Hills; the Lammermoor, where only mountain-sheep can be at home. The crossing of which, by any of its boggy passes, and brawling stream-courses, no Army, hardly a solitary Scotch Packman could attempt, in such weather. To the edge of these Lammermoor Heights, David Lesley has betaken himself; lies now along the outmost spur of them,-a long Hill of considerable height, which the Dunbar people call the Dun, Doon, or sometimes for fashion's sake the Down, adding to it the Teutonic Hill likewise, though Dun itself in old Celtic signifies Hill. On this Doon Hill lies David Lesley with the victorious Scotch Army, upwards of Twenty-thousand strong; with the Committees of Kirk and Estates, the chief Dignitaries of the Country, and in fact the flower of what the pure Covenant in this the Twelfth year of its existence can still bring forth. There lies he since Sunday night, on the top and slope of this Doon Hill, with the impassable heathcontinents behind him; embraces, as within outspread tigerclaws, the base-line of Oliver's Dunbar peninsula; waiting what Oliver will do. Cockburnspath with its ravines has been seized on Oliver's left, and made impassable; behind Oliver is the sea; in front of him Lesley, Doon Hill, and the heathcontinent of Lammermoor. Lesley's force is of Three-andtwenty-thousand,1 in spirits as of men chasing; Oliver's about half as many, in spirits as of men chased. What is to become of Oliver?

LETTER CXXXIX.

HASELRIG, as we know, is Governor of Newcastle. Oliver on Monday writes this Note; means to send it off, I suppose, by

127,000 say the English Pamphlets; 16,000 foot and 7,000 horse, says Sir Edward Walker (p. 182), who has access to know.

sea. Making no complaint for himself, the remarkable Oliver; doing, with grave brevity, in the hour the business of the hour. He was a strong man,' so intimates Charles Harvey, who knew him: in the dark perils of war, in the high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar of fire, when it had gone out in all the others." A genuine King among men, Mr. Harvey. The divinest sight this world sees, -when it is privileged to see such, and not be sickened with the unholy apery of such ! He is just now upon an 'engagement,' or complicated concern, 'very difficult.'

To the Honourable Sir Arthur Haselrig at Newcastle or elsewhere: These. Haste, haste.

DEAR SIR,

'Dunbar,' 2d September, 1650. We are upon an Engagement very difficult. The Enemy hath blocked up our way at the Pass at Copperspath, through which we cannot get without almost a miracle. He lieth so upon the Hills that we know not how to come that way without great difficulty; and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination.

I perceive, your forces are not in a capacity for present release. Wherefore, whatever becomes of us, it will be well for you to get what forces you can together; and the South to help what they can. The business nearly concerneth all Good People. If your forces had been in a readiness to have fallen upon the back of Copperspath, it might have occasioned supplies to have come to us. But the only wise God knows

1 Passages in his Highness's last Sickness, already referred to.

what is best. All shall work for Good.

Our spirits1 are comfortable, praised be the Lord,-though our present condition be as it is. And indeed we have much hope in the Lord; of whose mercy we have had large experience.

Indeed do you get together what forces you can against them. Send to friends in the South to help with more. Let H. Vane know what I write. I would not make it public, lest danger should accrue thereby. You know what use to make hereof. Let me hear from you, I rest,

Your servant,

OLIVER CROMWELL.

'P.S.' It's difficult for me to send to you. Let me hear from 'you' after 'you receive this.'*

The base of Oliver's 'Dunbar Peninsula,' as we have called it (or Dunbar Pinfold where he is now hemmed in, upon ‘an entanglement very difficult'), extends from Belhaven Bay on his right, to Brocksmouth House on his left; about a mile and a half from sea to sea.' Brocksmouth House, the Earl (now Duke) of Roxburgh's mansion, which still stands there,

1 minds.

