Chapter VII: Part 7

You hear the muttering growl of distant thunder; you see the
storm-clouds gathering ominously over the lowering head of the Boar
of Badenoch or the Sow of Athol: the storm bursts, the rain comes
down in torrents, and, before you have been well soaked to the
skin, each stream and tiny burn is in foaming spate. Many a torrent
has to be breasted waist-deep, or maybe shoulder-high, before you
get into dry garments at the shooting-lodge. Still more perilous it
is if you are belated and without a knowledgeable guide in the mist
that envelops you in its fleecy folds, either thickening insensibly
into palpable darkness, or coming down in a rush with appalling
suddenness. Coming with a rush, I say, and I speak by book. I
remember one bright afternoon, below the Tap o’ Noth, on an
Aberdeenshire moor, and when walking up to a point, we had little
time to look up at the phenomenon of a sudden sun-eclipse. What we
did see was a dense wall of vapour descending on the dogs, who were
drawing on a point, some twenty yards ahead. It was a race against
time. I got forward to score a right and left. One of the birds we
did pick up, the other was lost beyond groping for in a darkness
that might be felt. Of course experiences like these are
comparatively rare and I do not pretend there is real danger on the
moors; I only say there is an inspiring suspicion of it. There is
undeniable romance, more enjoyable in the recollection than in the
reality, when you feel you are abroad as to the points of the
compass; when you are “turned round,” like the lost sportsman on
the American prairies; when the whistle of the curlew, the crow of
the grouse, the bellowing of the amorous harts in the rutting
season, sound strangely uncanny out of the watery cloud. You can
understand how the fervid imagination of the Celt, nursed on
superstitions in a savage solitude, peopled the gloomy wilderness
with brownies and spectres, and heard the wings and weird shrieks
of witches in the air, when the skein of wild geese was flying
inland.

When Ben Ledi’s top be not veiled in clouds, one has hence a noble prospect over “the varied realms of fair Menteith,” another of those domain provinces whose names in Scotland are older than its shires. Dr. Graham defines this as the country between the Forth and the Teith, rising in the lakes of the Trossachs region, to unite a little above Stirling. Its old bounds appear to have been rather wider, taking in Perthshire up to Strathearn, and Stirlingshire down to the basin of the Clyde. It was, in fact, the upper part of Strathmore, enclosed between the Grampians to the north and the southern Campsie Fells or Lennox Hills, which, curving to the west beyond Stirling, continue the line of the Ochils and the Sidlaws. Through this finely broken valley of heights, meadows, and moors flow the streams of the Forth, that seem to have drained away the importance of the old heart of Scotland to Stirling and Edinburgh. In our day these abundant waters have been artificially led off to Glasgow, where Bailie Nicol Jarvie little thought how Loch Katrine would be laid on to make toddy in the Saltmarket. For centuries this half-Lowland strath has been a channel through which the civilisation of the South flowed up into the Highlands, long stemmed at the mountain gates of the Trossachs country.

The farmers who settled here under the shadow of the Grampians had to lay their account with being exposed to attacks from their mountain neighbours. On the west of Perthshire the clans were shut in by bens and glens as rugged as their own, defended by warriors of the same race; what feuds raged on that side have at all events left slighter marks in history. On the east, the walls of Perth and the castles of the Tay and Earn, each with its pit and gallows, would avail to keep raiders in check. On the north, it was a far cry to the rich plains of Moray, which yet suffered sorely from invasion through Badenoch. But, southwards, a day’s march brought Roderick Dhus and Rob Roys down to a tempting prospect of “Lowland field and fold,” opened from their “savage hills.”

Time was when the Lowlanders could better guard their own against frequent foes; but a day came in which they would be more at home in markets than on battlefields, while the mountaineer still kept the use and the habit of arms. That was the flourishing period of a man like Rob Roy, who had a head for business as well as a hand for violence upon occasion. Both he and his son, Robin Oig--probably confused with each other--left a dubious name in Menteith, over which the father is said to have pushed his _creaghs_ so far as to come to encounter with Macgregor of Balhaldie, the Sheriffmuir laird who by some was recognised as chief of the clan. For the like of them, such raids were honourable occupation: a Highland gentleman, who would scorn to be the thief of a single cow, might be proud of playing the robber on a drove of cattle, yet also with a good conscience he could act as policeman, for a consideration.

