KING'S MOUNTAIN.-A BALLAD OF THE CAROLINAS. BY W. GILMORE SIMMS. [The battle of King's Mountain, fought October 7, 1780, constituted a turning point in the war of the Revolution in the South; the British and Tories, under Colonel Ferguson, being defeated, with great slaughter, by the mountaineers of Virginia, Georgia, and the two Carolinas. The battle took place in South Carolina, but only a mile and a half south of the North Carolina line. Colonel Ferguson was one of the most distinguished of the British partisan warriors in America during the Revolution. He was especially opposed, as a great leader of riflemen, to the Southern riflemen; was himself an inventor of an improved rifle which, in that day, gained him large reputation. His bravery was remarkable, as well as his skill. During the battle he used a silver whistle, which was to be heard sounding every where through all the din of the conflict. The Tory chiefs were executed on the spot soon after the battle. Tradition says that ten were hung from the tree which appears on the right in our view of the battle-ground. The Deckard rifle was named, we believe, from a famous maker of that region; it was the weapon most in use among the mountaineers of the South during the period of the Revolution. It is, perhaps, not so generally known that, along the dividing ridges of the two Carolinas, there have been manufacturers of the rifle famous for the excellence of this weapon from a very early period. Even in the Revolution the native rifle has been known to kill across a river 250 yards wide. This range, at that period, was held to be almost miraculous.] MONUMENT ON KING'S MOUNTAIN.. From a thousand deep gorges they gather- 'Neath the crag where the eagle keeps still; Each lonely at first in his roaming, Till the vale to the sight opens fair, IV. Thus a thousand brave hunters assemble 'Neath the shock of the thunder-bolt's blow. Hurrah! V. "The British-the Tories are on us, VI. No war council suffer'd to trifle With the hours devote to the deed; Swift follow'd the grasp of the rifle, Swift follow'd the bound to the steed; And soon, to the eyes of our yeomen, All panting with rage at the sight, Gleamed the long wavy tents of the foemen, As he lay in his camp on the height. Hurrah! VII. Grim dash'd they away as they bounded, And never, with arms of more vigor, Did their bayonets press through the strife, Where, with every swift pull of the trigger, The sharp-shooters dash'd out a life! Hurrah! VIII. 'Twas the meeting of eagles and lions, IX. An hour, and the battle is over, But the terror still stands in the way: THE FOUR GEORGES. SKETCHES OF MANNERS, MORALS, COURT AND TOWN LIFE. III.-GEORGE THE THIRD. QUEEN CHARLOTTE. period would occupy our allotted time, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt of the American colonies; to submit to defeat and separation; to shake under the volcano of the French Revolution; to grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Napoleon; to gasp and rally after that tremendous struggle. The old soIciety, with its courtly splendors, has to pass away; generations of statesmen to rise and disappear; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory; the Sold poets who unite us to Queen Anne's time to Sto sink into their graves; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise; Garrick to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theatre. Steam has to be invented; kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored; Napoleon to be but an episode, and George III. is to be alive through all these varied changes, to accompany his people through all these revolutions of thought, government, society; to survive out of the old world into ours. E have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during that long When I first saw England she was in mourning for the young Princess Charlotte, the hope of the empire. I came from India as a child, and our ship touched at an island on the way home, where my black servant took me a long walk over rocks and hills until we reached a garden where we saw a man walking. "That is he," said the black man: "that is Bonaparte. He eats three sheep every day, and all the little children he can lay hands on!" There were people in the British dominions besides that poor Calcutta serving-man with an equal horror of the Corsican ogre. bright as Hervey's, but as interesting, and even more descriptive of the time, because the letters are the work of many hands. You hear more voices speaking, as it were, and more natural than Horace's dandified treble, and Sporus's malignant whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters—as one looks at Reynolds's noble pictures illustrative of those magnificent times and voluptuous people-one almost hears the voice of the dead past; the laughter and the chorus; the toast called over the brimming cups; the shout at the race-course or the gaming-table'; the merry joke frankly spoken to the laughing fine lady. How fine those ladies were, those ladies who heard and spoke such coarse jokes! how grand those gentlemen! With the same childish attendant I remember peeping through