8 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



of a religious and reflecting people — namely, the patience, resignation, and 

 sobriety with which they have conducted themselves during seasons of adversity, 

 dearth, and privation ; and the peaceable demeanour and regard for public order 

 so rigorously observed at periods when political dissension was busy around them, 

 and every means which craft could suggest, or example strengthen, employed for 

 their seduction. Instances of this nature are to be regarded as the most satisfac- 

 tory evidence of the sUent working of those religious principles which never fail, 

 where carefully engrafted, to produce their fruit in due season. It will be a 

 glorious reflection if the country which, in ancient times, set limits to the power 

 of Rome, and repulsed the hordes of Scandinavian adventurers, should still, in 

 these latter days, maintain a struggle equally successful against the insidious 

 inroads of moral corruption. This will be the great trial of her strength, and an 

 ordeal which the signs of the times, and the complexion of passing events, seem 

 to point out as at no great distance. 



As there is no country on earth which, considering its extent, and the influence 

 of poUtical circumstances, has exhibited more brilliant traits of what is good in 

 principle or great in action, or which — at periods the most disastrous to her hopes 

 — has shown the workings of a mind actuated and governed by more exalted 

 motives ; so, encouraged by ancestral example, and strengthened by conscious 

 integrity, Scotland may again triumph under circumstances the most untoward, 

 and to the purity of lier religious creed add the essential accompaniments of 

 political order and consistency. 



The tide of emigration which, for the last twenty years, has carried so many of 

 her primitive race from the highlands, has unquestionably thinned and saddened 

 their once cheerful solitudes ; but the reflection that they have taken root in a 

 more kindly soil — carried with them the arts of civilized life, and given their 

 names, language, and religion, to the solitudes of a new world, is at least con- 

 solatory, inasmuch as their new home has proved more hospitable than their 

 ancestral hills, and what was a loss to the kingdom has led to the prosperity of 

 many a scattered clan. 



Down to the disastrous period of the Forty-five — as it is emphatically called, 

 the Celtic or highland portion of the Scottish population was divided into septs or 

 clans — each with its chief, on whose discretion in time of peace, and talents in the 

 field, they reposed vnth filial confidence. To him tliey professed allegiance as 

 their sovereign, and, in return, looked for sympathy and protection in cases 

 where the laws of the country stood opposed to them. Thus, mutually dependant, 

 the strength of the chief consisted in the number of his retainers, and the 

 seciu-ity of the latter in the merits of their chief, whose name — common to the 