My sketch of Rob did not dwell on his dealings in the blackmail business, because I cannot clearly make out at what period or periods of his life it was that, when not harrying or spoiling the Grahams and other ill-wishers, he turned to this comparatively honest means of livelihood. The word _blackmail_, which has now taken on a darker shade, then answered to an institution marking a certain advance in peace and order. As Bailie Nicol Jarvie calculated, there were far more men in the Highlands than could find honest work, even had they wanted it. The loose fringe of unemployed, when no more glorious warfare was stirred, sought an outlet for their energies in foraging upon their neighbours’ cattle; and such enterprises naturally found lines of least resistance in richer Lowland straths like Menteith and the Lennox. While civil authority was too weak to guard “herds and harvests reared in vain” within swoop of the Highland line, an urgent demand called forth a supply of redress by means of more calculating adventurers, who undertook for a fixed payment to guarantee their peaceful clients against serious loss. The line between caterans and blackmailers would not be very clearly drawn. As the Jonathan Wilds and Vidocqs of a more organised police played alternately the part of thief and thief-taker; and as

He who _silence_ hoots
Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes--

so the professed guardians might also take a turn at robbery, if only by way of impressing the need of insurance on should-be clients. Even the commissioned Watch companies, who were the nucleus of our famous Highland regiments, had the repute of being somewhat discriminating in their protective service. But a “high-toned” blackmailer like Rob Roy made it a point of honour to carry out his contract with subscribers, if sometimes he turned aside to give non-subscribers a plain hint of what they might gain by employing him. They had nothing but his honour to depend upon, a contract of blackmail being strictly illegal--indeed, by an act of the sixteenth century, declared a capital crime in the case of both parties. The necessity of the time, however, let the law wink at the effect of its own shortcomings; and prudent border landlords were fain to insure movable property with men who made it their business and pleasure to take hard knocks and rough excursions.

Later on, the authorities saw well to recognise what had become a regular practice. Rob Roy’s nephew, Glengyle, who appears to have borne a more respectable character than the uncle, entered into formal contracts to recover stolen cattle, or make good the loss, at the rate of five per cent on the rent of a holding; and in the end he was employed and subsidised by Government as Captain of a Watch, the makeshift police of the border line. More distinguished chiefs were not ashamed to carry on the same business. Scott asserts that one of the last to practise it was Macdonald of Barrisdale--a hero rubbed rather threadbare by Mr. A. Lang--who adorned his claymore with a Virgilian inscription--

Hae tibi erunt artes--pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.

Rob Roy’s blackmailing had to be carried on more or less _sub rosa_, but may have been quite as efficient for the protection of those who made terms with him. Such a Highland Robin Hood would have no difficulty in keeping about him a gang of followers like the Dougal cratur and his own sturdy brood. His proceedings in a case of robbery within his jurisdiction are described by Scott from the mouth of an old man in the Lennox, who, scores of years afterwards, told him the tale of this exciting experience. As a herd-lad of fifteen, he had been working with his father on an estate from which some dozen head of cattle were carried off one autumn

night. Rob Roy was called in, and came with seven or eight men armed as instruments of his function. Having gravely inquired into the symptoms, he soon diagnosed the cause, and set about the remedy with professional promptness, only requiring that two herds should accompany him to identify the cattle and to drive them back when recovered, a duty not to be expected of gentlemen like those who figured in his tail. If Scott’s stories be skimmed nowadays, his notes and introductions are apt to be skipped; so I make bold to borrow freely from one who has so much to lend.

