"'Tis now five o'clock and we have no accounts of any of the enimie being come further than Dodoch, where a partie of them came last night, so I'll detain the messenger. This goes by no stranger. Perhaps they may find the roads impracticable, and by the burning that they can advance no further,--at which, indeed, I shall not be much surprised; and if so, may be forced to delay their extraordinary march til more human weather for making warr. The King was forced, sore against his will, to give these burning orders,--as all of us were, could wee have helpt it; but this extrodinar manuver of the enimie made it absolutly necessary: a fingor must be cut of to save the whole body. I have ordered some copies of a proclamation to be sent you, there is about two of the places burnt, and ther's another order about the rest. Adieu. "It were not amiss that this proclamation was sent to London. The little young letter enclosed is for Lady Wigton, which pray cause deliver." On Tuesday, the last day of January, the Duke of Argyle passed the river Eru, and took possession of Tullibardine. It has been stated by several historians that the Jacobites fled from Perth on the same day; but the following letter from Lord Mar, dated the first of February, shows that the flight could not have taken place until the following day. This curious letter, which was written at the early hour of six in the morning, is unfinished. It is the last in the series of that correspondence which has formed of itself a narrative of Lord Mar's life, from his first taking upon himself the office of General and Commander-in-Chief, to the hour when he virtually resigned that command. In the midst of pressing danger his sanguine nature seems not to have deserted him: his love of the underplots of life, the influence of "Kate Bruce," and the arrangements for a coronation, were as much in his thoughts as in the more hopeful days before Sherriff Muir and Preston. "Wednesday, about six forenoon, ffebruary 1st, 1716. "On Monday evening I gave you the trouble of a greatly long letter, mostly on indifferent subjects, and sent it off yesterday to A. W. If I was too tedious upon what concerned a woman and a Prince, it was with a good intent, and to make matters plain. By what I hear from R. B., and the Hole, that Argyle's forces were yesterday forenoon at Stirling, and so was the regiments of dragoons there and St. Ninian's, for accounts of motions there and thereabouts, on both sydes of the river,--you may expect it best sent from R. B., the Hole, and a grave gentleman.