the colonnade at Carlton House, and seeing the abode of the great Prince Regent. I can see yet the Guards pacing before the gates of the place. The place? What place? The palace exists no more than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is but a name now. Where be the sentries who used to salute as the Royal chariots drove in and out? The chariots, with the kings inside, have driven I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the to the realms of Pluto; the tall Guards have fine gentleman, has almost vanished off the face marched into darkness, and the echoes of their of the earth, and is disappearing like the beaver drums are rolling in Hades. Where the palace or the Red Indian. We can't have fine gentleonce stood a hundred little children are paddling men any more, because we can't have the society up and down the steps to St. James's Park. A in which they lived. The people will not obey: score of grave gentlemen are taking their tea at the parasites will not be as obsequious as formerthe Athenæum Club; as many grisly warriors ly: children do not go down on their knees to are garrisoning the United Service Club oppo- beg their parents' blessing: chaplains do not say site. Pall Mall is the great social Exchange of grace and retire before the pudding: servants do London now-the mart of news, of politics, of not say your honor and your worship at every scandal, of rumor the English forum, so to moment: tradesmen do not stand hat in hand speak, where men discuss the last dispatch from as the gentleman passes: authors do not wait for the Crimea, the last speech of Lord Derby, the hours in gentlemen's ante-rooms with a fulsome next move of Lord John. And, now and then, dedication, for which they hope to get five guinto a few antiquarians, whose thoughts are with eas from his lordship. In the days when there the past rather than with the present, it is a were fine gentlemen, Mr. Secretary Pitt's undermemorial of old times and old people, and Pall secretaries did not dare to sit down before him; Mall is our Palmyra. Look! About this spot but Mr. Pitt, in his turn, went down on his Tom of Ten Thousand was killed by Königs- gouty knees to George II.; and when George mark's gang. In that great red house Gains- III. spoke a few kind words to him, Lord Chatborough lived, and Culloden Cumberland, George ham burst into tears of reverential joy and gratIII.'s uncle. Yonder is Sarah Marlborough's itude; so awful was the idea of the monarch, palace, just as it stood when that termagant oc- and so great the distinctions of rank. cupied it. At 25 Walter Scott used to live; at Lord John Russell or Lord Palmerston on their the house now No. 79, and occupied by the So-knees while the Sovereign was reading a dispatch, ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel in For- or beginning to cry because Prince Albert said eign Parts, resided Mrs. Eleanor Gwynn, come- something civil! dian. How often has Queen Caroline's chair At the accession of George III. the patricians issued from under yonder arch! All the men were yet at the height of their good fortune. of the Georges have passed up and down the Society recognized their superiority, which they street. It has seen Walpole's chariot and Chat-themselves pretty calmly took for granted. They ham's sedan; and Fox, Gibbon, Sheridan, on inherited not only titles and estates, and seats in their way to Brookes's; and stately William the House of Peers, but seats in the House of Pitt stalking on the arm of Dundas; and Han-Commons. There were a multitude of Governger and Tom Sheridan reeling out of Raggett's; and Byron limping into Wattier's; and Swift striding out of Bury Street; and Mr. Addison and Dick Steele, both perhaps a little the better for liquor; and the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York clattering over the pavement; and Johnson counting the posts along the streets, after dawdling before Dodsley's win-itics, the pleasures of social life. dow; and Horry Walpole hobbling into his carriage, with a gimcrack just bought out at Christie's; and George Selwyn sauntering into White's. In the published letters to George Selwyn we get a mass of correspondence by no means so brilliant and witty as Walpole's, or so bitter and Fancy ment places, and not merely these, but bribes of actual £500 notes, which members of the House took not much shame in assuming. Fox went into Parliament at 20: Pitt was just of age: his father not much older. It was the good time for patricians. Small blame to them if they took and enjoyed, and over-enjoyed, the prizes of pol In these letters to Selwyn we are made acquainted with a whole society of these defunct fine gentlemen: and can watch with a curious interest a life, which the novel-writers of that time, I think, have scarce touched upon. To Smollett, to Fielding even, a lord was a lord: a gorgeous being with a blue ribbon, a coroneted He in which he reveled, played out; all the rouged chair, and an immense star on his bosom, to whom commoners paid reverence. Richardson, a man of humbler birth than either of the above two, owned that he was ignorant regarding