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not have been objects of interest and curiosity. The Englishwere then abundantly inquisitive about the manners of rude •nations separated from our island by great continents andoceans. Numerous books were printed describing the laws, thesuperstitions, the cabins, the repasts, the dresses, the mar-riages, the funerals of Laplanders and Hottentots, Mohawksand Malays. The plays and poems of that age are full of allu-sions to the usages of the black men of Africa and of the redmen of America. The only barbarian about whom there w*as nowish to have any information was the Highlander. Five or sixyears after the 1-tevolution, an indefatigable angler publishedan account of Scotland. He boasted that, in the course of hisrambles from lake to lake, and from brook to brook, he had leftscarcely a nook of the kingdom unexplored. But, when weexamine his narrative, we find that he had never venturedbeyond the extreme skirts of the Celtic region. He tells us thateven from the people who lived close to the passes he couldlearn little or nothing about the Gaelic population. Few Eng-lishmen, he says, had ever seen Inverary. All beyond Inverarywas chaos.* In the reign of George the First, a work waspublished which professed to give a most exact account of Scot-land; and in this work, consisting of more than three hundredpages, tw'o contemptuous paragraphs w’ere thought sufficientfor the Highlands and the Highlanders.** We may well doubtwhether, in 1G89, one in twenty of the well read gentlemen whoassembled at Will’s coffeehouse knew that, within the four seas,and at the distance of less than five hundred miles fromLondon,

* Northern Memoirs, by R. Franck Pliilanthropus, 1694. The authorhad caught a few glimpses of Highland scenery, and speaks of it much asBurt spoke in the following generation: “It is apart of the creation leftundressed; rubbish thrown aside when the magnificent fabric of the worldwas created; as void of form as the natives are indigent of morals and goodmanners.”

** Journey through Scotland, by the author of the Journey throughEngland, 1723*

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