[O] Alas! it is a world of change. While correcting the press, we have just heard that some learned antiquary has enlightened the Lunfananers, and that they have set up a tavern called "The Macbeth Arms!" The timber edifice on such an eminence as the Peel Bog--probably, as the sagacious Lord Hailes imagines, the true character of the edifices possessed by Macbeth--would no more fill up the true architectural wants of the drama, than a marble Grecian temple, or a Canadian settler's log-house. Crimes briefly told without details have no interest, unless they can be put in the shape of statistics--some people will be inclined to deny that the exception is the reverse of the rule. We are not writing history, and if we were, the historical details which go no further than that A stabbed B, and C poisoned D, and E mutilated F, are not such as we are inclined to believe our readers would thank us for. It is very clear that the death of Duncan, if we had no more than authentic annals to deal with--if it had been a question merely of history, and not in some measure incidentally connected with the highest rank of human intellectual effort--would have formed a very meagre object of comment. The society of antiquaries might have endured a paper on it--for such endurance is the martyrdom they have chosen--but no other person would. In looking, then, down through Scottish history from the accession of Macbeth's successor, we find little that can be noticed with any applicability to our particular purpose, until we reach the time when the records provide us with some of the details. Yet there is one very early tragic incident, which appears to us to have considerable interest, as one of the first striking instances where the fierce spirit of clan animosity--the burning desire to avenge the wrongs of the chief--was exhibited by the Highlanders. It occurred about the year 1242. A tournament was held on the English Border, at which two young knights, Patrick Earl of Athole, and Walter de Bysset, a cadet of the family who were lords of the great northern districts, subsequently the patrimony of Lord Lovat, encountered each other. Bysset was unhorsed. Not long afterwards, the building in which the Earl of Athole lived, in Haddington, was burned to the ground, and he, with several of his followers, died in the flames. By some accounts the Earl was previously murdered, and the house was burned to conceal the deed. Let us here have recourse to the distinct and considerate account of the incident in our favourite poet:-- "Whether it was of recklessness, Or it of forethought felony was, Into the Inns, lang ere day, Quhare that the Earl of Athole lay A fell fire him to coals brynt, Thus suddenly was that Earl tynt. And with him mony ma There houses and men were brunt alswa."