92 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



'Are you aware that wild deer sometimes swim 

 across wide estuaries such as the Frith of Cromarty? 

 It was only last week that some of our boatmen found 

 a fine roe swimming across to the Black Isle side, nearly 

 opposite the church of Rosskeen, and fully three quarters 

 of a mile from the nearest shore. It is still alive, and in 

 the keeping of Mr Watson. My uncle tells me that in 

 calm weather deer not unfrequently cross the opening of 

 the bay from Sutor to Sutor ; and that when he was a 

 boy there was a fine large animal of this species captured 

 by some fishermen when swimming from the Black 

 Park, near Invergordon, to the Cromarty quarries, where 

 the Frith is fully five miles in breadth. 



' I have seen of late some highly interesting articles 

 on the political designs of Russia, by David Urquhart of 

 Braelanguel, a talented young fellow, better acquainted 

 with the details of the question than perhaps any other 

 Briton of the present day. It is wonderful with what 

 art this mighty empire has been extending and con- 

 solidating its power for the last century. Should it go 

 on unchecked for half a century more civilized Europe 

 must fall before it, and the world witness, a second time, 

 the arts and refinements of polished life overwhelmed and 

 lost in a deluge of northern barbarism. The democratic 

 principle, says Hume, is generally strongest among a 

 civilized people the thirst of conquest among a semi- 

 barbarous one. Urquhart shows me that the Russians 

 of the present times are strongly possessed by the latter, 

 and never, certainly, was the democratic principle stronger 

 in civilized Europe than now. Witness the struggles of 

 the antagonist parties in France, Austria, and Italy, and 

 to what extremes Whigs and Tories carry matters among 

 ourselves. And the democratic principle has this dis- 

 advantage when contemporary with the other, that it 



