tives from David Leslie and his officers. The account adopted by Hume, who resembles Livy in falsehood though not in picturesque and amusing narrative, is so falsified that the truth from which it has been corrupted can now hardly be discovered even with the authentic English dispatches but without similar Scottish documents. What with national prejudices on the one hand and religious and political spirit on the other, the Scottish general and the Presbyterian ministers had as little chance of receiving justice at the hands of Walker, Clarendon, Whitelock, Burnet, Carte, and Hume, as the son of Hamilcar had of receiving it at the hands of the Roman historians. We are told by Hume, and he cites as his authorities Sir Edward Walker, page 168, and Whitelock, no page, that the clergy murmured extremely not only against their prudent general, but also against the Lord, on account of his delays in giving them deliverance; and that they plainly told Him that, if He would not save them from the English sectaries, He should no longer be their God.' We are also told by the same author, and for this he cites no authority, that an advantage having offered itself on a Sunday, they hindered the general from making use of it,

1 Whitelock indeed has the following passage (p. 465). "That the Scots ministers in their prayers say that, if God will not deliver them from the sectaries, He shall not be their God." But Whitelock only mentions this as a report or rumour. He does not, as he could not, say that he himself heard the Scots minister say so, or even that he had received the story from any one who had heard them. There is nothing on the subject at page 168 of Sir Edward Walker, but at page 180 Walker says "On Sunday they [the Scots] had fair

opportunities to have fought him [Cromwell] but the ministers would not give way to it, because forsooth it was the Lord's day." And at page 182 he says that after the battle of Dunbar "there was great lamentation by the ministers, who now told God Almighty, it was little to them to lose their lives and estates but to him it was great loss to suffer his Elect and Chosen to be destroyed:" which if true is a pretty strong effort of fanaticism. But on such matters Walker is by no means an unexceptionable authority.

lest he should involve the nation in the guilt of sabbathbreaking. Now the incident here transformed is thus related in Cromwell's dispatch. "The next morning [Sun

day] we drew into an open field, on the south side of Haddington; we not judging it safe for us to draw to the enemy upon his own ground, he being prepossessed thereof, but rather drew back to give him way to come to us, if he had so thought fit; and having waited about the space of four or five hours, to see if he would come to us, and not finding any inclination in the enemy so to do, we resolved to go, according to our first intendment, to Dunbar." 1

Leslie had taken up his position on the higher ground to the south of the town of Haddington; and true to the principle on which he acted he was not to be induced to leave it because Cromwell wished him to do so; precisely as more than 300 years before Douglas and Randolph had laughed at the message of Edward the Third and said that when they fought it should be at their own pleasure, and not because the King of England chose to ask for a battle. If on that occasion the English army was greatly superior in numbers to the Scotch, and on the present occasion it was greatly inferior in numbers, its superiority in arms, in discipline, in veteran soldiers accustomed to victory, over the hastily raised Scottish levies convinced the prudent commander of the Scots that his only safe line of operations was the same as that recommended by Robert Bruce and so successfully pursued by Douglas and Randolph. And David Leslie, though his evil fortune which made him the victim of other men's folly has cast a cloud over his name, is the man who of all his countrymen came nearest in military skill and prudence to Bruce, Douglas, and

1 Cromwell to the Speaker, Sept. 4, 1650.

Randolph, out of the long and dark catalogue of cruel yet foolish tyrants, whether kings or nobles, who pretended to be leaders in war, and for so many generations had oppressed and dishonoured Scotland.

Leslie's plan of carrying on the war was evidently fast accomplishing its work. The English army marched from Haddington towards Dunbar in such a condition that very few more such marches would have made it an easy prey to Leslie. "We staid," says Captain Hodgson, “until about ten o'clock, had been at prayer in several regiments, sent away our waggons and carriages towards Dunbar, and not long afterwards marched, a poor, shattered, hungry, discouraged army; and the Scots pursued very close that our rear-guard had much ado to secure our poor weak foot, that was not able to march up. We drew near. Dunbar towards night, and the Scot ready to fall upon our rear." 1 As the English approached Dunbar, Leslie, who had hitherto hung on their rear,2 marched to the south of a marsh, now almost entirely drained and highly cultivated, and encamped on Down Hill, a spur of the Lammermoor chain of

