that NOW everything stood as it ought to do, and that
there was no use in looking back narrowly on the right or wrong of the
matter half a century ago.

"The Highlands," I suggested, "should furnish you with ample subjects
of recollection. You have witnessed the complete change of that primeval
country, and have seen a race not far removed from the earliest period
of society melted down into the great mass of civilization; and that
could not happen without incidents striking in themselves, and curious
as chapters in the history of the human race."

"It is very true," said Mrs. Baliol; "one would think it should have
struck the observers greatly, and yet it scarcely did so. For me, I
was no Highlander myself, and the Highland chiefs of old, of whom I
certainly knew several, had little in their manners to distinguish them
from the Lowland gentry, when they mixed in society in Edinburgh, and
assumed the Lowland dress. Their peculiar character was for the clansmen
at home; and you must not imagine that they swaggered about in plaids
and broadswords at the Cross, or came to the Assembly Rooms in bonnets
and kilts."

"I remember," said I, "that Swift, in his Journal, tells Stella he had
dined in the house of a Scots nobleman, with two Highland chiefs, whom
he had found as well-bred men as he had ever met with." [Extract
of Journal to Stella.--"I dined to-day (12th March 1712) with Lord
Treasurer and two gentlemen of the Highlands of Scotland, yet very
polite men." SWIFT'S WORKS, VOL. III. p.7. EDIN. 1824.]

"Very likely," said my friend. "The extremes of society approach much
more closely to each other than perhaps the Dean of Saint Patrick's
expected. The savage is always to a certain degree polite. Besides,
going always armed, and having a very punctilious idea of their own
gentility and consequence, they usually behaved to each other and to the
Lowlanders with a good deal of formal politeness, which sometimes even
procured them the character of insincerity."

"Falsehood belongs to an early period of society, as well as the
deferential forms which we style politeness," I replied. "A child does
not see the least moral beauty in truth until he has been flogged half a
dozen times. It is so easy, and apparently so natural, to deny what you
cannot be easily convicted of, that a savage as well as a child lies to
excuse himself almost as instinctively as he raises his hand to protect
his head. The old saying, 'Confess and be