ed by the Saxons as mere
savages. But it is surely strange that, considered as savages, they
should not have been objects of interest and curiosity. The English were
then abundantly inquisitive about the manners of rude nations separated
from our island by great continents and oceans. Numerous books were
printed describing the laws, the superstitions, the cabins, the repasts,
the dresses, the marriages, the funerals of Laplanders and Hottentots,
Mohawks and Malays. The plays and poems of that age are full of
allusions to the usages of the black men of Africa and of the red men
of America. The only barbarian about whom there was no wish to have any
information was the Highlander. Five or six years after the Revolution,
an indefatigable angler published an account of Scotland. He boasted
that, in the course of his rambles from lake to lake, and from brook to
brook, he had left scarcely a nook of the kingdom unexplored. But, when
we examine his narrative, we find that he had never ventured beyond
the extreme skirts of the Celtic region. He tells us that even from the
people who lived close to the passes he could learn little or nothing
about the Gaelic population. Few Englishmen, he says, had ever seen
Inverary. All beyond Inverary was chaos, [320] In the reign of George
the First, a work was published which professed to give a most exact
account of Scotland; and in this work, consisting of more than three
hundred pages, two contemptuous paragraphs were thought sufficient for
the Highlands and the Highlanders, [321] We may well doubt whether, in
1689, one in twenty of the well read gentlemen who assembled at Will's
coffeehouse knew that, within the four seas, and at the distance of less
than five hundred miles from London, were many miniature courts, in
each of which a petty prince, attended by guards, by armour bearers, by
musicians, by a hereditary orator, by a hereditary poet laureate, kept
a rude state, dispensed a rude justice, waged wars, and concluded
treaties. While the old Gaelic institutions were in full vigour, no
account of them was given by any observer, qualified to judge of them
fairly. Had such an observer studied the character of the Highlanders,
he would doubtless have found in it closely intermingled the good and
the bad qualities of an uncivilised nation. He would have found that the
people had no love for their country or for their king; that they had
no attachment to any commonwealth larger than the cla