My informant and his father were dispatched on the expedition. They
had no goodwill to the journey; nevertheless, provided with a
little food, and with a dog to help them to manage the cattle, they
set off with Macgregor. They travelled a long day’s journey in the
direction of the mountain Benvoirlich, and slept for the night in a
ruinous hut or bothy. The next morning they resumed their journey
among the hills, Rob Roy directing their course by signs and marks
on the heath, which my informant did not understand. About noon Rob
commanded the armed party to halt and to lie crouched in the
heather where it was thickest. “Do you and your son,” he said to
the oldest Lowlander, “go boldly over the hill;--you will see
beneath you, in a glen on the other side, your master’s cattle
feeding, it may be, with others; gather your own together, taking
care to disturb no one else, and drive them to this place. If
anyone speak to, or threaten you, tell them that I am here, at the
head of twenty men.” “But what if they abuse us, or kill us?” said
the Lowland peasant, by no means delighted at finding the embassy
imposed on him and his son. “If they do you any wrong,” said Rob,
“I will never forgive them as long as I live.” The Lowlander was by
no means content with this security, but did not think it safe to
dispute Rob’s injunctions. He and his son climbed the hill,
therefore, found a deep valley, where there grazed, as Rob had
predicted, a large herd of cattle. They cautiously selected those
which their master had lost, and took measures to drive them over
the hill. As soon as they began to remove them, they were surprised
by hearing cries and screams, and looking around in fear and
trembling, they saw a woman, seeming to have started out of the
earth, who _flyted_ at them, that is, scolded them, in Gaelic. When
they contrived, however, in the best Gaelic they could muster, to
deliver the message Rob Roy told them, she became silent, and
disappeared without offering them any further annoyance. The chief
heard their story on their return, and spoke with great complacency
of the art which he possessed of putting such things to rights
without any unpleasant bustle.

On the way back the herd-boy gained a recollection to last him for life, and to suggest an incident in _Waverley_. At nightfall they bivouacked on one of those bare moors that so much appalled Andrew Fairservice, swept by a frosty wind which did not much trouble the hardy escort.

The Highlanders, sheltered by their plaids, lay down in the heath
comfortably enough, but the Lowlanders had no protection whatever.
Rob Roy, observing this, directed one of his followers to afford
the old man a portion of his plaid; “for the callant (boy), he
may,” said the freebooter, “keep himself warm by walking about and
watching the cattle.” My informant heard this sentence with no
small distress; and as the frost wind grew more and more cutting,
it seemed to freeze the very blood in his young veins. He had been
exposed to weather all his life, he said, but never could forget
the cold of that night; in so much that, in the bitterness of his
heart, he cursed the bright moon for giving no heat with so much
light. At length the sense of cold and weariness became so
intolerable that he resolved to desert his watch to seek some
repose and shelter. With that purpose he couched himself down
behind one of the most bulky of the Highlanders, who acted as
Lieutenant to the party. Not satisfied with having secured the
shelter of the man’s large person, he coveted a share of his plaid,
and by imperceptible degrees drew a corner of it round him. He was
now comparatively in paradise, and slept sound till daybreak, when
he awoke and was terribly afraid on observing that his nocturnal
operations had altogether uncovered the dhuiniewassell’s neck and
shoulders, which, lacking the plaid which should have protected
them, were covered with _cranreuch_ (_i.e._ hoar frost). The lad
rose in great dread of a beating, at least, when it should be found
how luxuriously he had been accommodated at the expense of a
principal person of the party. Good Mr. Lieutenant, however, got up
and shook himself, rubbing off the hoar frost with his plaid, and
muttering something of a _cauld neight_.

After Culloden, for a time, Menteith farmers might sit in a worse plight than before. While the blackmail insurance was no longer to be depended on, a banditti of broken rebels ensconced themselves above the lakeland passes in fastnesses like the crags of Ben Venue, from which they sallied forth on depredations now unchecked by any spirit of clan loyalty, or neighbourly alliances. Their reign of robbery was overthrown mainly through the exertions of Mr. Nicol Graham of Gartmore, whose descendant in our time has not always been hot on the side of law and order, while a forbear of theirs had shown the family spirit in refusing to pay tribute to Rob Roy. This gentleman stirred up the Government to military battues, which, guided by his experience and knowledge of the country, had more success than Captain Thornton’s expedition, till the robbers were rooted out of their lairs, scattered, banished, or executed. Mr. Graham accumulated in his library a curious collection of documents which he called “thief-papers,” illustrating the condition of the border country in this troubled time. These papers are understood to have been put into the hands of the romancer who turned them to such famous use, hence, for instance, being taken Mr. Nicol Jarvie’s account of the population and resources of the clans behind the Highland line; and the “change-houses,” like that of Lucky Macalpine at Aberfoyle, are here pointed out as stills of demoralisation.

