proportion will be found to dedicate themselves to other branches of study, and to have neither taste nor leisure for the perusal of poetry. Every man, however, can listen; and where the whole stock of literature consists in poetry, the chance is, that every man has listened to a great deal of it.

But, in the second place, and this is of still greater importance, it should be remembered, that their poetry was accommodated, in a most singular degree, to the character and capacity, to the prejudices and affections, of those for whose use it was produced. It did not treat, like most of the written poetry of Europe, of remote regions and nations long ago extinguished; of gods that are known to have had no existence, or men whose existence is known only to the learned and studious: It spoke of the exploits of their own progenitors;-of the very mountains and the valleys, to the echoes of which it was recited; of the fields of battle, where they still saw the mouldering bones and the rusted arms of their kindred; of the feats and the fall of chiefs, whose gathered heaps still met their eyes in the desert. It painted no manners, but those with which their own experience was familiar;-it recounted no prodigies that were not still current in their belief, and reported no language but that which was ever resounding in their ears. It is impossible that such poetry as this should not be listened to with eagerness, and treasured up in the memory with avidity: And it is equally impossible that it should not produce a great and conspicuous effect upon the character and manners of those to whom its study not only stood in the place of all literature, but constituted an occupation and a duty of the first magnitude. Every step they took after their enemies, their game, or their cattle, presented to their eyes the scene of some lofty description, or some daring exploit. Every valley and every cliff,-every river, and cavern, and defile, reminded them of some feat of their ancestors; and every such feat was clothed, in their conception of it, in the brightness of poetical description, and rose to their recollection with all the splendid accompaniments of sublime imagery or passionate expression, with which the genius of the poet had invested it. Their poetry was not written, indeed, in books, which might be illegible or neglected; but it was written on the rocks and the mountains, the cairns, and the caverns of their country, and in the hearts, and lives, and daily occupations of its inhabitants. Even if such poetry had existed in the low country, it would not have produced the same effects,-for it would not have existed alone; and there would have been neither leisure nor disposition in the body of the people to attend to it. But, in reality, it never did exits in the low country. The gods and heroes of our dignified poetry, are beings quite incomprehensible, and uninteresting to the uninstructed; and the few

humble ballads that have been indited upon subjects accommodated to their condition, are calculated to do any thing but to expand the heart, or elevate the imagination. In the Highlands, however, there is no one so poor as not to reckon chieftains and celebrated warriors in his genealogy; and, the humblest peasant being early fed with legends of his ancestors' glory, finds no poetry so congenial to his taste, as that which is devoted to their praise.

Without going further, then, into this curious subject, we think it may be asserted, without any great extravagance, that this universal pride of family, with its cherished domestic chronicles, added to their early and continual familiarity with such a species of poetry as has been described, must have communicated to the Highland tribes a degree both of polish and of elevation, which we would look for in vain among the more luxurious commonalty of the South; and that this traditionary and poetical education,' as Mrs. Grant has happily termed it, in which every one is unintentionally trained, may have done as much for the illiterate natives of the Grampians, as could have been accomplished by a more systematic course of instruction.

These, accordingly, are the elements to which Mrs. Grant ascribes the extraordinary polish and gentleness of deportment, for which she contends so fondly in her mountaineers; but she adds, that they were harmonized and reduced to form,-moulded and fitted for society, by the habit of frequenting the castles, and the company of their chieftains. After enlarging, with great zeal, upon the deeper and more fundamental sources of their ease and politeness, and expressing a sufficient degree of contempt for those who think that such qualities are exclusively the growth of courts, she proceeds

"However, to conciliate those very refined persons, it may be as well to own, what is in fact literally true, that much of the polish, superadded to the courtesy of the mountains, was owing to the frequency of courts among them. In the superior culture of the heart and of the imagination, no doubt, they had their origin. But, in the hails of the chieftains, they received the form and pressure' which so much distinguished them. This, too, is obvious from the symptoms of decay that begin to appear since the diminution of feudal influence.