the manners of the aristocracy, and besought Mrs. Donnellan, a lady who had lived in the great world, to examine a volume of Sir Charles Grandison, and point out any errors which she might see in this particular. Mrs. Donnellan found so many faults that Richardson changed color, shut up the book, and muttered that it were best to throw it in the fire. Here, in Selwyn, we have the real original men and women of fashion of the early time of George III. We can follow them to the new club at Almack's: we can travel over Europe with them: we can accompany them not only to the public places, but to their country-houses and private society. Here is a whole company of them; wits and prodigals; some persevering in their bad ways; some repentant, but relapsing; beautiful ladies, parasites, humble chaplains, led captains. Those fair creatures whom we love in Reynolds's portraits, and who still look out on us from his canvases with their sweet calm faces and gracious smiles those fine gentlemen who did us the honor to govern us; who inherited their boroughs, took their ease in their patent places, and slipped Lord North's bribes so elegantly under their ruffles-we make acquaintance with a hundred of these fine folks, hear their talk and laughter, read of their loves, quarrels, intrigues, debts, duels, divorces; can fancy them alive if we read the book long enough. We can attend at Duke Hamilton's wedding, and behold him marry his bride with the curtain-ring: we can peep into her poor sister's death-bed: we can see Charles Fox cursing over the cards, or March bawling After Warner, the most interesting of Selout the odds at Newmarket: we can imagine wyn's correspondents is the Earl of Carlisle, Burgoyne tripping off from St. James's Street to grandfather of the amiable nobleman at present conquer the Americans, and slinking back into Viceroy in Ireland. The grandfather, too, was the club somewhat crest-fallen after his beating: Irish Viceroy, having previously been treasurer we can see the young king dressing himself for of the king's household; and, in 1778, the printhe drawing-room and asking ten thousand ques- cipal commissioner for treating, consulting, and tions regarding all the gentlemen: we can have agreeing upon the means of quieting the divishigh life or low, the struggle at the Opera to be- ions subsisting in his majesty's colonies, plantahold the Violetta or the Zamperini-the Maca- tions, and possessions in North America. You ronies and fine ladies in their chairs trooping may read his lordship's manifestoes in the Royal to the masquerade or Madame Cornelys's - the New York Gazette. He returned to England, crowd at Drury Lane to look at the body of Miss having by no means quieted the colonies; and Ray, whom Parson Hackman has just pistoled-speedily afterward the Royal New York Gazette or we can peep into Newgate, where poor Mr. somehow ceased to be published. Rice, the forger, is waiting his fate and his supper. "You need not be particular about the sauce for his fowl," says one turnkey to another: "for you know he is to be hanged in the morning." "Yes," replies the second janitor, "but the chaplain sups with him, and he is a terrible fellow for melted butter!" Selwyn has a chaplain and parasite, one Dr. Warner, than whom Plautus, or Ben Jonson, or Hogarth never painted a better character. In letter after letter he adds fresh strokes to the portrait of himself, and completes a portrait not a little curious to look at now that the man has passed away; all the foul pleasures and gambols This good, clever, kind, highly-bred Lord Carlisle was one of the English fine gentlemen who was well-nigh ruined by the awful debauchery and extravagance which prevailed in the great English society of those days. Its dissoluteness was awful: it had swarmed over Europe after the Peace; it had danced, and raced, and gambled in all the courts. It had made its bow at Versailles; it had run its horses on the plain of Sablons, near Paris, and created the Anglomania there: it had exported vast quantities of pictures and marbles from Rome and Florence: it had ruined itself by building great galleries and palaces for the reception of the statues and : pictures it had brought over singing-women of manly remorse; from some others he fled and dancing-women from all the operas of Eu- wisely, and ended by conquering them nobly. rope, on whom my lords lavished their thousands, But he always had the good wife and children in while they left their honest wives and honest chil- his mind, and they saved him. "I am very glad dren languishing in the lonely, deserted, splen- you did not come to me the morning I left Londors of the castle and park at home. don," he writes to G. Selwyn, as he is embarking for America. "I can only say, I never knew till that moment of parting what grief was." There is no parting now, where they are. The faithful wife, the kind, generous gentleman, have left a noble race behind them: an inheritor of his name and titles, who is beloved as widely as he is known; a man most kind, accomplished, gentle, friendly, and pure; and female descendants occupying high stations and embellishing