ned among the Esquimaux or the Samoyeds. Here and
there, indeed, at the castle of some great lord who had a seat in the
Parliament and Privy Council, and who was accustomed to pass a large
part of his life in the cities of the South, might have been found wigs
and embroidered coats, plate and fine linen, lace and jewels, French
dishes and French wines. But, in general, the traveller would have
been forced to content himself with very different quarters. In many
dwellings the furniture, the food, the clothing, nay the very hair
and skin of his hosts, would have put his philosophy to the proof. His
lodging would sometimes have been in a but of which every nook would
have swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with
peat smoke, and foul with a hundred noisome exhalations. At supper grain
fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied by a
cake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company with which he
would have feasted would have been covered with cutaneous eruptions, and
others would have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch would have
been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from that
couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the
reek of turf, and half mad with the itch, [322]

This is not an attractive picture. And yet an enlightened and
dispassionate observer would have found in the character and manners of
this rude people something which might well excite admiration and a good
hope. Their courage was what great exploits achieved in all the
four quarters of the globe have since proved it to be. Their intense
attachment to their own tribe and to their own patriarch, though
politically a great evil, partook of the nature of virtue. The sentiment
was misdirected and ill regulated; but still it was heroic. There must
be some elevation of soul in a man who loves the society of which he is
a member and the leader whom he follows with a love stronger than the
love of life. It was true that the Highlander had few scruples about
shedding the blood of an enemy: but it was not less true that he had
high notions of the duty of observing faith to allies and hospitality
to guests. It was true that his predatory habits were most pernicious to
the commonwealth. Yet those erred greatly who imagined that he bore any
resemblance to villains who, in rich and well governed communities, live
by stealing. When he drove before him the herds