I'll read you matter deep and dangerous, SHAKSPEARE. OF THE REBELLION OF 1745, 1746. CHAPTER I. PRINCE CHARLES'S LANDING. Guard.-Qui est là? Puc.-Païsans, pauvres gens de France. King Henry the Sixth. On the 20th of June 1745, Prince Charles embarked at the mouth of the Loire, on board the Doutelle, a frigate of sixteen guns; designing to raise an insurrection in the dominions from which his grandfather had been expelled, and attempt the restoration of his family to the throne. He was joined at Belleisle by the Elizabeth, an old warvessel of sixty guns, having on board about two thousand muskets, and five or six hundred French broad-swords. Accompanied by no officer of experience, and carrying with him a sum of money under four thousand pounds, he rested his sole hopes of success upon the attachment of his British friends, and upon the circumstance of the country which he designed to invade being then, by reason of the continental war, destitute of troops. He had long been amused with hopes of assistance from France, whose interest it might have been thus to cause a diversion in favour of its arms. In the preceding year, a strong armament had been fitted out by that government to accompany him to Britain; but it was prevented by a storm from reaching its destination; and there seemed now no necessity to renew it, since the French arms had achieved nearly the same object by the victory of Fontenoy. Charles was therefore induced, by his youthful ardour, to throw himself upon the affection of those whom he considered his father's natural subjects, and to peril his whole cause upon the results of a civil war. His attempt was bold in the extreme, and involved a thousand chances of destruction to himself and those who should follow him. It was a game in which the stakes were, to use his own emphatic language, either a crown or a coffin." Yet it seemed to be, in some measure, countenanced by the circumstances of Britain. Our country was then involved beyond its depth in one of those destructive and expensive wars which have so seldom ceased ever since we adopted a foreign race of sovereigns; the army had been almost cut to pieces in a recent defeat; the navy of England, generally so terrible, was engaged in distant expeditions; and the people were grumbling violently at the motives of the war, its progress, and the expense which it cost them. Charles had not proceeded far on his voyage, when the Elizabeth was engaged and disabled by an English cruiser, and compelled to return to the port from whence she came. Deprived of his slender store of arms, and only retaining his money, he nevertheless proceeded on his course, and soon reached that remotest range of the Hebrides, which, comprising Lewis, Uist, Barra, and many others, is known by the epithet of the Long Island, from its appearing at a distance to form a single continent. It was his intention to land in the Highlands of Scotland, a district where many had long wished to see their king cr -come o'er the water, ' and where the peculiar constitution of society was in a singular degree favourable to his views. From the landed proprietors of this rude and sequestered region, he had received many assurances of assistance, but with the condition that he was to bring a considerable foreign force. In approaching their shores without either arms or troops, he trusted entirely to the impression of his own appearance, to the generosity of that primitive and warlike people, and to the general merits of his cause. On reaching the southern extremity of the Long Island, the seamen of the Doutelle were compelled, by the appearance of three English vessels at a distance, to seek concealment in one of the landlocked bays which are so numerously interspersed throughout that rocky archipelago. Having found the shelter they desired in the strait betwixt South Uist and Eriska, the Prince determined to land and spend the night upon the latter island. He was conducted to the house of the tacksman (as a young Irish priest), and learned that the chief of |