Even after peace had been won for the villages and farms of the strath, the law was long a little shy of trusting itself among the mountains. Lockhart tells us that Scott’s first acquaintance with the braes of Balquhidder was as a writer’s apprentice, when he accompanied a process server who had to be escorted to the scene of his duty by a party of soldiers, where now a policeman is a rare sight, and few crimes are known to justice but drunkenness with its _sequelae_. Till a good deal later there were parts on the Welsh borders in much the same state of home rule. An old gentleman not long deceased told me how in the Llanthony Valley, where the late Father Ignatius secluded himself, disputes were settled by a sort of rough lynch law; and in the next valley, within living memory, the only murder known had been that of a bailiff who attempted to serve a writ. In some parts of the United States, if all tales be true, life and property are less safe to-day than they were a century ago in the Highlands--where officers of the law were the last travellers to feel how they carried their lives in their hands.

Scott compares the mountain clans to Afghan tribes, of whom he seems to have been reading some account. A more familiar resemblance is with the Red Indians of the backwoods, so well known to us through Catholic and Puritan adventurers on their borders. There was the same fierce pride, tempered by traits of generosity and scruples of honour; the same hardihood, along with impatience of regular work; in some cases the same veneer of Christian ritual; always the same restless turbulence of young warriors eager to prove their manhood, held more or less in check by the cooler heads of chiefs and counsellors. The moving narratives of the frontier settlers of New York and Pennsylvania give us some idea of what perils Menteith farmers had long to be familiar with, though indeed the wild Highlandmen seldom showed such cruel temper as was religiously cultivated in the Red Indian.

There appears this other difference in the Highlands and the backwoods border feuds, that in the former, the jarring elements were brought into much closer relations, so that love played its part as well as hatred. The inveterate enemies of the wide New World would be separated from each other by great stretches of forest and prairie, through which war parties travelled for days and weeks, by stealthy paths and silent waterways, to fall at advantage upon their unguarded foe. The pale-face settlers could not feel themselves safe from vengeful redskins whose camp-fires were a hundred miles away. It is said that the Indian summer, that serene truce of nature, got its name through the red warriors taking then a last chance of a raid in force upon the frontier, before the snows held them back; yet even in the depth of winter bands of human wolves might come prowling about the lonely blockhouses, to drag away unwary or unlucky victims to a carnival of torture among their distant wigwams. No band of cultivators would care to fix themselves within a dozen miles of a tribe that was being slowly pushed out of its hunting-grounds. But in Menteith and behind its mountain walls, hereditary enemies were so closely packed together that it is hard to understand how they got on without mutual extermination.

We hear, indeed, of occasional raids into this district from so far off as Appin and Lochaber. But also the tale quoted above from Scott shows how near to their prey were caterans, who, in the _Lady of the Lake’s_ time, could push their devastations as far as the Devon valley of the Ochils. We have seen how the Macgregors and the Maclarens ill-neighboured each other in Balquhidder, the latter clan gradually ousted and taking refuge among the Stewarts, who filled the adjacent wilds of Glenfinlas. To the south lay the Buchanans, the Colquhouns, and the “wild Macfarlanes.” To the north were the Macnabs and advanced parties of Murrays. The name of the Dreadnought Hotel at Callander tells us how it was first built by the Laird of Macnab, whose concerns straggled so far from their root on Loch Tay. And all those smaller bodies were pushed upon from opposite sides by the Grahams and the Campbells, powerful enemies whom the older inhabitants would sometimes be able to play off against each other, while sometimes the medley of quarrel seems to have tended to such an awkward shape as that triangular duel in _Midshipman Easy_.

What the Campbells were in Argyll and Breadalbane, the Grahams were in Menteith, intruders and agents of civilisation, who had to hang their heads for long through a series of miscalculations and misfortunes. The house of Menteith was an unlucky one ever since one of its sons betrayed Wallace; nor did it prosper by the earldom of Strathearn, through which it claimed to inherit the purest strain of royal blood. It sank into misery and extinction, having passed from Menteiths and Stewarts to the Grahams, on whom also a curse seemed to come through the murder of James I. Other branches of this family gained futile distinction, in the meteoric career of Montrose and the dark fame of Claverhouse, who to an uncovenanting generation looks now not so black as he was once painted. The mysterious murder of Lord Menteith’s heir by an intimate friend has been told in _The Legend of Montrose_. In the next century the empty title was claimed by one who literally died a beggar on the roadside.

