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tablishment at Dunkeld, where that same Tay makes nature beautiful. The drive down the valley (accomplished, not in a dog-cart, but with dignity in a carriage, where we were all inside, and I-my modesty will scarcely permit me to write the words-was able to divide my attentions equally) was calm, but agreeable. Neither the society nor. the scenery were exciting; and the exceptional character of yesterday's proceedings in the rain having subsided into common comfort, no incident occurred worth mentioning. The feature of Dunkeld, as every body knows, is the river; and nobody can possibly expect me to describe that well-known scene. Arabella might, but I doubt whether it would be to edification. The day was calm, and, as I have said, not exciting in its enjoyment, and the evening was amicably spent in lamentations over our approaching separation, and settling of the route by which the fair travellers were to proceed when I left them the next morning-a matter not concluded without trouble. The tendency women have to go back upon their decisions, and reconsider the whole matter, is remarkable. I wonder if they carry it equally into all the arrangements of life.

Next morning I took my fair friends into Perth, and placed them in the railway carriage which was to convey them back into the bosoms of their families. I will not attempt to describe the trembling lip, the suppressed sigh, the falter

ing and too - feeling acknowledgments with which this parting was accomplished. When the inexorable train plunged out of sight, one of the kind creatures was bending forward, her eager lips moving with some last words; but my melancholy fate prevented me hearing that affecting message. With their heads full of lochs and mountains, mists and torrents, and with, I am bound to say, an amount of gratitude highly gratifying to receive, but which I do not feel myself to have deserved in its full extent, my fair companions disappeared out of these latitudes; and I went on my way rejoicing.

At this moment I sit in a very different scene, at a sunny window, overlooking, through half-cut openings in the trees, a distant scene of sea and city, too charming to be indicated more plainly-but at a nearer point of vision, overlooking the lawn from which the battered but bland face of that new denizen of polite society known as "Aunt Sally" beams upward benignant upon my thoughtful gaze. Last night a little group of figures gathered round that venerable vision. Ah me! can you imagine any region in the world to which one would not wander joyfully in such company? The hand that poises that skilful missile, dispenses fate and fortune. Miss Arabella was a judge more lenient. I was somebody while I was the champion and guard of the dear old ladies. A creature of eighteen is competent to put her yoke upon me now.*

* I add a note. I recall the concluding word of the penultimate paragraph above. A week has come and gone since I bade farewell to the companions of these three days. Ever after-day by day- -even amid the excitement of Aunt Sally and Louisa's smiles, their memory has come back to me with a gratefulness of tenderly lingering fancy that does not diminish, but is increasing still. I bless the day I started on our tour. I bless the day of the dog-carts. Blessed among all days be the day spent between Taymouth and Dunkeld. Instead of going, like Christian, on my way rejoicing," as rashly stated above, I recall the souvenir of Lord Ullin, which our first day's voyage brought to mind, and say, that on the last of that eventful pilgrimage I was, like him, "left lamenting." No more.

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SCOTLAND is once more upon her trial. The poor old country bears a certain conjugal relationship to her richer neighbour, which is fruitful of criticism. The amiable comments with which a man's family and relatives are apt to receive his wife, and accompany at intervals her course through life, convey a lively idea of the manner in which the smaller and poorer country, received into reluctant equality with the larger, is assailed at the various periods of their joint career. Not that the husband regrets his marriage, or that any reference to Sir Cresswell Cresswell looms darkly on their future fate, but only that there is a certain relish in reporting the follies of all the poor lady's sisters and brethren, and that her own foibles show salient upon the calm background of domestic life. Such has been the luck of our ancient kingdom. Wedded, not without boastfulness like many a bride, she has had her struggles in the new family relationship, which has bound the hands but not the tongues of the two spouses. The best of married people are not without a certain satisfaction in the possession of a ready taunt, which may either aggravate or sub

VOL. XC.-NO. DLI.

due on occasion the other side of the house; and perhaps, while the present world lasts, this condition of matrimony will last along with the institution. In the happy espousals of the United Kingdom this amiable human element never was wanting; but there are occasions when it takes special force. One of these crises has just occurred, and the culprit stands once more at the bar. Her assailants are threefold at least; and what with the sneers of a skirmishing band of general literature, the grave direct assault of the Historic Muse in its most serious development, and the insane defence which aids their efforts, our respected and venerable parent, suddenly brought to a standstill in her respectable and busy career, and amazed at the face of battle which she has done nothing to provoke, is in a position to call forth the sympathies of all her friends and lovers. At the present moment, when her mind is much more occupied with Highland expeditions and country rambles than with subjects less agreeable-when, before the trees have browned, with no direful bondage of the season upon her freeborn limbs, her thoughts are bent upon the gleaming lochs

