athers on the field of battle? As long as there
were Gaelic marauders, they had been regarded by the Saxon population
as hateful vermin who ought to be exterminated without mercy. As soon as
the extermination had been accomplished, as soon as cattle were as safe
in the Perthshire passes as in Smithfield market, the freebooter was
exalted into a hero of romance. As long as the Gaelic dress was worn,
the Saxons had pronounced it hideous, ridiculous, nay, grossly indecent.
Soon after it had been prohibited, they discovered that it was the most
graceful drapery in Europe. The Gaelic monuments, the Gaelic usages, the
Gaelic superstitions, the Gaelic verses, disdainfully neglected during
many ages, began to attract the attention of the learned from the moment
at which the peculiarities of the Gaelic race began to disappear. So
strong was this impulse that, where the Highlands were concerned, men of
sense gave ready credence to stories without evidence, and men of taste
gave rapturous applause to compositions without merit. Epic poems, which
any skilful and dispassionate critic would at a glance have perceived
to be almost entirely modern, and which, if they had been published as
modern, would have instantly found their proper place in company with
Blackmore's Alfred and Wilkie's Epigoniad, were pronounced to be fifteen
hundred years old, and were gravely classed with the Iliad. Writers of
a very different order from the impostor who fabricated these forgeries
saw how striking an effect might be produced by skilful pictures of the
old Highland life. Whatever was repulsive was softened down: whatever
was graceful and noble was brought prominently forward. Some of these
works were executed with such admirable art that, like the historical
plays of Shakspeare, they superseded history. The visions of the poet
were realities to his readers. The places which he described became
holy ground, and were visited by thousands of pilgrims. Soon the
vulgar imagination was so completely occupied by plaids, targets, and
claymores, that, by most Englishmen, Scotchman and Highlander were
regarded as synonymous words. Few people seemed to be aware that, at no
remote period, a Macdonald or a Macgregor in his tartan was to a citizen
of Edinburgh or Glasgow what an Indian hunter in his war paint is to
an inhabitant of Philadelphia or Boston. Artists and actors represented
Bruce and Douglas in striped petticoats. They might as well have
represented Wa