1 Captain Hodgson's Memoirs, pp. 143, 144.

2 Sir Walter Scott says (Hist. of Scotland contained in "Tales of a Grandfather," vol. i. p. 489. Edinburgh, 1846) that Leslie "moving by a shorter line than Cromwell, who was obliged to keep the coast, took possession with his army of the skirts of Lammermoor," &c. But Leslie moved by the same line as Cromwell. Leslie could not have marched among the Lammermoor hills, as this statement would imply; the ravines and other difficulties of the ground would have precluded it under the circumstances of any army but one entirely composed of infantry and those Highlanders like Montrose's. It is the

more remarkable that Sir Walter Scott should have made this statement, as we are indebted to him for the excellent edition, published at Edinburgh in 1806, of the original memoirs, dispatches and letters, specially relating to Cromwell's campaign in Scotland:-nor is this the only debt which English History owes to that illustrious man, his edition of Lord Somers's Tracts (13 vols. 4to.) being the only available one, the old edition, from the want of indexes and chronological arrangement, being nearly useless. It is probable that Sir Walter may have made the statement as to Leslie's march in consequence of writing from memory.

hills, situated about two miles south-west of Dunbar. Consequently Leslie's position was between Cromwell's army and Berwick, Down Hill being about a mile on the right of the road by which Cromwell would have to march to Berwick. Leslie also sent forward a considerable party to seize the pass at Cockburn's Path.1

If Cromwell really intended to garrison Dunbar and fortify himself there, as he pretended in his dispatch written after his victory, there was not much need to trouble himself about the pass at Cockburn's Path being seized by Leslie, as he would depend upon receiving his supplies from England by sea. But there are some reasons2 for concluding that the idea of garrisoning Dunbar was an after-thought put forward in his dispatch to cover the fact of his having been completely outgeneralled by David Leslie, though he had afterwards beaten Leslie's army when moved from the hill by the order of the Estates' Committee. All this seems to let in some light upon what has been considered a dark subject, Cromwell's character, moral and intellectual.

1 Cromwell to the Speaker, Sept. 4, 1650. Captain Hodgson's Memoirs, p. 144. Relation of the Campaign in Scotland, p. 276, in the same collection.

2 See Captain Hodgson's Memoirs, pp. 144, 145; and see the inconsistencies in Cromwell's Dispatch of Sept. 4, 1650, where, after writing as if he had retreated to Dunbar merely for his own convenience in having a garrison there, he speaks "of their advantages, of our weakness, of our strait." And in his letter to Sir Arthur Haselrig, governor of Newcastle, written on the second of Sept. the day before the battle, though not sent till after the battle with another letter dated September 4th, he says

"We are upon an engagement very difficult. The enemy hath blocked up our way at the pass at Copper's Path through which we cannot get without almost a miracle. He lieth so upon the hills that we know not how to come that way without great difficulty; and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination." The same letter contains further proof, in addition to the many proofs in his other letters, of his great confidence in the sagacity of Sir Henry Vane, before he found it convenient to pray to be delivered from Sir Henry Vane. He says "Let H. Vane know what I write. I would not make it public, lest danger should accrue thereby."

Cromwell's merit as a general was confined to raising a body of troops, who were well-fed, well-disciplined, and furnished with arms as superior to those generally used at the time as the long shield and stabbing sword of the Roman soldier excelled all other weapons of his time in the work of human slaughter, and to leading on his men, thus prepared and armed, with prompitude and daring to their work. But he never on any occasion-not even at this field of Dunbar-exhibited that higher military genius which dazzles and excites, if it does not elevate, the mind of the reader in studying the campaigns of Hannibal and Frederic; and relieves the attention sick and weary with looking at a country turned into a huge slaughter-house, by presenting to it not the mere action of matter upon matter, but the action of mind producing combinations so new, so astonishing, and so powerful, that the effect is like that of some of the great powers of Nature, and an army is destroyed as if by a stroke of lightning. If Cromwell had secured in time and without awakening the suspicions of the enemy the pass of Cockburn's Path, which has been minutely described; if he had taken his measures so craftily and so skilfully as to draw on the Scots to follow him to it, and had then destroyed them as Hannibal destroyed the Romans at Thrasymenus; or, such a stratagem being perhaps unlikely to succeed with so wary an adversary as Leslie, had he escaped from the pitfall in which he seemed to be caught by the Scottish Fabius, by some such device of a fertile mind as that by which Hannibal escaped the toils of the Roman Fabius, he would have owed to his own genius what, as it was, he owed to a blunder committed by those opposed to him. But this merit can hardly be even here accorded to Cromwell, for although he beat the Scots at Dunbar by the same move