2 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



Such was south-eastern Scotland in the twelfth 

 century : a country fitted to be the home of men 

 of action rather than of thought ; men whose joy 

 should lie in the chase and the conflict with nature 

 as yet unsubdued, who could track the savage 

 creatures of the forest to their dens, and clear the 

 land where it pleased them, and build, and dwell, 

 and beget children in their own likeness, till by the 

 labours of generations that country should become 

 pastoral, peaceful, and fit for fertile tillage as we 

 see it now. 



Already, at the early time of which we speak, 

 something of this work had been begun. There 

 were gaps in the high forest where it lay well to 

 the sun : little clearings marked by the ridge and 

 furrow of a rude agriculture. Here and there a 

 baron's lonely tower raised its grey horn on high, 

 sheltering a troop of men-at-arms who made it 

 their business to guard the land in war, and in 

 peace to rid it of the savage forest-creatures that 

 hindered the hind and herd in their labour and 

 their hope. In the main valleys more than one 

 great monastery was rising, or already built, by the 

 waters of Tweed and Teviot. The inmates of these 

 religious houses took their share in the whole duty 

 of peaceful Scottish men by following trades at 

 home or superintending the labours of an army of 

 hinds who broke in and made profitable the wide 

 abbey lands scattered here and there over many a 

 lowland county. All was energy, action, and pro- 

 gress : a form of life which left but little room for 

 the enterprises of the mind, the conflicts and con- 

 quests which can alone be known and won in the 

 world of thought within. 



