RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 457 



numerous small properties farmed by the proprietors, and 

 forming, in most instances, farms by no means very large. 

 There are parishes in this part of the mainland divided among 

 from sixty to eighty landowners. 



A nearly similar state of things seems to have obtained 

 in Scotland about the beginning of the eighteenth century, 

 and for the greater part of the previous one. I am acquaint- 

 ed with old churchyards in the north of Scotland that con- 

 tain the burying-grounds of from six to ten landed proprie- 

 tors, whose lands are now merged into single properties. 

 And, in reading the biographies of our old covenanting mi- 

 nisters, I have often remarked as curious, and as bearing in 

 the same line, that no inconsiderable proportion of their num- 

 ber were able to retire, in times of persecution, to their own 

 little estates. It was during the disastrous wars of the 

 French Revolution, wars the effects of which Great Britain 

 will, I fear, never fully recover, that the smaller holdings 

 were finally absorbed. About twenty years ere the war be- 

 gan, the lands of England were parcelled out among no fewer 

 than two hundred and fifty thousand families ; before the 

 peace of 1815, they had fallen into the hands of thirty-two 

 thousand. In less than half a century, that base of actual 

 proprietorship on which the landed interest of any country 

 must ever find its surest standing, had contracted in England 

 to less than one-seventh its former extent. In Scotland the 

 absorption of the great bulk of the lesser properties seems to 

 have taken place somewhat earlier ; but in it also the revo- 

 lutionary war appears to have given them the final blow ; 

 and the more extensive proprietors of the kingdom are assur- 

 edly all the less secure in consequence of their extinction. 

 They were the smaller stones in the wall, that gave firmness 

 in the setting to the larger, and jambed them fast within 

 those safe limits determined by the line and plummet, which 

 it is ever perilous to overhang. Yery extensive territorial 



