odities for sale, nor money for
purchase, seldom visit more polished places, or if they do visit them,
seldom return.

It sometimes happens that by conquest, intermixture, or gradual
refinement, the cultivated parts of a country change their language. The
mountaineers then become a distinct nation, cut off by dissimilitude of
speech from conversation with their neighbours. Thus in Biscay, the
original Cantabrian, and in Dalecarlia, the old Swedish still subsists.
Thus Wales and the Highlands speak the tongue of the first inhabitants of
Britain, while the other parts have received first the Saxon, and in some
degree afterwards the French, and then formed a third language between
them.

That the primitive manners are continued where the primitive language is
spoken, no nation will desire me to suppose, for the manners of
mountaineers are commonly savage, but they are rather produced by their
situation than derived from their ancestors.

Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a
distinction produces rivalry. England, before other causes of enmity
were found, was disturbed for some centuries by the contests of the
northern and southern counties; so that at Oxford, the peace of study
could for a long time be preserved only by chusing annually one of the
Proctors from each side of the Trent. A tract intersected by many ridges
of mountains, naturally divides its inhabitants into petty nations, which
are made by a thousand causes enemies to each other. Each will exalt its
own chiefs, each will boast the valour of its men, or the beauty of its
women, and every claim of superiority irritates competition; injuries
will sometimes be done, and be more injuriously defended; retaliation
will sometimes be attempted, and the debt exacted with too much interest.

In the Highlands it was a law, that if a robber was sheltered from
justice, any man of the same clan might be taken in his place. This was
a kind of irregular justice, which, though necessary in savage times,
could hardly fail to end in a feud, and a feud once kindled among an idle
people with no variety of pursuits to divert their thoughts, burnt on for
ages either sullenly glowing in secret mischief, or openly blazing into
public violence. Of the effects of this violent judicature, there are
not wanting memorials. The cave is now to be seen to which one of the
Campbells, who had injured the Macdonalds, retired with a body of his own
clan. The