with him all the horse and dragoons, and all the standing foot.  By which I conclude, certainly, they are preparing against the landing in the west.  I entreat to hear from you as soon as possible; and am, in the old manner, most sincerely, for all Carleton can say, my lord, your most humble and faithful servant,

     “Dundee.”

It appears by a postscript added on the following day, that before Dundee’s messenger left Lochaber letters had arrived from Melfort.  They seem to have been again full of complaints of the hard things said about him, and of the undeserved dislike with which all classes in Scotland seemed to regard him.  But of help there was no more than the usual vague promises, and glowing accounts of apocryphal successes in Ireland.  Dundee congratulated the Secretary on their master’s good fortune, diplomatically fenced with the question of unpopularity, and reiterated his appeal for succour.

“For the number” [he wrote], “I must leave [that] to the conveniency you have.  The only inconveniency of the delay is, that the honest suffer extremely in the low country in the time, and I dare not go down for want of horse; and, in part, for fear of plundering all, and so making enemies, having no pay.  I wonder you send no ammunition, were it but four or five barrels.  For we have not twenty pounds.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[78] The passage in which Macaulay has explained the condition and sentiment of the Highlanders at this time, will be familiar to every reader.  What may be less familiar is a pamphlet entitled “Remarks on Colonel Stewart’s Sketches of the Highlanders,” published at Edinburgh in 1823, the year after Stewart’s book.

[79] Now the Third Dragoon Guards.

[80] In Napier’s third volume will be found many translations in prose from this poem, from which I have taken a few touches.

[81] Napier (iii. 552, note) quotes the following minute in the records of the Estates:—­“13th May, 1689:  A missive letter from the Viscount of Stormont to the President was read, bearing that the Viscount Dundee had forced his dinner from him at his house of Scone, on Saturday last, and therefore desiring that his intercommuning with him, being involuntary, might be excused.”  He was cited, however as a delinquent, together with his father-in-law, Scott of Scotstarvet and his uncle, Sir John Murray of Drumcairn (a Lord of Session), who had also to assist at the involuntary banquet.  Throughout his short campaign Dundee was careful never to take a penny from the pocket of any private person.  He considered, he said, that he was justified in appropriating the King’s money to the King’s use.

[82] Creichton calls him Lord Kilsyth, but he had not then succeeded to the title.  He is the same who afterwards married Lady Dundee.