Or echoes from the groaning ground
The warrior's measured tread?
Is it the lightning's quivering glance
That on the thicket streams,
Or do they flash on spear and lance
The sun's retiring beams?

I see the dagger-crest of Mar,

I see the Moray's silver star,
Wave o'er the cloud of Saxon war,

That up the lake comes winding far!
To hero, bound for battle strife,

Or bard of martial lay,

'T were worth ten years of peaceful life,
One glance at their array!

3. Their light-armed archers far and near,
Surveyed the tangled ground,

Their center ranks, with pike and spear,
A twilight forest frowned,

Their barbed horsemen, in the rear,
The stern battalia crowned.
No cymbal clashed, no clarion rang,
Still were the pipe and drum;
Save heavy tread, and armor's clang,
The sullen march was dumb.

4. There breathed no wind their crests to shake, Or wave their flags abroad;

Scarce the frail *aspen seemed to quake,
That shadowed o'er their road;
Their vanward scouts no tidings bring,
Can rouse no lurking foe,

Nor spy a trace of living thing,

Save when they stirred the roe;
The host moves, like a deep sea-wave,
Where ride no rocks, its pride to brave,
High-swelling, dark, and slow.

The lake is passed, and now they gain
A narrow and a broken plain,
Before the Trosach's rugged jaws:
And here, the horse and spearmen pause,
While to explore a dangerous glen,
Dive through the pass the archer-men.

5. At once there rose so wild a yell
Within that dark and narrow dell,

As all the fiends, from heaven that fell,
Had pealed the banner-cry of hell!
Forth from the pass in tumult driven,
Like chaff before the wind of heaven,
The archery appear;

For life! for life! their flight they ply;
While shriek, and shout, and battle-cry,
And plaids and bonnets waving high,
And broadswords flashing to the sky,
Are maddening in the rear.

6. Onward they drive, in dreadful race,
Pursuers and pursued;

Before that tide of flight and chase,
How shall it keep its rooted place,

The spearmen's twilight wood?

"Down! down!" cried Mar, "your lances down!
Bear back both friend and foe!"
Like reeds before the tempest's frown,
That serried grove of lances brown
At once, lay leveled low;

And closely shouldering side to side,
The bristling ranks the onset bide,
"We'll quell the savage mountaineer,
As their Tinchell cows the game!
They come as fleet as mountain deer,
We'll drive them back as tame."

7. Bearing before them in their course
The relics of the archer force,
Like wave with crest of sparkling foam,
Right onward did Clan-Alpine come.
Above their tide, each broadsword bright
Was brandishing like gleam of light,
Each targe was dark below;
And with the ocean's mighty swing,
When heaving to the tempest's wing,
They hurled them on the foe.
I heard the lance's shivering crash,
As when the whirlwind rends the ash;
I heard the broadsword's deadly clang,
As if a hundred anvils rang;

But Moray wheeled his rearward rank
Of horsemen on Clan-Alpine's flank,

"My banner-man, advance!

I see," he cried, "their column shake:
Now, gallants! for your ladies' sake,
Upon them with the lance!"

8. The horsemen dashed among the rout
As deer break through the broom;
Their steeds are stout, their swords are out,
They soon made lightsome room.
Clan-Alpine's best are backward borne;
Where, where was Roderick then?
One blast upon his bugle-horn
Were worth a thousand men.
And refluent through the pass of fear,
The battle's tide was poured;
Vanished the Saxon's struggling spear,
Vanished the mountain sword.

As Bracklinn's chasm, so black and steep
Receives her roaring +linn,

As the dark caverns of the deep
Suck the wild whirlpool in,
So did the deep and darksome pass
Devour the battle's mingled mass;
None linger now upon the plain,
Save those who ne'er shall fight again.

CXXVII.--THE BAPTISM.

FROM WILSON.

JOHN WILSON, for more than thirty years Professor in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, is better known as the principal editor of Blackwood's Magazine, and its chief contributor, under the name of Christopher North. He has written numerous interesting tales, descriptive of Scotch life and manners.

