Edinburgh, July 19.
A memorial commemorating Flora Macdonald has been dedicated in the churchyard of Kilmuir, in the Isle of Skye, and the address in honour of the heroine was given by Dr. OG. G. Vardell, of the Flora Macdonald College, Red Springs, North Carolina. That on the 200th year since her birth the President of a College bearing her name should pronounce a eulogium over her grave is one more proof how Flora has captured. and held the imagination of the world. When Dr. Johnson had slept in the bed on which Prince Charlie reposed at Kingsburgh, he wrote of her, name that will be mentioned in history, and, if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour." On the toilet table in the bedroom, the morning he left Kingsburgh, Cly. Johnson left a slip of paper with the words written in pencil, "Quantum cedut virtutibus aurum;" and it was delicate compliment that he left it there untranslated, because he knew that his host and all his kin were well versed in the classic tongue.
The story of Flora Macdonald will keep the hearts of men and women as long as the world endures. Devotion, resource, and esurage always make an irresistible appeal to the noblest elements in humanity. There would have been no escape for the Prince out of Renbecula had Flora not saved him. The Minch and all the lochs of the Hebrides were filled with ships and boats searching for the Royal fugitive.- The attempt to get a ship at Stornoway had failed because the minister of Harris had warned the factor of Seaforth of the coming of the Prince. Back south the Prince came to Uist, and now he was like a bird caught in the net. It was then that Lady Clanranald, knowing that Flora was about to visit her mother in Skye, appealed to her to take the Prince with her disguised as her maid. The first thing was to get a passport, and by good fortune ber own step-father was in command of the ford. He provided a passport for herself, her manservant (Neil MacEachen, afterwards the father of Marshal Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum), and for an Irish spinning maid, "Betty Burke." It was thus that the Prince, in a maid's garb, escaped out of the trap.
When the boat reached Waternish, its sails, were riddled with shot by the Militia, and, veering off, the fugitives steered for Kilmuir. There Lady Margaret Macdonald, while her husband was in arms for King George, helped Flora, and old Kingsburgh found Prince Charlie on the shore clad in a "flowered linen gown," and the Chief said, "I am Macdonald of Kingsburgh come to serve your Royd Highness." It all belongs to the realm of romance, and it loved the more because it tells how women outwitted men, as Flora and Lady Margaret, outwitted the officers of King George, in Uist and in Skye.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.