to which he was stimulated by a passion to see the polar regions, and he was in that respect highly gratified.

A fondness for travelling induced him to make a voyage to America, where the spirit of adventure led him to pass a considerable time among the Indians, in the back settlements; but he finally settled in Maryland, becoming a considerable proprietor of lands in Virginia, and occupying one of the most delightful seats on the picturesque banks of the Potowmac. Here he combined the occupation of a cultivator, with that of a physician, when the commencement of the disputes between the colonies and the mother country rendered it necessary for every man to declare himself on one side or the other. As the republican, or liberty, party were in truth the descendants of the very families who had been driven from England by the intolerance of the Stuarts, and as Dr. S. Stuart inherited the political errors and prejudices of his family, which he cherished to the last day of his life, he be, came a staunch supporter of the pretensions of the mother country, and so bitter in his hatred of the modern round-heads, that his residence soon became unpleasant and dangerous.

Hence, abandoning his profession and the arts of peace, we find hin in 1774 a captain in the Western Virginia troops, when he particularly distinguished himself in a severe action against the Indians; and, on the rebellion, as he always called it, breaking out, he openly attached himself to the British government, in a province where, for three counties around him, there was scarcely another loyalist. He was, in consequence, soon marked out for public vengeance, and com pelled to abandon his home, his fortune, and his family, in October 1775. After encountering many dangers, the nearest British post being 320 miles from his residence, he joined the British army; and being appointed a captain in the Queen's Royal Regiment of Rangers, was ordered on a most important and perilous expedition; but, after conducting the enterprise in perfect safety, nearly four hundred miles, on the day after he relinquished the charge, he was taken prisoner, and rigidly confined.

On the 30th of December, he escaped from a guard of 50 men, at the peril of his life, and travelled three hundred miles on foot over the Alleganey mountain, the most inaccessible and extensive in the world, in an extremely rigorous winter, almost destitute of clothes and food, and encountered a series of dangers and hardships scarcely to be paralleled. He was however recaptured when nearly out of danger, and dragged seven hundred miles, bound with cords, and delivered up a prisoner at Philadelphia. Here he suffered captivity, during eighs teen months, and subsisted only on bread and water, in dungeons, and in irons. Being ordered to be taken after the Congress, which had fled from Philadelphia to Baltimore, he was compelled to march one hundred and fifty miles in irons, forced on with bayonets, and cover. ed with blood, occasioned by the irons and broken blisters. Unable to

march any farther, by the wounds and lacerations of the irons, he was thrown into the hold of a privateer, upon pig-iron and stones, the ballast of the vessel, where he was kept, without food and clothes, for three days and nights, in the snow that was falling fast through the hatches, and still in irons. At length, however, having again effected his escape, and having a fourth time undergone great hardships and dangers almost incredible, in passing down the great bay of Chesapeak, two hundred miles by water, and more than three hundred by land, through a hostile country, where he was well known, and while a high reward was offered for securing him, he got safe on board the Preston, then 21 miles out at sea, where he had been tossed about in a storm all night in a canoe. During these very hazardous escapes, he was, of course, under the necessity of expending considerable sums of money; but so ardent was his loyalty and zeal, that, on his arrival at New York, he declined accepting a very handsome gratuity, in money, from Sir William Howe, the British commander in chief. He afterwards did duty in the Loyal American Regiment, as a captain, and in the 420, or Royal Highland-regiment. Besides forty-five men in the Loyal American regiment, he raised a corps of one hundred and eighty-five chosen men, out of Clifton. Chambers, and Allen's regiments, at a very great expense. From that time he commanded his corps, as captain commandant, in the most active service, until he was attached, by his own choice, with all his men, to the Queen's Rangers. He used to relate, that, during this period he refused high and flattering commissions from the Americans; that before he left his house, he defended it against a superior force, till one of his servants was killed, and himself dangerously wounded; that, while he was in the hands of the enemy, he prevented numbers of British prisoners from entering into the American army; that he hazarded his life in saving Detroit and Upper Canada from falling into the hands of the enemy; that, during his escape, he, by his advice and influence, preserved many loyalists from utter destruction, to the number of one thousand families and that, in the Danbury expedition, with only ten men, he repulsed and drove back, with fixed bayonets, above one hundred of the enemy, who greatly harassed the rear of the British army, leaving nineteen dead on the field. That, at the capture of Philadelphia, he discover. ed eighteen serviceable pieces of cannon concealed in the Delaware ; that with a small detachment covering the wood-cutters near Derby, being attacked by six times his force, he repulsed them, and killed more of the enemy than his detachment consisted of; that he was particularly distinguished at the action of Edgehill, against a great superiority of the very best troops of the enemy (Morgan's riflemen), pursuing them to the abattis of Washington's camp; that with only two men he went into the country beyond a considerable force of the enemy, at noon-day, and captured a very active partizan officer. That en the first of May 1778, in the battle of the Crooked Billet, he total

