152 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



sections are to be found nowhere. The burn of Eathie 

 is a study in itself/ 



In a critique on the poems of a local poet, named 

 MacColl, published by Miller about this time in the 

 Inverness Courier, there occurs a comparative estimate 

 of Celt and Saxon, as represented by the Highlanders 

 and Lowlanders of Scotland. Miller would probably 

 have agreed with Professor Huxley that physiologically 

 there is no important difference between the races ; but 

 it is evident that he considered them as widely differing 

 in those psychological characters which, though taken 

 no account of by the physiologist, are of immense im- 

 portance to the historian. Here is the passage : 

 'The Celt is essentially a different person from the 

 Saxon in the very constitution of his mind. Both are 

 shrewd, but each in his own way. The Highlander is 

 characterized by the shrewdness of observation, the Low- 

 lander by that of inference ; the Highlander is delighted 

 by the external beauty of things, the Lowlander in 

 diving into their secret causes ; the Highlander feels 

 keenly, and gives free vent to his feelings, the Lowlander, 

 on the contrary, cautiously conceals every emotion, 

 unless it be a very potent one indeed ; the Highlander is 

 a descriptive poet, the Lowlander a metaphysician. Our 

 Adam Smiths and David Humes are types of the one 

 class, the Ossian of MacPherson is no unmeet repre- 

 sentative of the other. The Gaelic as a language is 

 singularly rich in the descriptive, and comparatively 

 barren in the abstract. Phrenologists remark nearly the 

 same thing of the Celtic head ; the reflective organs are 

 always less prominently developed than the knowing 

 ones. It may be adduced, too, as a corroborative fact, 

 that the native literature of the Highlands abounds in 

 poems which contain nothing but pure description from 



