Next to the three Lions, however (all of them, you find, French), there is a shield bearing one Lion, "Rampant"--that is to say, climbing like a vine on a wall. Remember that the proper sense of the word "rampant" is "creeping," as you say it of ground ivy, and such plants: and that a lion rampant--whether British, or as this one Scotch, is not at all, for his part, in what you are so fond of getting into--"an independent position," nor even in a specifically leonine one, but rather generally feline, as of a cat, or other climbing animal, on a tree; whereas the three French Lions, or Lioncels, are "passant-gardant," "passing on the look out," as beasts of chase. Round the rampant Scottish animal (I can't find why the Scotch took him for their type) you observe farther, a double line, with--though almost too small to be seen--fleur-de-Lys at the knots and corners of it. This is the tressure, or binding belt, of the great Charles, who has really been to both English and Scottish lions what that absent Charles of the polar skies must, I suppose, have been to their Bear, and who entirely therefore deserves to be stellified by British astronomers. The Tressure, heraldically, records alliance of that Charlemagne with the Scottish King Achaius, and the vision by the Scottish army of St. Andrew's cross--and the adoption of the same, with the Thistle and Rue, for their national device; of all which the excellent Scotch clergyman and historian, Robert Henry, giving no particular account, prefers to note, as an example of such miraculous appearances in Scotland, the introduction, by King Kenneth, the son of Alpine, of a shining figure "clothed in the skins of dried fish, which shone in the dark," to his nobility and councillors, to give them heavenly admonitions "after they had composed themselves to rest." Of course a Presbyterian divine must have more pleasure in recording a miracle so connected with the existing national interests of the herring and salmon fisheries, than the tradition of St. Andrew's cross; and that tradition itself is so confused among Rodericks, Alpines, and Ferguses, that the 'Lady of the Lake' is about as trustworthy historical reading. But St. Andrew's Cross and the Thistle--(I don't know when the Rue, much the more honourable bearing of the two, was dropped)--are there, you see, to this day; and you must learn their story--but I've no time to go into that, now.