did? Would the Scottish adventurers who once kept their swords sharp as soldiers of fortune all over Europe, have sooner found a career in forcing themselves to the front of British society? This much seems clear, that there has been a woeful waste of ill-blood before a union that came about after all, in the way of peace. Yet are we so made that the most philosophic Scot, even fresh from a course of John Stuart Mill or Herbert Spencer, cannot look down upon these battle-grounds without a throb in his heart. It was Bannockburn that made us a nation, poor but free to be ourselves. Then, since we did not always come off so well in our battles with England, naturally we make much of the points won in a doubtful game. When I was at school there came among us perfervid young Scots an English boy, before whom, we agreed, it would be courteous and kind not to mention Bannockburn. Yet in the end some itching tongue let slip this moving name, but without ruffling our new comrade’s pride. It turned out that he complacently took Bannockburn to have been an English victory; at all events, one more or less made no great matter to his thinking. Englishmen take their own national trophies so much for granted, that they are apt to forget the susceptibilities of other peoples. Such a one was rebuked by a coachman driving him over the field of Bannockburn. “You Scotch are always boasting of your country, but when you come south you are in no hurry to get back again.” With thumb pointed to the ground, the Scot made stern answer: “There was thirty thousand o’ you cam north, and no mahny o’ them went back again!” There are other battlefields about Stirling, of which Scotland has no such title to be proud, as that of Falkirk, where Wallace brought his renown to a falling market and Prince Charles Edward had but half a victory; that of Sauchieburn, where James III. was foully slain; and that of Sheriffmuir, the Culloden of 1715. Let us hang a little longer upon the Castle ramparts to take a bird’s-eye view of the stirring story that often came to centre round this rock. Over Highland mountain and Lowland strath the clouds lift away, giving here and there a doubtful glimpse of Scots from Ireland, Celts from who knows how far, Britons of Strathclyde, and dim Picts of the east, each such a wild race as “slew the slayer and shall himself be slain,” among whom intrude Roman legions and Norse pirates, the former falling back from their thistly conquest, the latter settling themselves firmly on the coasts. Out of this welter, as out of the Heptarchy in the south, emerges a more or less dominant kingdom seated on the Tay. While the power of the Scots seems to have gone under, their name floats at the top, so as to christen the new nation, that on the south side, from the wide bounds of Northumbria, takes in a stable element destined to be the cement of the whole.