It is to one of these frightful outcomes of human ferocity, an event with which even after a period of 200 years that all Scotland, and especially all the Highlands, rings from side to side, and which unborn generations shall shudder at, that we propose to turn the attention of the readers of the _Celtic Magazine_. We do so partly, no doubt, from the extreme interest of the subject, and partly also, because important lessons of humanity, of forgiveness, of hatred at wrong and oppression, of the benefits of civilization, of the gratitude we feel for the extinction of clan quarrels and feuds, and the thousand other irregularities and inhumanities which once defaced the grandest of landscapes, and marred a noble and a manly race of men; because such lessons may be, if not formally drawn, yet may pervade and penetrate the whole story as with a living moral. The occasion of the Massacre of Glencoe was as follows:--Although the Lowlands, since the date of the Revolution, were now quiet, it was far different with the Highlands. There, indeed, the wind was down, but still the sea ran high. The Highlanders were at that time very poor, very discontented, and very pugnacious. To subdue them seemed a long and difficult process. To allow them to exterminate one another, and re-enact on a much larger scale, the policy of the battle between the clans on the North Inch of Perth seemed as unwise as it was cruel. There was a third course proposed and determined on, that of buying them up, bribing them in short, applying that golden spur which has, in all ages, made the laziest horse to go, and the most restive to be obedient. The Government of King William resolved to apply to this purpose a sum variously estimated at £12,000 and £20,000. This sum was committed to John, Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a powerful branch of the great Clan Campbell. He was one of the most unprincipled men of that day; had turned his coat, and would have turned his skin had it been possible and worth while; and is described by a contemporary as "Grave as a Spaniard, cunning as a fox, wiry as a serpent, and slippery as an eel." He was the worst of persons to have the charge of pacifying the Highlands committed to him, being distrusted by both parties, and hated by the Jacobites with a deadly hatred. Nevertheless the negotiations went on, although slowly. Breadalbane lived at Kilchurn Castle, which, now a fine old ruin, stands on the verge of the magnificent Loch Awe, looks up to the gigantic Ben Cruachan, and which Wordsworth has glorified in one of his finest minor poems. To that romantic castle, now silent in its age, but then resounding with the music and revelry of the clans, were to be seen some of the leading Jacobite chieftains crossing the mighty mountains to the northwest, and holding conferences with the crafty head of the Campbells; and on the 30th of January 1690 a large assembly met at Achallaster in Glenorchy, to arrange matters between the Earl and the