Nor was it only in the field that the great and patriotic conduct of Robert Bruce was displayed. In endeavor to restore the almost ruined fortunes of his country and to heal the wounds which a war of unparalleled severity had brought upon this people he exhibited the same wise and beneficent policy. Under his auspicious rule, husbandry revived, arts were encouraged, and the turbulent barons were awed into subjection. Scotland recovered during his administration in a great measure from the devastation that had preceded it; and the peasants, forgetting the stern warrior in the beneficent monarch, long remembered his sway under the name of the “good King Robert’s reign.” But the greatness of his character appeared most of all from the events that occurred after his death. When the capacity with which he and his worthy associates Randolph and Douglas had counterbalanced the superiority of English arms was withdrawn, the fabric which they had supported fell to the ground. In the very first battle which was fought after his death at Hamildon Hill, a larger army than that which conquered at Bannockburn was overthrown by the archers of England, without a single knight couching his spear. Never at any subsequent period was Scotland able to stand the more powerful arms of the English yeomanry. Thenceforward her military history is little more than a melancholy catalogue of continued defeats, occasioned rather by treachery on the part of her nobles or incapacity in her generals than any defect of valor in her soldiers; and the independence of the monarchy was maintained rather by the terror which the name of Bruce and the remembrance of Bannockburn had inspired than by the achievements of any of the successors to his throne. The merits of Robert Bruce as a warrior are very generally acknowledged; and the eyes of Scottish patriotism turn with the greater exultation to his triumphs from the contrast which their splendor affords to the barren annals of the subsequent reigns. But the important consequences of his victories are not sufficiently appreciated. But for his bold and unconquerable spirit, Scotland might have shared with Ireland the severity of English conquest; and instead of exulting now in the prosperity of our country, the energy of our peasantry, and the patriotic spirit of our resident landed proprietors, we might have been deploring with her an absent nobility, an oppressive tenantry, a bigoted and ruined people. EDWARD III, KING OF ENGLAND. BY DAVID HUME.