710 



HIGGINSON 



HIGHLANDS 



larly 'excelled in the implication of the most 

 pungent meaning in a demure simplicity of state- 

 ment. ' He was a man of gigantic stature 6 feet 

 8 inches high. A few of his sketches were collected 

 by their author, and printed for private circulation 

 in 1857. They appeared again, with others, as 

 Essays on Social Subjects, with a Memoir by 

 Sir W. Stirling Maxwell ( 1875). 



Higginson, THOMAS WENTWORTH, an Ameri- 

 can author, was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 

 22d December 1823, graduated at Harvard in 1841 

 and at the divinity school in 1847, and was ordained 

 in the same year. He retired from the ministry in 

 1858. Meanwhile he had been active in the anti- 

 slavery agitation, and, with Theodore Parker, 

 Wendell Phillips, and others, had been indicted 

 for the murder of a man killed during an attempt 

 to rescue a fugitive slave, but escaped through a 

 flaw in the indictment. In the struggle to make 

 Kansas a free state he took a conspicuous part. In 

 the civil war he rose to the command of the first 

 regiment that was raised from among the former 

 slaves. He afterwards returned to literature, and 

 in 1880-81 was a member of the Massachusetts 

 legislature. His books include,, besides histories 

 of the United States, a volume of Harvard 

 Memorial Biographies, and a translation of Epic- 

 tetus, Out-door Papers (1863); Malbone, an Old- 

 port Romance (1869), and Oldport Days (1873); 

 Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870); Atlantic 

 Essays ( 1871 ) ; Common- Sense about Women ( 1881 ) ; 

 a Life of Margaret Fuller ( 1884) ; The Monarch of 

 Dreams (1886); On Writing and Speech-making 

 ( 1887 ) ; and New World and the New Book ( 1891 ). 



High Commission Court, a court or judicial 

 committee established in 1559 by Queen Elizabeth to 

 investigate ecclesiastical cases, the members being 

 nominated by the crown. In the reign of James I. 

 disputes arose between the common-law courts and 

 the High Commission as to the powers of the latter. 

 In 1611 Coke decided that it had no right to fine or 

 imprison, save in cases of heresy and schism. Laud 

 employed it freely to enforce uniformity and 

 prevent immorality ; but the number of clergy 

 punished by it was never great. In two years of 

 its greatest activity only three were deprived and 

 seven suspended. Complaints were made against 

 this extraordinary tribunal, the counterpart for 

 ecclesiastical persons to the Star Chamber for lay 

 offenders, that it exceeded its powers, and was 

 in itself illegal ; and it was abolished by the Long 

 Parliament in 1641. A new court of commission 

 for ecclesiastical cases was established by James II. 

 in 1686, only to be abolished by the Bill of Rights 

 (1689). The High Commission Court established 

 in Scotland in 1608 was abolished in 1638. 



High Court of Justice. See APPEAL, 

 CHANCERY, COMMON LAW, JUDICATURE ACTS. 



Highgate, a northern suburb of London, in 

 the county of Middlesex, 4J miles NNW. of 

 King's Cross Station by rail. Here Bacon and 

 Coleridge died ; Whittington's Stone at the foot of 

 Highgate Hill marks the spot where Dick heard 

 Bow Bells, and turned again ; Coleridge's remains, 

 buried in the old churchyard, are now covered by 

 the chapel of the Highgate grammar-school ; and 

 in the great cemetery (consecrated 1839) have been 

 buried Faraday, Lord Lyndhurst, 'George Eliot,' 

 and many other famous persons. 



Highlands* a term applied to the higher parts 

 of a country, as, for example, Highlands of the 

 Hudson, in the state of New York ; but commonly 

 used of a particular district in Scotland. This 

 district has no political or civil boundary. Separated 

 by only a vague line of demarcation from the 

 division called the Lowlands, the Scottish High- 

 lands may be briefly described as that portion of 



the north and north-west of Scotland in which the 

 Celtic language and manners have less or more 

 lingered until modern times. The Highland line, 

 as it is usually called, extends diagonally across 

 the country from Nairn on the Moray Firth to 

 Dumbarton on the Clyde ; but the mountainous 

 part of the counties of Banff, Moray, Aberdeen, 

 Kincardine, and Perth are also understood to be 

 included in the designation Highlands. Caithness 

 might be excluded as being a generally level 

 country ; but throughout the Highlands there are 

 rich level tracts, none being more so than the 

 eastern division of Ross-shire. The Hebrides (q.v. ) 

 or Western Isles are included in the Highlands, but 

 the isles of Orkney and Shetland, though to the 

 north, are distinctly excluded, by reason of the 

 Norwegian origin of the inhabitants. 



The Highlands are full of lofty hills, some green 

 and pastoral with tracts of heath, and others 

 rugged and bare ; seven reach a height of 4000 feet 

 and upwards, and nearly fifty are between 3500 

 and 4000 feet. Besides the grander features, 

 there are impetuous mountain-torrents, pictur- 

 esque ravines, and valleys or glens, lakes of 

 singular beauty, and fiords, or narrow arms of the 

 sea (like the lakes, called lochs). Perhaps the 

 most remarkable feature in the country is the line 

 of valleys from Inverness to Fort-William, in 

 which lies a series of navigable lochs, united by 

 artificial channels to form the Caledonian Canal. 

 Growing up under a system of clanship, the state 

 of society in the Highlands was antiquated and 

 alien, from a national point of view ; while the 

 country was almost impenetrable to travellers or 

 to any species of traffic. The first great attempt 

 to reform this state of affairs was the opening up 

 of the country by roads in different directions, 

 under the superintendence of General Wade, about 

 1725-26. The next great act of melioration was 

 the abolition of Heritable Jurisdictions (q.v.), 

 including the ancient privileges of the heads of 

 clans, about 1748. And lastly, not to speak of 

 the planting of schools and churches, much was 

 done by the establishment of the Highland and 

 Agricultural Society in 1784. Since these events 

 the ancient patriarchal system has given place to 

 improvements as regards communication, agri- 

 culture, dwellings, education, and other modern 

 conditions, including a gradual substitution of 

 English for the Gaelic language. Great numbers 

 of the Celtic inhabitants emigrated in the last 

 quarter of the 18th century. An enormous increase 

 of population had arisen with no corresponding in- 

 crease of food. The mountains were practically 

 waste ; the discovery that sheep throve upon those 

 natural pastures led of necessity to the letting of them 

 to such tenants as could supply stock. The half- 

 starving people were at various times dispossessed, 

 and their place taken by stock-farmers with capital 

 from the Lowlands ; the ' Sutherland clearances,' 

 which have been the subject of so much controversy, 

 took place between 1810 and 1820. While a new 

 character was thus given to extensive Highland 

 pasturages, the value of estates has been very 

 remarkably advanced by being let for the pursuit 

 of game to sportsmen, chiefly persons of rank and 

 opulence from England. What, therefore, with 

 improved farming and shootings, Highland estates 

 have in the 19th century risen immensely in value. 

 Inverness is usually spoken of as the capital of the 

 Highlands. 



The physical geography of the Highlands is discussed 

 under GREAT BRITAIN; see also SCOTLAND. The clan 

 system is treated at CLAN, and the language of the 

 Highlands at GAELIC ; see also CELTS. The condition of 

 the CROFTERS and the measures taken for ameliorating it 

 form the subject of a separate article ; and DEER-FORESTS 

 are treated under that head. See also AGRICULTURE, for 



