Gaelic edition had been spread
over the county. The fact that such a practice should have been common
in Sutherland, says something surely for the intelligence of the
family patriarchs of the district. That thousands of the people who
knew the Scriptures through no other medium, should have been
intimately acquainted with the saving doctrines and witnesses of their
power (and there can be no question that such was the case), is proof
enough, at least, that it was a practice carried on with a due
perception of the scope and meaning of the sacred volume. One is too
apt to associate intelligence with the external improvements of a
country--with well-enclosed fields and whitewashed cottages; but the
association is altogether a false one. As shown by the testimony of
General Stewart of Garth, the Sutherland regiment was not only the
most eminently moral, but, as their tastes and habits demonstrated,
one of the most decidedly intellectual under the British Crown. Our
relative's cottage had, as we have said, its bookcase, and both his
sons were very intelligent men; but intelligence derived directly from
books was not general in the county; a very considerable portion of
the people understood no other language than Gaelic, and many of them
could not even read; for at this period about one-tenth of the
families of Sutherland were distant five or more miles from the
nearest school. Their characteristic intelligence was of a kind
otherwise derived: it was an intelligence drawn from these domestic
readings of the Scriptures and from the pulpit; and is referred mainly
to that profound science which even a Newton could recognise as more
important and wonderful than any of the others, but which many of the
shallower intellects of our own times deem no science at all. It was
an intelligence out of which their morality sprung; it was an
intelligence founded in earnest belief.

But what, asks the reader, was the economic condition--the condition
with regard to circumstances and means of living--of these Sutherland
Highlanders? How did they fare? The question has been variously
answered: much must depend on the class selected from among them as
specimens of the whole,--much, too, taking for granted the honesty of
the party who replies, on his own condition in life, and his
acquaintance with the circumstances of the poorer people of Scotland
generally. The county had its less genial localities, in which, for a
month or two in the summer