great names; some renowned for beauty, and all for spotless lives, and pious, matronly virtues. Besides the great London society of those days, there was another unacknowledged world, extravagant beyond measure, tearing about in the pursuit of pleasure; dancing, gambling, drinking, singing; meeting the real society in the public places (at Ranelaghs, Vauxhalls, and Ridottos, about which our old novelists talk so constantly), and outvying the real leaders of fashion in luxury, and splendor, and beauty. For instance, when the famous Miss Gunning visited Paris as Lady Coventry, where she expected that her beauty would meet with the applause which had followed her and her sister through England, it appears she was put to flight by an English lady still more lovely in the eyes of the Parisians. A certain Mrs. Pitt took a box at the opera opposite the countess; and was so much handsomer than her ladyship, that the parterre cried out that this was the real English angel, whereupon Lady Coventry quitted Paris in a huff. The poor thing died presently of consumption, accelerated, it was said, by the red and white paint with which she plastered those luckless charms of hers. (We must represent to ourselves all fashionable female Europe, at that time, as plastered with white, and raddled with red.) She left two daughters behind her, whom George Selwyn loved (he was curiously fond of little children), and who are described very drolly and pathetically in these letters, in their little nursery, where passionate little Lady Fanny, if she had not good cards, flung hers into Lady Mary's face; and where they sate conspiring how they should receive a new mother-in-law whom their papa presently brought home. They got on very well with their mother-in-law, who was very kind to them; and they grew up, and they were married, and they were both divorced afterward -poor little souls! Poor painted mother, poor society, ghastly in its pleasures, its loves, its revelries! As for my lord commissioner, we can afford to speak about him; because, though he was a wild and weak commissioner at one time, though he hurt his estate, though he gambled and lost ten thousand pounds at a sitting-"five times more," says the unlucky gentleman, "than I ever lost before;" though he swore he never would touch a card again; and yet, strange to say, went back to the table and lost still more: yet he repented of his errors, sobered down, and became a worthy peer and a good country gentleman, and returned to the good wife and the good children whom he had always loved with the best part of his heart. He had married at one-and-twenty. He found himself, in the midst of a dissolute society, at the head of a great forForced into luxury, and obliged to be a great lord and a great idler, he yielded to some temptations, and paid for them a bitter penalty tune. Another of Selwyn's correspondents is the Earl of March, afterward Duke of Queensberry, whose life lasted into this century; and who certainly as earl or duke, young man or graybeard, was not an ornament to any possible society. The legends about old Q. are awful. In Selwyn, in Wraxall, and contemporary chronicles, the observer of human nature may follow him, drinking, gambling, intriguing to the end of his career; when the wrinkled, palsied, toothless old Don Juan died, as wicked and unrepentant as he had been at the hottest season of youth and passion. There is a house in Piccadilly, where they used to show a certain low window at which old Q. sat to his very last days, ogling through his senile glasses the women as they passed by. There must have been a great deal of good about this lazy, sleepy George Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his present credit. "Your friendship," writes Carlisle to him, "is so different from any thing I have ever met with or seen in the world, that when I recollect the extraordinary proofs of your kindness, it seems to me like a dream." "I have lost my oldest friend and acquaintance, G. Selwyn," writes Walpole to Miss Berry: "I really loved him, not only for his infinite wit, but for a thousand good qualities." I am glad, for my part, that such a lover of cakes and ale should have had a thousand good qualities-that he should have been friendly, generous, warm-hearted, trust-worthy. "1 rise at six," writes Carlisle to him, from Spa (a great resort of fashionable people in our ancestors' days), "play at cricket till dinner, and dance in the evening till I can scarcely crawl to bed at eleven. There is a life for you! You get up at nine; play with Raton your dog till twelve, in your dressing-gown; then creep down to White's; are five hours at table; sleep till supper-time; and then make two wretches carry you in a sedan-chair, with three pints of claret in you, three miles for a shilling." Occasionally, instead of sleeping at White's, George went down and snoozed in the House of Commons by the side of Lord North. He represented Gloucester for many years, and had a borough of his own, Ludgershall, for which, when he was too lazy to contest Gloucester, he sat himself. "I have given directions for the election of Ludgers |