* Communicated by John Hare, Esquire, Rosemont Cottage, Clifton. The Ms. at Clifton is a Copy, without date; but has this title in an old hand: Copy of an original Letter of Oliver Cromwell, written with his own hand, the day before the Battle of Dunbarr, to Sir A. Haselridge.' - Note to Second Edition. Found since, (1846), with the Postscript, printed from the Original, in Brand's History of Newcastle (London, 1789), ii. 479.--Note to Third Edition. Autograph Original found now (May 1847); in the possession of R. Ormston, Esq., Newcastle-onTyne. See postea, p. 64, and Appendix, No. 13.

his soldiers now occupy as their extreme post on the left. As its name indicates, it is the mouth or issue of a small Rivulet, or Burn, called Brock, Brocksburn; which, springing from the Lammermoor, and skirting David Lesley's Doon Hill, finds its egress here into the sea. The reader who would form an image to himself of the great Tuesday 3d of September, 1650, at Dunbar, must note well this little Burn. It runs in a deep grassy glen, which the South-country Officers in those old Pamphlets describe as a 'deep ditch, forty feet in depth, and about as many in width,'-ditch dug out by the little Brook itself, and carpeted with greensward, in the course of long thousands of years. It runs pretty close by the foot of Doon Hill; forms, from this point to the sea, the boundary of Oliver's position his force is arranged in battle-order along the left bank of this Brocksburn, and its grassy glen; he is busied all Monday, he and his Officers, in ranking them there. Before sunrise on Monday' Lesley sent down his horse from the Hilltop, to occupy the other side of this Brook; 'about four in the afternoon' his train came down, his whole Army gradually came down; and they now are ranking themselves on the opposite side of Brocksburn,-on rather narrow ground; cornfields, but swiftly sloping upwards to the steep of Doon Hill, This goes on, in the wild showers and winds of Monday 2d September, 1650, on both sides of the Rivulet of Brock. Whoever will begin the attack, must get across this Brook and its glen first; a thing of much disadvantage.

Behind Oliver's ranks, between him and Dunbar, stand his tents; sprinkled up and down, by battalions, over the face of this 'Peninsula ;' which is a low though very uneven tract of ground; now in our time all yellow with wheat and barley in the autumn season, but at that date only partially tilled, — describable by Yorkshire Hodgson as a place of plashes and rough bent-grass; terribly beaten by showery winds that day,

so that your tent will hardly stand. There was then but one Farm-house on this tract, where now are not a few: thither were Oliver's Cannon sent this morning; they had at first been lodged 'in the Church,' an edifice standing then as now somewhat apart, at the south end of Dunbar.' We have notice of only one other small house,' belike some poor shepherd's homestead, in Oliver's tract of ground: it stands close by the Brock Rivulet itself, and in the bottom of the little glen; at a place where the banks of it flatten themselves out into a slope passable for carts: this of course, as the one 'pass' in that quarter, it is highly important to seize. Pride and Lambert lodged six horse and fifteen foot' in this hut early in the morning: Lesley's horse came across, and drove them out; killing some and taking three prisoners ;' -and so got possession of this pass and hut; but did not keep it. Among the three prisoners was one musketeer, 'a very stout man, though he has but a wooden arm,' and some iron hook at the end of it, poor fellow. He 'fired thrice,' not without effect, with his wooden arm; and was not taken without difficulty: a handfast stubborn man; they carried him across to General Lesley to give some account of himself. In several of the old Pamphlets, which agree in all the details of it, this is what we read :

poor

'General David Lesley (old Leven,' the other Lesley, 'being in the Castle of Edinburgh, as they relate'), asked this man, If the Enemy did intend to fight? He replied, "What do you think we come here for? We come for nothing else!" "-"Soldier," says Lesley, "how will you fight, when you have shipped half of your men, and all your great guns?" The Soldier replied, "Sir, if you please to draw down your 'men, you shall find both men and great guns too!"'-A

1 Old Leven is here, if the Pamphlet knew; but only as a volunteer and without command, though nominally still General-in-chief,