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ly routed nine hundred of the enemy, with only sixty-five Officers and men of the Queen's Rangers, leaving two hundred dead in the field, and taking sixty-seven prisoners, with their waggons, baggage, &c. That, at Croswick's Creek, upon Captain Stephenson being shot by his side, he, with eighty men, attacked the enemy, consisting of two thousand five hundred, with six pieces of cannon, drove them from the bridge which they had fortified, and secured the safe passage of the British army. That, at the battle of Freehold, the regiment bee ing only three hundred and forty strong, having alone, and unsupports ed, sustained the attacks of five thousand of the enemy, under General Lee, during two hours: and commanding eighty men, as a forlorn hope, he was ordered to sustain the attack of the whole column of the enemy, in order to cover and secure the retreat of the rest of the de tachment; but, after a long and severe conflict, in a narrow pass, in which he posted his men. Ire repulsed the enemy. And that in the evening of the said memorable day, being again detached with twa companies under his command, to cover the retreat of some troops in danger of being cut off by a very superior force, after performing that service, he, by an ambuscade, killed five and captured twenty-seven of the enemy.

Such was part of the summary of his services in this inglorious and disastrous contest in a cause which he thought meritorious, and which was thought by tens of thousands, besides him, to be in the laudible defence of their" King and country;" though it is now universally felt, that the Americans were fighting in defence of their dear est privileges as freemen. On such a subject, the errors of a Stuart may, however, be forgiven more than that of any other man.

To be continued.

The Man in the Mask, at the Execution of King Charles I.

"The fatal day (of execution) being come, at ten of the clock, attended by a regiment of foot and a guard of partizans, his majesty was conveyed through a window of the banqueting house to the scaffold, covered with black, where he beheld the executioner in a mask, at which he was not at all affrighted, but declaring himself to the world, to die an innocent man and a good Christian, according to the profes sion of the church of England, praying that his

enemies might repent, and that his death might not be laid to their charge. After which, with a Christian magnanimity, he endured the fatal stroke which separated his head from his body: both were put into a coffin, and carried into his lodging at Whitehall, and from thence to St. James's, and put into a leaden coffin; and, on the 7th of February, interred by James Duke of Lennox, the Marquises of Hartford and Dorcester, the Earl of Lindsay, and Dr. Juxton, bishop of London, in a vault in the Abbey of Westminster, with this inscription upon the coffin in capital letters,

The above extract we have thought proper, as introductory to the following narrative.

Curious Anecdote of Lord Stairs, Lieutenant General of the English Army, and who was the British Ambassador in France towards the end of the Reign of Lewis XIV and during the Regency.—(Trans lated from the French ).

George II. on return to his capital, after the affair of Etinghen, supported impatiently the presence of Lord Stairs. He could not pardon him for having uselessly published the dangers of the English Army, by which, but for the bold imprudence of the Duke de Grammont, it would have been completely defeated.

Lord Stairs was not slow in perceiving the dispo sitions of the Prince, and not wishing to expose himself to a greater disgrace, he was making preparations for retiring to this estates in Scotland, when he received the following note:-ogo was

"My Lord,

"You are brave, we are convinced of it. But are you enough so, to come alone, to-morrow, at the decline of day, to the entrance of the Somerset coffeehouse, where you will be wwaited on by a person who, if you dare follow him, will conduct you into a quarter of the city little frequented, but where you will find one who ardently wishes to see you, and to unfold to you some mysteries which are of the most extreme importance that you can imagine, and that cannot be trusted to paper. #

"P. S. If you fear this is any project upon your purse, take nothing with you that you can be robbed of."

Surprised, as we may suppose, on reading this letter, his Lordship imagined at first it was a trap by some secret enemy, or some affair of a more delicate nature, where the heroine had probably motives for acting thus; as the postscript did away every other species of fear.

On which his Lordship immediately formed his resolution, as, in either case, he would have believed his honour compromised in refusing the proposed

rendezvous.

The next day, in consequence, armed with his sword and a pair of good pistols, he went to the Somerset coffee-house, found there a man, who, without speaking, made a sign to follow him, and arrived, after half an hour's walk, at the extremity of one of the suburbs, in a street almost unoccupied, where his conductor stopping at the door of an old and small house, opened it, shewed him a stair-case, and said to him. "Go up, my Lord," and shut the door on him. :

The courageous Lord, holding his sword in one hand, a pistol in the other, arrived at the top of the stair-case, saw opposite an old door, half opened, a