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indented in her coasts, and the shadowy hills which overlook them it is hard to be called upon to stand and clear her reputation before she takes her year's holiday. However, matters have come to a crisis. Not for the first nor the last time, nor by reason of any special misdeed of the moment, is this sudden assault brought about. Nor does it produce any tragical results in the mind of the startled heroine of the occasion. She is amazed, but not overcome, by the unexpected tempest. Thanking heaven that there are few countries in the world which require to form their estimate of the Scottish character at second hand either from a Buckle or a Blackie, Scotland is able to bear the storm with very philosophical composure. It is old ground, often gone over-often, doubtless, to be gone over again; for the estimate formed by one nation of another is something utterly beyond reason, and impervious to argument; with which comfortable conviction let us see what her critics have to say against Scotland, and whether that poor old lady can find anything to say for herself.

Three pictures side by side present themselves before us, each claiming to be an authentic portrait of the face which we know so well. The first is drawn in light and sketchy outlines, with features caricatured, indeed, but recognisable. Here it

is an eager, alert, and energetic figure, which looms red and strong through the traditionary mists; a figure rich in traditionary features, high cheek-boned, red-haired covetous but enterprising, prompt, shrewd, selfish, clear-sighted, fortunate-always on the outlook for opportunities of personal advantage, generally most successful in seizing them unscrupulous, but not unkind, ready to lend a hand to another Scot, or even, no Scot being in the way, to any fit follower always steady, cool, pertinacious; a figure so distinct and well defined that it does credit to the popular imagination. Emotions

are few in this development of character, and graces do not exist. It has no enthusiasm, no humour, in its composition. In face of a joke it stares blankly, but in sight of an investment or a promising occupation becomes immediately acute. It goes out upon the world rawboned (whatever that may be) and hungry, and returns, weighted with money, or covered with decorations, amid sneers and plaudits. Such is the Scotch character, as renowned in contemporary journals and periodical literature. Of this native stuff, all unadorned and unsusceptible of adornment, Generals and Chancellors are made. And when they die, it is recorded of them how, being Scotch, they had but to set out to conquer Fortune, when fortune flew into their arms.

The next portrait is very different. The air trembles with sighs more vulgar but scarce less dreadful than those of the Inferno. The heavens are dark above, and the earth is desolate below. Through the murky atmosphere appears a frantic figure in a pulpit, uttering wild denunciations; underneath, a cowed and wretched assemblage sits groaning. A melancholy ascetic sits in grim self-inquisition in the front of the picture, frowning at earth and heaven; for him no sun lights the world, no music breathes, no beauty exists. Neither love nor human kindness can find entrance into his sullen soul; enterprise, activity, and thought are as foreign to him as love and charity. Too timorous to move a step out of that horrific gloom, he sits amusing himself with hideous speculations upon the future damnation of his neighbours; and if a gleam of ghastly comfort ever enters his heart, it is contained in a reflection of that thanksgiving of the Pharisee, that he is not as other men. Black against the pale unwholesome sky he rises grimly, an apparition wonderful to behold. This is the Scotland which, with much elaboration, Mr Buckle, who professes to be at once the most unimpassioned and

profound of historians, has just communicated to the world.

And beside this extraordinary presentment rises another scarcely less extraordinary. The scene again is changed. On the top of the softest wooded height, fair, rich, and serene, a shrill outcry and Babel of tongues startles the tender mists. There, all shrill and furious, stands a rampant nationality, grinning desperate in hot spite and malice against her wedded partner-living on the recollection of certain passages of arms between them six or seven centuries ago, and, with all the wild tricks of a mountebank, made doubly absurd by the fact that mountebankism is exotic to the soil and never looks natural, thrusting her infuriate fist into the calm, puzzled face of the companion of her days. This is Professor Blackie's idea upon the subject. The three pictures range together all strange and unlike, with nothing common to them but their name. The Scotch are a nation of adventurers, bound upon getting all the good things that come within their reach, and not at all over-scrupulous as to the means by which they must obtain them. The Scotch are a nation of the sourest asceticsascetics of an asceticism unsoftened even by those gleams of light which made monks and convents tolerable; mean, vulgar, and sullen in their self-mortification. The Scotch are a nation of furious patriots, defying all the world, and especially England, to prove them anything but perfection. You can take your choice, for the field is all before you.

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has lived as long a lifetime as most nations, and done such work as she had to do with tolerable effectiveness. What she has done is written in various histories; what she is, does not appear very hard to come at, seeing the doors of her house are open, and travellers come and go without let or hindrance; yet some certain inherent mystery must surely exist in the country of which so many conflicting representations are given to the world.