KIRK; Scotch for Church. KITTLE; dangerous, ticklish.

1. THE rite of baptism had not been performed for several months in the kirk of Lanark. It was now the hottest time of persecution; and the inhabitants of that parish found other places in which to worship God and celebrate the *ordinances of religion. It was now the sabbath-day, and a small congregation of about a hundred souls, had met for divine service, in a place more magnificent than any temple

that human hands had ever built to Deity. The congregation had not assembled to the toll of the bell, but each heart knew the hour and observed it; for there are a hundred sundials among the hills, woods, moors, and fields; and the shepherd and the peasant see the hours passing by them, in sunshine and shadow.

2. The church in which they were assembled was hewn by God's hand, out of the eternal rock. A river rolled its way through a mighty chasm of cliffs, several hundred feet high, of which the one side presented enormous masses, and the other, corresponding recesses, as if the great stone girdle had been rent by a convulsion. The channel was overspread with prodigious fragments of rocks or large loose stones, some of them smooth and bare, others containing soil and verdure in their rents and fissures, and here and there, crowned with shrubs and trees. The eye could at once command a long-stretching vista, seemingly closed and shut up at both extremities by the coalescing cliffs. This majestic reach of river contained pools, streams, and waterfalls innumerable; and when the water was low—which was now the case, in the common drought-it was easy to walk up this scene with the calm, blue sky overhead, an utter and sublime solitude.

3. On looking up, the soul was bowed down by the feeling of that prodigious height of unscalable, and often overhanging cliff. Between the channel and the summit of the far extended precipices, were perpetually flying rooks and wood-pigeons, and now and then a hawk, filling the profound abyss with their wild cawing, deep murmur, or shrilly shriek. Sometimes a heron would stand erect and still, on some little stone island, or rise up like a white cloud along the black walls of the chasm, and disappear. Winged creatures alone could inhabit this region. The fox and wild cat chose more accessible haunts. Yet, here came the persecuted Christians and worshiped God, whose hand hung over their head those magnificent pillars and arches, scooped out those galleries from the solid rock, and laid at their feet the calm water, in its transparent beauty, in which they could see themselves sitting in reflected groups, with their Bibles in their hands.

4. Here, upon a semicircular ledge of rocks, over a narrow

chasm of which, the tiny stream played in a murmuring water-fall, and divided the congregation into two equal parts, sat about a hundred persons, all devoutly listening to their minister, who stood before them on what might be called a small, natural pulpit of living stone. Up to it there led a short flight of steps, and over it waved the canopy of a tall, graceful birch-tree. The pulpit stood in the middle of the channel, directly facing the congregation, and separated from them by the clear, deep, sparkling pool, into which the scarce heard water poured over the blackened rock. The water, as it left the pool, separated into two streams, and flowed on each side of that altar, thus placing it in an island, whose large mossy stones were richly embowered under the golden blossoms and green tresses of the broom.

5. At the close of divine service, a row of maidens, all clothed in purest white, came gliding off from the congregation, and crossing the murmuring stream on stepping stones, arranged themselves at the foot of the pulpit, with those who were about to be baptized. Their devout fathers, just as though they had been in their own kirk, had been sitting there during worship, and now stood up before the minister. The baptismal water, taken from that *pellucid pool, was lying, consecrated, in an appropriate receptacle, formed by the upright stones that composed one side of the pulpit, and the holy rite proceeded.

6. Some of the younger ones in that semicircle, kept gazing down into the pool, in which the whole scene was reflected; and now and then, in spite of the grave looks and admonishing whispers of their elders, letting fall a pebble into the water, that they might judge of its depth, from the length of time that elapsed before the clear air-bells lay sparkling on the agitated surface. The rite was over, and the religious service of the day closed by a psalm. The mighty rocks hemmed in the holy sound, and sent it in a more compact volume, clear, sweet, and strong, up to heaven. When the psalm ceased, an echo, like a spirit's voice was heard dying away, high up among the magnificent *architecture of the cliffs; and once more might be noticed in the silence, the reviving voice of the water-fall.

7. Just then, a large stone fell from the top of the cliff