summer's day of Bannockburn, in which Edward II. was repelled, and the gallant army of his father annihilated; the energy and wisdom of the Bruce's civil administration after the victory; the less famous, but noble battle of Byland, nine years after Bannockburn, in which he again smote the foes of his country; and the recognition which at last he procured, on the accession of Edward III., of the independence of Scotland in 1329, himself dying the same year, his work done and his glory for ever secured,--not to speak of the beautiful legends which have clustered round his history like ivy round an ancestral tower--of the spider on the wall, teaching him the lesson of perseverance, as he lay in the barn sad and desponding in heart--of the strange signal-light upon the shore near his maternal castle of Turnberry, which led him to land, while 'Dark red the heaven above it glow'd, Dark red the sea beneath it flow'd, Red rose the rocks on ocean's brim, In blood-red light her islets swim, Wild screams the dazzled sea-fowl gave, Dropp'd from their crags a plashing wave, The deer to distant covert drew, The blackcock deem'd it day, and crew;' and last, not least, the adventures of his gallant, unquenchable heart, when, in the hand of Douglas,--meet casket for such a gem!--it marched onwards, as it was wont to do, in conquering power, toward the Holy Land;--all this has woven a garland round the brow of Bruce which every civilised nation has delighted to honour, and given him besides a share in the affections and the pride of his own land, with the joy of which 'no stranger can intermeddle.' Bruce has been fortunate in his laureates, consisting of three of Scotland's greatest poets,--Barbour, Scott, and Burns. The last of these has given us a glimpse of the patriot-king, revealing him on the brow of Bannockburn as by a single flash of lightning. The second has, in 'The Lord of the Isles,' seized and sung a few of the more romantic passages of his history. But Barbour has, with unwearied fidelity and no small force, described the whole incidents of Bruce's career, and reared to his memory, not an insulated column, but a broad and deep-set temple of poetry.