The noble Oak of Ellerslie sheltered the birth-place of Wallace. Centuries have passed since then, and now it stands in the centre of a small common, time-worn and reft of all its greatness, a magnificent ruin; although, within the memory of man, its ample branches extended over a Scotch acre of ground. Wallace, and the children of the village, used to play beneath its shelter: they would gather acorns for cups and balls, and rest on the green sward when they were hot and weary. A poet, perhaps, would tell you that the patriarchal tree loved to look down on the young "wee things," whose remotest ancestors--precursors, it may be, of a thousand generations, to the period concerning which we speak--had dwelt beside it; that it liked to screen them from the noonday heat; and that, when a sudden shower, driving furiously from off the hills, made the fondlings haste beneath its branches, it kept off the heavy rain-drops that they might not harm the merry crowd. Certain it is that the village children liked best to play beneath the shade of the old oak, and that their parents knew where to seek for the young truants, when they had wandered from school or home. We can all enter into the feelings of children, for we have been children ourselves; we can remember how the primrose and the cowslip, although the gathering of them often gained for us both colds and chidings; the nest of the hedge-sparrow, or the coming forth of the white thorn, were things of vast importance; what delight the finding of them imparted, and how every new object powerfully excited the young mind, because they had all, and each, the charm of novelty. We know, also, that as months and years pass on, somewhat of care begins to steal across all this joyousness, as the shadow of a passing cloud obscures a sunny landscape; that the cares of every day occurrence--the difficulty of finding bread for a large young family--the father's weariness after a day of labour, and the anxious feelings of the mother, are soon shared in by children. They feel more than any one imagines who does not vividly remember what his or her feelings have been in very early life, although the feelings were not, perhaps, depressed by circumstances of equal trial. Time goes on, and it is not only home sorrows that engross the mind; if the days in which they live, are stormy, and men speak of their country's wrongs, the striplings aspire to aid in seeking redress; and the ardour by which their fathers are excited, is reflected in them with double vividness. Thus it was at the period when Wallace lived. The thoughts of all were much engrossed by the terrible condition of the country, and the once playful children, who used to assemble beneath the Oak of Ellerslie, now grown up to boyhood, heard from their fathers that the English army was advancing with all speed towards the border land. Edward led them on, but he had no right to the crown of Scotland. Alexander III., who had