304

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XIII.

16S9.

before him, accompanied by a cake of blood drawn from livingcows. Some of the company with which he would have feastedwould have been covered with cutaneous eruptions, and otherswould have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch wouldhave been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be;and from that couch he would have risen half poisoned withstench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half mad withthe itch. *

This is not an attractive picture. And yet an enlightenedand dispassionate observer would have found in the characterand manners of this rude people something which might wellexcite admiration and a good hope. Their courage was whatgreat exploits achieved in all the four quarters of the globe havesince proved it to be. Their intense attachment to their owntribe and to their own patriarch, though politically a great evil,partook of the nature of virtue. The sentiment was misdirectedand ill regulated; but still it was heroic. There must be someelevation of soul in a man who loves the society of which he isa member and the leader whom he follows with a love strongerthan the love of life. It was true that the Highlander had fewscruples about shedding the blood of an enemy: but it was notless true that he had high notions of the duty of observing faithto allies and hospitality to guests. It was true that his preda-tory habits were most pernicious to the commonwealth. Yetthose erred greatly who imagined that he bore any resemblanceto villains who, in rich and well governed communities, live bystealing. When he drove before him the herds of Lowlandfarmers up the pass which led to his native glen, he no more

* Almost all these circumstances aro taken from Burt's Letters. Forthe tar, 1 am indebted to Cleland’s poetry. In his verses on the “High-land Host" ho says:

“The reason is, they’re smeared with tar,

Which doth defend their head and neck,

Just as it doth their sheep protect."