song on audiences ignorant of the alphabet. It is
probable that, in the Highland councils, men who would not have been
qualified for the duty of parish clerks sometimes argued questions of
peace and war, of tribute and homage, with ability worthy of Halifax and
Caermarthen, and that, at the Highland banquets, minstrels who did
not know their letters sometimes poured forth rhapsodies in which a
discerning critic might have found passages which would have reminded
him of the tenderness of Otway or of the vigour of Dryden.

There was therefore even then evidence sufficient to justify the belief
that no natural inferiority had kept the Celt far behind the Saxon.
It might safely have been predicted that, if ever an efficient police
should make it impossible for the Highlander to avenge his wrongs by
violence and to supply his wants by rapine, if ever his faculties should
be developed by the civilising influence of the Protestant religion and
of the English language, if ever he should transfer to his country and
to her lawful magistrates the affection and respect with which he had
been taught to regard his own petty community and his own petty prince,
the kingdom would obtain an immense accession of strength for all the
purposes both of peace and of war.

Such would doubtless have been the decision of a well informed and
impartial judge. But no such judge was then to be found. The Saxons
who dwelt far from the Gaelic provinces could not be well informed. The
Saxons who dwelt near those provinces could not be impartial. National
enmities have always been fiercest among borderers; and the enmity
between the Highland borderer and the Lowland borderer along the
whole frontier was the growth of ages, and was kept fresh by constant
injuries. One day many square miles of pasture land were swept bare by
armed plunderers from the hills. Another day a score of plaids dangled
in a row on the gallows of Crieff or Stirling. Fairs were indeed held on
the debatable land for the necessary interchange of commodities. But
to those fairs both parties came prepared for battle; and the day often
ended in bloodshed. Thus the Highlander was an object of hatred to his
Saxon neighbours; and from his Saxon neighbours those Saxons who dwelt
far from him learned the very little that they cared to know about his
habits. When the English condescended to think of him at all,--and it
was seldom that they did so,--they considered him as a filthy abject
sava