After a victory achieved in the face of difficulties so formidable; with what feelings must the hero of Stirling Bridge and the Scottish aristocracy have regarded each other! The mighty force of him whom they had acknowledged as their Lord Paramount, was now broken and dispersed before the superior valour and steadiness of one whom they had so rashly abandoned. In the rich harvest of laurels which had been acquired, they had excluded themselves from all participation; and, though conscious that they could not lay claim to a single leaf, they were sensible that the heroism of their late companions would soon be emblazoned through every country in Europe; while they had the mortification to reflect, that the tale of their own pusillanimous submission, would be held up as a counterpart to the gallantry of those friends whom they had so shamefully forsaken in the road to immortality. APPENDIX. A. WALLACE’S TREE.--TORWOOD. Page 179. The following memoranda respecting this celebrated tree, will doubtless be acceptable to the reader:[120] “In Dunipace parish is the famous Torwood, in the middle of which there are the remains of Wallace’s Tree, an oak, which, according to a measurement when entire, was said to be about 12 feet diameter. To this wood Wallace is said to have fled, and secreted himself in the body of that tree, then hollow, after his defeat in the north.”--_Stat. Acc._ iii. 336. “This oak is still dignified by the name of _Wallace’s Tree_. It stands in the middle of a swampy moss, having a causeway round its ruins; and its destruction has been much precipitated, by the veneration in which the Scottish hero has been long held; numerous pieces have been carried off, to be converted into various memorials of the Champion of Scotland.”--_Kerr’s Hist. of Bruce_, i. 127. “Wallace’s Oak, as it has been called for ages, still remains in the Torwood near Stirling. The old tradition of the country bears, that Sir William Wallace, after a lost battle, secreted himself in this tree, and escaped the pursuit of his enemies. By this account, it behoved then, that is, about 500 years ago, to have been a large tree. Whatever may be its age, it certainly has in its ruins the appearance of greater antiquity than what I have observed in any tree in Scotland. “At a very remote period it has separated in the middle, and the one half of it has mouldered entirely away. The other half remains, and is in one place about twenty feet high. But what the tree was above this height, is unknown. All the original part of the tree is putrid. Yet one may perceive that the whole of it, from the head to the very bark, has been red wood, and is so hard even in its putrid state as to admit of a polish.