Burt, returning to the spot after a short absence, asked the officer in charge "what had become of the sarcophagus." "He answered that he had intended to preserve it in the condition I left it, till the commander-in-chief had seen it, as a curiosity, but that it was not in his power so to do; for soon after the discovery was known to the Highlanders, they assembled from distant parts, and, having formed themselves into a body, they carefully gathered up the relics, and marched with them in solemn procession to a new place of burial, and there discharged their fire-arms over the grave, as supposing the deceased had been a military officer."--BURT'S _Letters_, ii. 188. The engineer officer, desirous to account for so unaccountable a proceeding naturally drew on the etiquette of his own profession. We make the supporters of Ossian a free gift of this anecdote, not doubting that they will appreciate our liberality.
[O] Alas! it is a world of change. While correcting the press, we have just heard that some learned antiquary has enlightened the Lunfananers, and that they have set up a tavern called "The Macbeth Arms!"
The timber edifice on such an eminence as the Peel Bog--probably, as the sagacious Lord Hailes imagines, the true character of the edifices possessed by Macbeth--would no more fill up the true architectural wants of the drama, than a marble Grecian temple, or a Canadian settler's log-house.
Crimes briefly told without details have no interest, unless they can be put in the shape of statistics--some people will be inclined to deny that the exception is the reverse of the rule. We are not writing history, and if we were, the historical details which go no further than that A stabbed B, and C poisoned D, and E mutilated F, are not such as we are inclined to believe our readers would thank us for. It is very clear that the death of Duncan, if we had no more than authentic annals to deal with--if it had been a question merely of history, and not in some measure incidentally connected with the highest rank of human intellectual effort--would have formed a very meagre object of comment. The society of antiquaries might have endured a paper on it--for such endurance is the martyrdom they have chosen--but no other person would. In looking, then, down through Scottish history from the accession of Macbeth's successor, we find little that can be noticed with any applicability to our particular purpose, until we reach the time when the records provide us with some of the details.