284 SCOTLAND. 



islands : and they appear to be as quiet and inoffensive a3 protestant 

 subjects. 



Scotland, during the time of episcopacy, contained two archbish- 

 oprics, St. Andrew's and Glasgow ; and twelve bishoprics, Edinburgh, 

 Dunkeld, Aberdeen, Murray, Brechin, Dumblain, Roth, Caithness, 

 Orkney, Galloway, Argyle, and the Isles. 



Literature... For this article we may refer to the literary history 

 of Europe for 1400 years past. The western parts and isles of Scotland 

 produced St. Patrick, the celebrated apostle of Ireland. The writings 

 of Adamnanus, and other authors who lived before, and at the time of 

 the Norman invasion, which are still extant, are specimens of early 

 Scotch learning Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, most unques- 

 tionably held a correspondence, by letters, with the king of Scotland, 

 with whom he entered into a league ; and employed Scots in planning, 

 settling, and ruling his favourite universities, and other seminaries of 

 learning, in France, Italy, and Germany. It is an undoubted truth, 

 though a seeming paradoxical fact, that Barbour, a Scottish poet, philos- 

 opher, and historian, though prior in time to Chauser, having flourished 

 in the" year 1368, wrote, according to the modern ideas, as pure English 

 as that bard ; and his versification is perhaps more harmonious. The 

 destruction of the Scottish monuments of learning and antiquity has 

 rendered their early annals lame, and often fabulous ; but the Latin 

 style of Buchanan's history is equal in classical purity to that of any 

 modern productions. The letters of the Scottish kings to the neigh- 

 bouring princes are incomparably the finest compositions of the times 

 in which they were written, and are free from the barbarisms of those 

 sent them in answer. This has been considered as a proof that classical 

 learning was more cultivated at the court of Scotland than at any other 

 in Europe. 



The discovery of the logarithms, a discovery which in point of in- 

 genuity and utility may vie with any that has been made in modern 

 times, is the indisputable right of Napier of Merchistone. And since 

 his time, the mathematical sciences have been cultivated in Scotland 

 with great success. Keil, in his physico-mathematical works, to the 

 clearness of his reasoning, has sometimes added the colouring of a poet. 

 Of all writers on astronomy, Gregory is allowed to be one of the most 

 perfect and elegant. Maclaurin, the companion and the friend of sir 

 Isaac Newton, was endowed with all that precision and force of mind 

 which rendered him peculiarly fitted for bringing down the ideas of that 

 great man to the level of ordinary apprehensions, and for diffusing that 

 light through the world which New-ton had confined within the sphere 

 pf the learned His Treatise on Fluctions is regarded by the best 

 judges in Europe as the clearest account of the most refined and sub- 

 tile speculations on which the human mind ever exerted itself with 

 success. While Maclaurin pursued this new career, a gometrician no 

 leSs famous distinguished himself in the almost deserted track of an- 

 tiquity. This was the late Dr. Simpson, so well known for his illustra- 

 tions of the ancient geometry. His Elements of Euclid, and, above all, 

 his Conic Sections, are sufficient of themselves to establish the scien- 

 tific reputation of his native country. 



In the department of history the highest celebrity has been acquired 

 by Scottish writers. Hume was the first who, with any pretensions to 

 classical elegance, wrote the history of England. Dr. Robertson began. 