We will not enter into any discussion of the first of these pictures. It is two or three centuries old at least, a consistent imagination let us be thankful that the ancient luck of the Scot is unabated. If he is still as red-haired, as high-cheeked, and as raw-boned as ever, it is creditable to the stamina of the original race which produced him; and far be it from us to complain of the success which has attended the enterprises of our brethren. With modesty we acknowledge that we have made ourselves a little remarkable over the face of the world

that for "gardeners and ministers, and a' kind o' head-work, they maun come to huz," as a Scotch gardener is said to have remarked to the Scotch rector of his parishand that, whether mounted upon other people's shoulders or by means of their own personal stature, not a few Scotch heads rise over the crowd in every direction. With equanimity we accept the laudatory spitefulness of other people's remarks on this national peculiarity. Let them laugh who win. If Scotch failures were uppermost instead of Scotch successes, it might not be so easy to show a Christian spirit.

But Mr Buckle's theory demands a very different treatment. At the outset, however, let us discriminate between the object and the scene of the attack. Much virtuous indignation, it appears to us, has been wasted by imagining the assault of the historian of Civilisation to be directed against Scotland in her own venerable person. The real state of the case is not so. Mr Buckle is much too profound and abstract a thinker to care two straws about Scotland. A country is to him a certain stretch of territory with such and such peculiar features of formation and climate. His science does not concern itself with men or their individualities. Whether the puppets on that stage are Scots or Turks is a matter of total indifference to the philosopher who sweeps off generation after generation of the puny creatures before

veller's dinner, offended his highest sympathies. Thenceforward he deserted Kate, and addressed himself to another passenger, who did not abuse his confidence.

But while the sound of their conversation went on at my ear, I devoted myself to the lovely landscape through which we were passing. Leaving the salt-water lochs, those wistful investigations of the "homeless sea" into the lone recesses of the hills, we plunged into the world of opening slopes which make a mountainous country so full of interest. Here a gleam of lovely valley, with lonely houses hidden in light clouds of tender birch, or pillared solitudes of fir-there a brown cottage on a height, all brown, thatch and wall, growing out of the soil like a natural production; and on every side great living walls of hills, silent, with silver threads of water descending their steeps, or plaintive with pathetic bleatings, mournful incessant voice of the wilderness. But now our attention was distracted by a discussion on the poor-laws, which, the gentlemen having been requested to descend while we mounted the hill, was addressed almost exclusively to Kate and myself, and listened to by her with provoking indifference to the landscape. Fancy discussing poor-laws with a Campbell coachman while winding up the picturesque ascents of Hell's Glen! I cannot deny that I was considerably disgusted. For myself, I confess that the absence of human habitations does by no means injure the landscape in my opinion. I like the unbroken splendour of the primitive mountains. But dear Kate, who loves to talk, and who had at the moment no better interlocutor, entered into a discussion of rates and local necessities with the warmest interest, and lamented over the charming solitude, as if a dirty hamlet and crowds of Gaelic children could have added quite an additional attraction to that solitary glen. Human interest-that is the expression. Dear Kate, I am sorry to say, is often carried away by the fashionable talk of the time.

When we reached the top of the ascent, Inverary burst upon uslying lovely, with a sweet peacefulness, reflecting all her boats and houses in the tender-tinted water. You do not see the long stretch of Loch Fyne from that height-only a lovely bay folded in with hills, one of minor size, but wooded to a thought, rising just over the sombre pepper-boxes of the Castle. One could fancy a great Argyll coming here out of the fighting world, as to a haven of absolute rest and tranquillity. Can troubles come over those hills? Do any whispers of the angry surf ever steal upward through the reaches of the loch upon those gentle palpitating tides? I suppose it is possible; but to glide over the crisped and tinted waters towards that halcyon shore, with its boats lying round the little pier, and its houses slumbering on the beach, it is difficult to imagine such a retreat as open to the invasions of the common world.

Notwithstanding what I say, we had a proof of those invasions in the various groups accompanying our own steps. Our stout Englishman, all unromantic as he looked, was bound to some picturesque solitude in the neighbourhood which he had rented for the summer— though what could have brought such a person to the Highlands it is hard to imagine. Perhaps his wife was a Campbell-though, indeed, I should rather imagine, from the perseverance with which he held his shoulder under the drip of my umbrella, that the good man was a widower, probably with an interesting family of children. Be that as it may, he disappeared placidly in a dog-cart from Inverary, and we saw him no more. Being accustomed to travelling on the Continent, neither Kate nor I had the smallest objection to dining at the table d'hôte, which we were told existed in the Inverary hotel; but you may imagine our consternation when we found ourselves in a small family-party, with two strangers, apparently newly-married people. Our young friend was placed at the

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