ions of an eager desire to promote and preserve the
religious and moral virtues of the people, should so frequently take
the lead in approving of measures which, by removing them from where
they imbibed principles which have attracted the notice of Europe, and
placed them in situations where poverty, and the too frequent
attendants, vice and crime, will lay the foundation of a character
which will be a disgrace, as that already obtained has been an honour,
to this country. In the new stations where so many Highlanders are now
placed, and crowded in such numbers as to preserve the numerical
population, while whole districts are left without inhabitants, how
can they resume their ancient character and principles, which,
according to the reports of those employed by the proprietors, have
been so deplorably broken down and deteriorated--a deterioration which
was entirely unknown till the recent change in the condition of the
people, and the introduction of that system of placing families on
patches of potato ground, as in Ireland--a system pregnant with
degradation, poverty, and disaffection, and exhibiting daily a
prominent and deplorable example, which might have forewarned Highland
proprietors, and prevented them from reducing their people to a
similar state? It is only when parents and heads of families in the
Highlands are moral, happy, and contented, that they can instil sound
principles into their children, who, in their intercourse with the
world, may once more become what the men of Sutherland have already
been, "an honourable example, worthy the imitation of all.'"

CHAPTER III.

We have exhibited the Sutherland Highlanders to the reader as
they exhibited themselves to their country, when, as Christian
soldiers,--men, like the old chivalrous knight, 'without fear
or reproach,'--they fought its battles and reflected honour on
its name. Interest must attach to the manner in which men of so
high a moral tone were reared; and a sketch drawn from personal
observation of the interior of Sutherland eight-and-twenty years
ago, may be found to throw very direct light on the subject.
To know what the district once was, and what it is now, is to
know with peculiar emphasis the meaning of the sacred text, 'One
sinner destroyeth much good.'

The eye of a Triptolemus Yellowlee would have found exceedingly little
to gratify it in the parish of Lairg thirty years ago. The parish had
its bare hills, its wide, dark moor