Flodden" has given way to hedges; its heather to corn; and the very King's Chair itself is broken by the hammer and the pick; but the wooded ridge and the little well will not easily be annihilated; and many a ruin or site in the neighbourhood, connected with the field of Flodden, or with stirring passages in border warfare, render this a most delightful resort for a summer-day's party; especially of such as have hearts and imaginations to raise again the ruined ranks, and see as Scott saw, the last scene of that contest, when

On the darkening heath

More desperate grew the strife of death.
The English shafts in volleys hailed,
In headlong charge their horse assailed;
Front, flank, and rear, the squadrons sweep,
To break the Scottish circle deep,

That fought around their king.

But yet, though thick the shafts as snow,
Though charging knights like whirlwinds go,

Though bill-men ply the ghastly blow,

Unbroken was the ring.

The stubborn spearmen still made good

Their dark impenetrable wood.

Each stepping where his comrade stood,

The instant that he fell.

No thought was there of dastard flight;

Linked in the sorried phalanx tight,

Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,

As fearlessly and well;

Till utter darkness closed her wing

O'er their thin host, and wounded king.

Then skilful Surrey's sage commands
Led back from strife his shattered bands;

And from the charge they drew;

As mountain waves from wasted lands
Sweep back to ocean blue.

Then did their loss his foemen know;

Their king, their lords, their mightiest low,
They melted from the field as snow

When streams are swoln and south winds blow,
Dissolves in silent dew.

Tweed's echoes heard the ceaseless plash,

While many a broken band,
Disordered, through her currents dash,

To gain the Scottish land;

To town and tower, to down and dale,
To tell red Flodden's dismal tale
And raise the universal wail.
Tradition, legend, tune and song,
Shall many an age that wail prolong;
Still from the sire the son shall hear
Of the stern strife and carnage drear,

Of Flodden's fatal field,

Where shivered was fair Scotland's spear,

And broken was her shield.

The ballads and traditions of Scotland are full of the lamentation and the desolation long produced there by this fatal battle.

"The Scots," says Sir Walter Scott, "were much disposed to dispute the fact that James IV. had fallen on Flodden Field. Some said he had retired from the kingdom, and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Others pretended that, in the twilight, when the field was nigh ended, four tall horsemen came into the field, having each a bunch of straw on the point of their spears, as a token for them to know each other by. They said these men mounted the king on a dun hackney, and that he was seen to cross the Tweed with them at nightfall. Nobody pretended to say what they did with him, but it was believed

he was murdered in Howe Castle; and I recollect about forty years since, that there was a report that, in cleaning the drawwell of that ruinous fortress, the workmen found a skeleton wrapt in a bull's hide, and having a belt of iron round the waist. There was, however, no truth in this rumour. It was the absence of this belt of iron which the Scots founded upon to prove that the body of James could not have fallen into the hands of the English, since they either had not that token to show, or did not produce it. But it is not unlikely that he would lay aside such a cumbrous article of penance on a day of battle; or the English, when they despoiled his person, may have thrown it aside as of no value. The body which the English affirm to have been that of James, was found on the field by Lord Dacre, and carried by him to Berwick, and presented to Surrey. Both of these lords knew James's person too well to be mistaken. The body was also acknowledged by his two favourite attendants, Sir William Scott and Sir James Forman, who wept at beholding it."

The singular history of these remains, Stow, in his "Survey of London." 4to, p. 539, thus furnishes from his own knowledge. What a strange end for so proud and chivalrous a king, and what treatment from the hands of a brother-inlaw—Henry VIII.—who certainly refused the body Christian burial!

"After the battle, the bodie of the same king being found, was closed in lead, and conveyed from thence to London, and to the monasterie of Sheyne in Surrey, where it remained for a

time, in what order I am not certaine; but since the dissolution of that house, in the reygne of Edward the Sixt, Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolke, being lodged, and keeping house there, I have been shewed the same bodie so lapped in lead, close to the head and bodie, throwne into a waste room amongst the old timber, lead, and other rubble. Since the which time, workmen there for their foolish pleasure, hewed off his head; and Lancelot Young, master glazier to Queen Elizabeth, feelinge a sweet savour to come from thence, and yet the form remaining, with the hair of the head and beard red, brought it to London to his house in Wood-street, where (for a time) he kept it for the sweetness; but, in the end, caused the sexton of that church to bury it amongst other bones, taken out of their charnel."

THE man of genius is often looked upon as a being that shuts himself up, and knows little of what is going on in the real world around him. He is supposed to live in a fairyland of his own creation-often a very barren and profitless one-full of all manner of enchantments and magical delusions. In reference to him, men of arts and sciences, the men of spinning-jennies and steam-engines-nay, the naturalists, and many other writers -talk of themselves as practical men. They often smile at the