"To keep awake the unseen vigilance which guards the barriers of good breeding, there must be something to excite both awe and admiration. The petty pomp of a Chieftain's castle was quite enough to produce this effect on him who had never seen any thing finer, and who supposed his own chief to be the first of human beings; and this chief, though possessed of little more knowledge than the meanest of his vassals, might, nevertheless, be a very tolerable model for the manners of his clan. Nothing can be more erroneous than the prevalent idea, that a Highland Chief was an ignorant and unprincipled tyrant,

who rewarded the abject submission of his followers with relentless cruelty and rigorous oppression. He was, on the contrary, the father of his people: gracious, condescending, and beloved. Far from being ruled by arbitrary caprice, he was taught from the cradle to consider the meanest individual of his clan, as his kinsman and his friend, whom he was born to protect, and bound to regard. He was taught, too, to venerate old age, to respect genius, and to place an almost implicit dependance on the counsels of the elders of his clan. Nay, so great was the prevalence of public spirit over private inclination, among those habituated to consider theinselves as born for the good of others, that a chieftain seldom contradicted the opinion of his counsellors, in the most personal of all concerns, his choice of a companion for life.

"Conscious power, and the habit of receiving universal respect, gave dignity to his manners-still more elevated by that loftiness of conception, incident to him, who thinks not of himself, but enlarges his comprehension by balancing continually in his mind the concerns of many. Beloved as he knew himself to be, it is not likely that he should want "the ease

"Which marks security to please." I. p. 206–208.

The slight sketch which we have now given of the Highland character, imperfect as it necessarily is, would, however, be still more incomplete, if we were not to take some notice of that singular trait, which has rendered it necessary to say so much in its explanation; we mean, the habitual reserve-half proud and half timid-with which they endeavour to conceal, among strangers, the peculiarities that distinguish and do honour to their race.

"Nothing," says Mrs. Grant," was so terrible to the punctilious pride of a Highlander as ridicule. To any but his countrymen he carefully avoided mentioning his customs, his genealogies, and above all, his superstitions. Nay, in some instances, he affected to speak of them with contempt, to enforce his pretensions to literature or philosophy. These early impressions however, and all the darling absurdities and fictions connected with them, only lay dormant in his mind, to be awakened by the first inspiring strain of his native poetry, the blast from the mountain he had first ascended, or the roar of the torrent that was wont to resound by the halls of his fathers. The mo ment that he felt himself within the stony girdle of the Grampians, though he did not yield himself a prey to implicit belief, and its bewildering terrors and fantastic inspirations, still he resigned himself willingly to the sway of that potent charm-that mournful, yet pleasing illusion, which the combined influence of a powerful imagination and singularly warm affections have created and preserved in those romantic regions. That fourfold band, wrought by music, poetry, tenderness, and melancholy, which connects the past with the present, and the material with the immaterial world, by a mystic and invisible tie; which all born within its influence feel, yet none, free from subjection to the potent spell, can comprehend. This partial subjection to the early habits of resignation to the wildering powers of song and

superstition, is a weakness to which no educated and polished Highlander will ever plead guilty: It is a secret sin, and, in general, he dies without confession. I. 35-37.

The only important trait that remains, is that of their Superstitions; and we cannot say that we find these either very interesting or very remarkable. Many of the stories, however, in which they are embodied, contain curious and incidental views of their character and state of manners; and furnish Mrs. Grant with abundant opportunities for the display of her powers of description. One of the most striking is the following, which was told, it is said, by a very poor and illiterate woman, in the course of an exhortation which she addressed to a lady in her neighbourhood, who had abandoned herself to excessive sorrow on the loss of a favourite child. It related to an adventure which happened in Glen Blanchar, a recess in the central Highlands, which Mrs. Grant describes as being

-"the most dreary and detached of all places of human habitation, and in winter the most stormy and inaccessible. There was however,' she adds,' much summer grazing about it; and its remoteness, and the rocky barriers with which nature had surrounded it, saved from all encroachment the few daring tenants who risked their lives by wintering there. They grew wealthy in cattle; and as none but themselves understood the art of managing them during the stormy season in that recess, their rent was never heightened; and they lived in their own way in great plenty and comfort.

