ception, "Whom do you wish to see, sir?" he lost his presence of mind; and instead of answering, as he ought, "the Prince," recurred to his accustomed phrase, and called out "The Pretender!" Upon this, as the story goes on, he was very unceremoniously kicked down from the top of the stairs to the bottom, with these words: "Rascal that you are, if you want to see a pretender, you should go to St. James's !"

But I forget that all this time I am leaving you outside the house--a piece of ill-manners of which Mr. Mousley himself would never have been guilty. It is a substantial handsome brick building, the front to the garden apparently much the same as it was a century ago. The dining-room is on the ground floor, but its character has been completely altered by modern improvements, which will no doubt be better appreciated by Mr. Mousley's convivial guests than by his antiquarian visitors. The staircase however is of dark polished oak, with carved balustrades, the same as when trod by the feet of the insurgents. On the first floor the drawingroom is equally unaltered; it is all over wainscoted with ancient oak, very dark and handsome, and looks out, as also the dining-room below, into the garden. At present the walls are adorned with several pictures, among which I recognised, not inappropriately, Prince Charles himself, and another of his truant wife in after years, the Countess of Albany.

In this drawing-room it was that Charles held his Councils all through the day of the 5th of December, on the great question, "Advance or Retreat?" There it was that early in the morning Lord George Murray

came in, followed by the other chiefs, and declared that, unless there were some certain promise or near hope of English aid, they would go no further into England. Then it was that Charles tried entreaties and arguments by turns, but both in vain, exclaiming, with no ungenerous warmth, "Sooner than go back, I would wish to be twenty feet under ground!" There it was that in fact they discussed and decided the fate, for the time, of England. For the papers which I have lately seen in the State Paper Office have confirmed me more and more in my opinion, that had the young Adventurer marched forward, he would, in the first instance at least, have prevailed. "The army at Finchley," of which the London newspapers were boasting, was only as yet it seems an army upon paper, and Charles had got one or two marches in advance of the army of the Duke of Cumberland.

Nor was this last army as yet, perhaps, in a condition to engage him upon equal terms. I have found in the State Paper Office two unpublished letters received by the Duke of Newcastle from Sir Everard Fawkener, who was Chief of the Staff to the Duke of Cumberland at this juncture. From these I took some extracts that I have now by me. Both the letters are dated from the same place, and on the same day, namely, Stafford, 2nd of December, 1745. The first letter seems to show that much confusion and skurry prevailed at the Duke's head-quarters, and also indicates a wholly erroneous idea as to the insurgents' line of march. Had the Highland chiefs advanced at all, it was to have been straight on London. But here are Sir Everard's own words :

H

“I shall send your Grace some of our latest and best intelligence: one is confounded by the multiplicity of it, but I will endeavour to separate for your Grace's perusal. The best appearance and the last of all seems to be that they are trying for Wales; for Broken Cross is to the westward or south-west of Macclesfield, and to go from thence to Nantwich, they must pass not very far from our advanced post at Congleton."

The second letter of the same date says:

"By to-morrow the Duke will have eleven old battalions, and ten old and two new squadrons. The nation never had more depending on one event."

From this sentence we may in some degree compute the real numbers. Each battalion in this age was commonly taken at between four and five hundred men when prepared for a campaign, but was always reckoned at much less when at home and not expecting service. There were many deductions in the latter case for furloughs, or sick leave, or for the deficiencies to be filled up by recruiting; so that as far as I am able to compute, from my reading of this period, I should estimate each battalion at home at scarcely more than three hundred men. The squadrons taken when abroad as of 120 men, may be taken at home as perhaps of 100. On this basis then the Duke of Cumberland's force, at the beginning of December, 1745, would be only 3300 foot and 1200 horse. Now, the Highland army at

1 When on learning, somewhat | gents, the Duke of Cumberland tardily, the retreat of the insur-st off in pursuit, and engaged

Derby, allowing for the English accessions obtained in Lancashire, was very little short of 5500 men. It follows, that had they marched onward, or given battle to the Duke of Cumberland before Wade could come up from Newcastle, and before the paper army at Finchley could be turned into a real one, they would have had a superiority in numbers; and I think that, looking at things as they stood then, with Preston Pans in our retrospect and Falkirk in our anticipation, we may fairly claim for them an equality in valour.

This is no doubt very different from the computations that were spread about at the time by the friends of the Established Government, and with good effect, for these computations certainly imposed on some of the Highland chiefs. The ablest of them all, Lord George Murray (in his own narrative as published with Bishop Forbes's papers), tells us, I remember, of the opinion which he gave at the Derby Council; and it was that if they did decide on marching southwards, they would speedily find themselves surrounded by above 30,000 men!

On the other hand, the lesser chiefs, as well as the rank and file of the Highland army, were in excellent spirits, and fully prepared for an advance. Of this I could judge by somewhere about a hundred letters from officers and men. Many had availed themselves of

them in the skirmish of Clifton on the 18th of December, his force was estimated at 4000 men. See the Memoirs of Chevalier Johnstone, who was present (p. 94, ed. 1822). But this affords no exact

criterion, since on the one hand the Duke had left part of his infantry behind him, and on the other hand was joined upon his march by some of Wade's horse.

their day of rest to write home, and they had put their epistles into the Derby post-office. But on their retreat next day, all these communications were seized and sent to London, and they have since found a place in the State Paper Office, where I had the opportunity of seeing them.

This then, I thought as I gazed around me, is the room in which the decision, so fraught with interest to England, was finally taken. Yonder stands the very mantelpiece against which the Duke of Perth, as is recorded, was mournfully leaning his head during the debate; until at length looking up, he said that he was still convinced that marching onward would be their ruin, but that as the Prince so passionately desired it, he would give his vote to follow him-through life or to death.

It is painful to reflect-for even while condemning the cause, we cannot but give our sympathy to the gallant spirits engaged in it-how few of those that sat in council at Derby but were reserved for some grievous form of death or of distress. Far from accomplishing the triumph which they sought in their advance, they did not even secure the safety for which their retreat was designed. How some fell amidst the war-cry of Culloden; how some, less fortunate, died by the hangman's hands at Kennington or Hairriby; how some had to pine away their lives, and consume as it were their very hearts in hopeless exile; while one or two of them perhaps, like their ill-fated chief, may have in the course of their darkening years incurred self-inflicted degradation, and added intemperance to their other woes; all this, in