THE HIGHLANDS. 335 



with a glow of beauty which is not properly their own, 

 and it requires an exertion to recall to our mind the 

 desolate, barren, and wild character which properly be- 

 longs to the objects we look upon. For the same reason, 

 it requires an effort of the understanding to remind us 

 that the system of society under which the Highland 

 clans were governed, although having much in it which 

 awakens both the heart and the fancy, was hostile to 

 liberty, and to the progress both of religious and moral 

 improvement, by placing the happiness, and indeed the 

 whole existence, of tribes at the disposal of individuals 

 whose power of administration was influenced by no 

 restraint saving their own pleasure. Like other men, 

 the heads of the clans were liable to be seduced into the 

 misuse of unlimited authority. The possession of such 

 power by a few men made it always possible for them to 

 erect the standard of civil war in a country otherwise 

 disposed to peace ; and their own bravery and that of 

 their retainers only rendered the case more dangerous, 

 the provocation more easily taken, and their powers of 

 attack and resistance more bloody and desperate. Even 

 in peace the power of ravaging the estates of a neigh- 

 bour, or of the Lowlands, by letting loose upon them 

 troops of banditti, kennelled like blood-hounds in some 

 obscure valley till their services were required, was giv- 

 ing to every petty chieftain the means of spreading 

 robbery and desolation through the country at pleasure. 

 With whatever sympathy, therefore, we may regard the 

 immediate sufferers, with whatever general regret we 

 may look upon the extinction, by violence, of a state of 

 society which was so much connected with honour, 

 fidelity, and the tenets of romantic chivalry, it is im- 

 possible, in sober sense, to wish that it should have con- 