"One peasant, in particular, whose wealth, wisdom and beneficence, gave him great sway in this elevated hamlet, was fortunate in all re spects but one. He had three very fine children, who all, in succession, died after having been weaned, though, before, they gave every promise of health and firmness. Both parents were much afflicted; but the father's grief was clamorous and unmanly. They resolved that the next should be suckled for two years, hoping, by this, to avoid the repetition of such a misfortune. They did so; and the child, by living longer, only took a firmer hold of their affections, and furnished more materials for sorrowful recollection. At the close of the second year, he followed his brothers; and there were no bounds to the affliction of the parents.

"There are, however, in the economy of Highland life, certain duties and courtesies which are indispensable; and for the omission of which nothing can apologize. One of those is, to call in all their friends, and feast them at the time of the greatest family distress. The death of the child happened late in the spring, when sheep were abroad in the more inhabited straths; but, from the blasts in that high and stormy region, were still confined to the cot. In a dismal snowy evening, the man, unable to stifle his anguish, went out, lamenting aloud for a lamb to treat his friends with at the late-wake. At the door of the cot, however, he found a stranger standing before the entrance.

He was astonished, in such a night, to meet a person so far from any frequented place. The stranger was plainly attired; but had a coun→ tenance expressive of singular mildness and benevolence, and, addressing him in a sweet, impressive voice, asked him what he did there amidst the tempest. He was filled with awe, which he could not account for, and said, that he came for a lamb. "What kind of lamb do you mean to take?' said the stranger. The very best I can find,' he replied, ' as it is to entertain my friends; and I hope you will share of it.” "Do your sheep make any resistance when you take away the lamb, or any disturbance afterwards?' Never,' was the answer. 'How differently am I treated!' said the traveller. When I come to visit my sheepfold, I take, as I am well entitled to do, the best lamb to myself; and my ears are filled with the clamour of discontent by these ungrateful sheep, whom I have fed, watched, and protected.'

"He looked up in a maze; but the vision was fled. He went however for the lamb, and brought it home with alacrity. He did more: It was the custom of these time-a custom, indeed, which was not extinct till after 1745, for people to dance at late wakes. It was a mournful kind of movement, but still it was dancing. The nearest relation of the deceased often began the ceremony weeping; but did however, begin it, to give the example of fortitude and resignation. This man, on other occasions, had been quite unequal to the performance of this duty; but at this time, he immediately, on coming in, ordered music to begin, and danced the solitary measure appropriate to such occasions. The reader must have very little sagacity or knowledge of the purport and consequences of visions, who requires to be told, that many sons were born, lived, and prospered afterwards, in this reformed family." I. p. 184-88.

The following has less local peculiarity in its circumstances; but is rather a good specimen of the dreary apparition,-to say nothing of the advantage of having been told to Mrs. Grant, by the very lady who witnessed it. She, and an only brother were left orphans in early youth; and loved each other the better for having no one else to love. The youth died at college at Aberdeen and his sister was inconsolable.

"It is not to be told how much the loss of a beloved object was aggravated by his thus dying, where he could not be buried with his fathers; and where the mourner could not visit his grave, and bedew it with the offerings of affection. Night after night she sat up, weeping incessantly, and calling in frantic agony on the beloved name, which was all she had left of what was once so dear to her.

"At length, in a waking dream, or very distinct vision, her brother appeared to her in his shroud, and seemed wet and shivering. Why, selfish creature, said he, why am I disturbed with the impious extravagance of thy sorrow? I have a long journey to make through dark and dreary ways, before I arrive at the peaceful abode, where souls attain their rest. Till thou art humble and penitent for this rebellion against the decrees of Providence, every tear thou shedest falls on this