as now shown is decidedly too big, too ponderous and unwieldy ever to have been used in actual fight. Only a Clan Samson or Clan Goliath, and all of them of ancestral stature and strength, could hope to wield such an arm in the heat and hurry of conflict with anything like dexterity and ease. Like the immense two-handed "Wallace" style of sword that is sometimes shown to you as having been the favourite weapon of some celebrated warrior of the middle ages and subsequent centuries, but which it is simply impossible that any mere man could ever have wielded with effect in actual fight, the modern Lochaber axe is too gigantic for use, and must have been manufactured, a big pattern of a lesser weapon, merely for parade and show. That a weapon of the kind, however, once existed, and was a favourite arm with the men of Lochaber, is unquestionable, and a truly formidable weapon it must have been. With a crescent axe face to cut with, it had a hook at the back by which horsemen could be caught hold of and dragged from their saddles, to be despatched at leisure as they lay helpless upon the ground. The shaft was necessarily of considerable length, about six feet, of ash or other tough wood, and of no greater girth than a common hay-fork handle. The shaft of the modern weapon, however, is between seven and eight feet long, and of a girth that an ordinary hand does not suffice to grasp. The axe proper, too, or head of the arm usually shown as a Lochaber axe, is nearly twice the weight of that of the older and more business-like weapon. An Indian tomahawk with a six-foot shaft, or a mediæval knight's battle-axe with a six-foot handle, such as that with which the Bruce cleft the skull of Henry de Boune at Bannockburn, would probably be nearer to the pattern of the original Lochaber axe than the ridiculously big and cumbrous modern article. You remember the scene in Scott's Lord of the Isles-- "Of Hereford's high blood he came, A race renown'd for knightly fame. He burn'd before his Monarch's eye, To do some deed of chivalry. He spurr'd his steel, he couched his lance, And darted on the Bruce at once. "As motionless as rocks, that bide The wrath of the advancing tide, The Bruce stood fast. Each breast beat high, And dazzled was each gazing eye. The heart had hardly time to think, The eyelid scarce had time to wink, While on the King, like flash of flame, Spurr'd to full speed the warhorse came! The partridge may the falcon mock, If that slight palfrey stand the shock; But, swerving from the knight's career, Just as they met, Bruce shunn'd the spear.