Memoirs, p. 131. Letters in Cromwelliana, pp. 83, 84, 85.

2 A proof of the superior quality of the defensive armour of Cromwell's troops, and that the term "Ironsides" was not applied without cause. There was one horse regiment in particular

which in those Scottish wars was called "The Brazen Wall" from their never having been broken.

3 Relation of the Fight at Leith, p. 207. These ravines or glens, rocky or not, baffled the powers of description of the English officers, most of whom had never before seen anything of the kind. The words used by them do not

In the march from Mordington to Cockburn's Path the English army did not see any Scotchman in the places they passed through: but the streets were full of spectrelooking women, clothed in white flannel in a very homely manner. In Dunbar also no men were to be seen but some few decrepid ones, and boys under seven and old men above seventy years of age.1 Cromwell published a declaration inviting all to remain in their houses without fear of molestation. At the same time he strictly enjoined his officers and soldiers not to offer the slightest violence to the persons or goods of any not immediately connected with the Scottish army. The infringement of these orders he punished with promptitude and severity.2

The English officers were naturally struck with the contrast between the Scottish villages and the English, particularly those of the south of England. An English village is not unfrequently spread in picturesque irregularity over a space of ground extending from half a mile to a mile or a mile and a half in length; frequently skirting the edges of a common fringed or dotted with fine old trees, where every turn of the winding road presents some new point of beauty. The village church is a picturesque old building of stone grey with age, its old tower half covered with ivy, having in front of it perhaps an immense yew tree some 300 years old. A Scottish village on the other hand is merely a collection of cottages,

convey any idea of the geographical character of the country which was the scene of this campaign.

1 Relation of the Fight at Leith, pp. 207, 208. Another of the contemporary accounts says, "The people had generally deserted their habitations, some few women only were left behind; yet we had this mercy, that their

houses thus forsaken were indifferently well furnished with beer, wine, and corn, which was a very good supply to us."-Relation of the Campaign in Scotland, p. 232. This account does not agree with Cromwell's strict orders against plundering.

2 Whitelock, pp. 465, 466.

at that time hovels of clay or turf,-placed close together, end to end, in rows, resembling the rows of negro cabins on a planter's estate, where nothing is left to the individual will of the tenant, but he must squat in the one case as the slave owner, in the other as the laird bids him. Whereas everything that gives beauty to an English village arises from the individual will having had nearly as much liberty to select a spot for a dwelling as the oak on the village green to shoot forth its boughs as nature bade it. The distinction remains to this day as striking as it was then. For where the hovels have given place to cottages built of stone, the latter form a stiff monotonous structure occupying in the same end to end rows the same ground formerly occupied by the clay hovels, without gardens or greensward between them and the dusty road, and without a village green with its scattered groups of picturesque old trees; for land it seems, is too valuable in Scotland to be wasted on cottage gardens or village greens. The English officers were at that time probably the more struck with what they considered the barbarous poverty of Scotland, inasmuch as Scotland, besides having a nobility as old as its hills, had given to England a race of kings who declared they had a title direct from heaven. The spectacle of a Scottish village was not calculated to impress them with an idea that the condition of the people of England would be improved if they were to be governed by the Scottish king and the Scottish nobility as the people of Scotland had been governed. And in this sense the difference between an English and Scotch village is by no means an insignificant fact.

The command of the Scottish army was held by David Leslie, a well-trained and skilful soldier, who had done more than the English accounts acknowledge towards the

winning of the battle of Marston Moor, and who had defeated Montrose at Philiphaugh. But it is not quite correct to say, as Sir Walter Scott says, that David Leslie was the effective commander-in-chief in Scotland, inasmuch as it can be distinctly shown on the best authority we have on Scottish affairs at that time, Principal Baillie's "Letters and Journals," that the oligarchical Committee of Estates hampered and controlled David Leslie at Dunbar, as they had before hampered and controlled Lieut.-General Baillie at Kilsyth and Preston. Napoleon Bonaparte told the Convention when they were about to give him a colleague in his Italian campaign that he would resign if they did, and that one bad general was better than two good ones. David Leslie might have told the Committee of Estates that a bad general left alone was better than a good one controlled by Argyle and Cassilis; and he would have better consulted his own reputation and perhaps the success of his side if he had resigned his command instead of suffering himself to be interfered with.

Leslie's dispositions, as far as they were uncontrolled, showed that he was a prudent and skilful general, and also that he was one of the few Scottish commanders who understood how to put in force the directions of what has been called the "Good King Robert's Testament." Bruce was too wise a man not to know that it would be unsafe to reckon on many Bannockburns. The sum of his testament therefore was to advise his countrymen to avoid risking great battles and to make such a use of their mountains, morasses, and deep narrow glens, that the enemy worn out with famine, fatigue, and apprehension should retreat as certainly as if routed in battle. Leslie had taken up a strong position between Edinburgh and