The _jeune premier_, though not the hero, in the _Lady of the Lake_, was a Graham who appears no further unfortunate than by having a double allowance of powerful rivals, to hinder his course of true love for the daughter of a once greater house that then lay under heavy clouds of royal disfavour. This heroine, we remember, was Ellen Douglas, conveniently exiled to a nook rather out of the way of Douglas power and pride. Did it ever occur to a careless reader to ask why here she had been brought up by an aunt, taking the place of a mother? Looking away from the Grahams a moment, I should like to quote a piece of commentary which my friend Mr. H. R. Allport believes himself to have made for the first time, in a privately-printed volume.

The heroines of the Waverley Novels, with a single prominent
exception, are all of them motherless. They had mothers presumably,
but their mothers filled untimely graves. The one prominent
exception, of course, is Lucy Ashton, whose mother, Lady Ashton, is
an important personage in the story. In _Waverley_ there are two
heroines, Flora M’Ivor and Rose Bradwardine, who are both
motherless. In _Guy Mannering_ there are also two heroines, Julia
Mannering and Lucy Bertram, who are both motherless. In _Rob Roy_
the heroine is Die Vernon, who is motherless. In _Old Mortality_
the heroine is Edith Bellenden, who is motherless. In _The Heart of
Midlothian_ the heroine is Jeanie Deans, who is motherless. In
_Ivanhoe_ there are again two heroines, Rebecca and Rowena, who are
both motherless. In _Kenilworth_ the heroine is Amy Robsart, who is
motherless. In _The Pirate_ the heroines are Minna and Brenda
Troil, who are motherless. In _The Fortunes of Nigel_ the heroine
is Margaret Ramsay, who is motherless. In _Quentin Durward_ the
heroine is Isabelle, Countess of Croye, who is motherless. In
_Woodstock_ the heroine is Alice Lee, who is motherless. In _The
Fair Maid of Perth_ the heroine is Catherine Glover, who is
motherless. I need not go through the entire list. I believe that
Lucy Ashton is the only exception of note.

It would be interesting to know Scott’s reason for what can hardly
be the result of accident. He may possibly have thought that a girl
deprived of a mother’s care and control was likely to grow up a
more unconventional, and therefore a more picturesque, personage
than one more happily circumstanced. But this is a mere guess.

I can think of another guess. It is known how Scott was disappointed in early love, and how he married a lady of French extraction, who makes a very shadowy appearance in biographies of him. Now that his children’s children are dead, there can be no harm in hinting that his wife was accused of a weakness which went to diminish the respect if not the affection of her family. An old friend of my father, still alive, heard the matter put very plainly by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, who told him how he himself had given up dining with the Scotts, because of the state in which he frequently found the lady of the house. That bit of hushed-up scandal would explain why the husband shrank from describing a mother’s influence, as touching a sore point in his own family life. His letters and diaries also dwell far more upon his children than upon their mother.

From this whispered aside, let us turn back to the Grahams of Menteith. At last the race began to flourish steadily in the new dukedom seated on Loch Lomond, forgetting its feuds with Argyll and overcoming its guerrilla neighbours, Macgregors and such-like. The Grahams may now look on themselves as a great clan that has absorbed the sentiment of the heather and the forest among which they made clearings. But they surely came from the south, one sept of them seen by Scott at home in the Debatable Land on the English border. The very name has a hint of darkly dubious origin. One ancient warrior of the race is said to have broken through the Roman wall, which, in memory of that exploit, became known as Graham’s Dyke. But the name Graham’s Dyke turns up in other distant parts of Britain--as, for instance, on Harrow Weald by the house of that dealer in modern “magic and spells,” Mr. W. S. Gilbert, where it is more plausibly interpreted as Grim’s Dyke, a name given in awe by rude Saxons to what seemed the work of supernatural hands, such as near Brighton, with a flourish of legend, has been bluntly christened the Devil’s Dyke. The Grahams had best look out for another forefather. _Quelle généalogie!_ as a Czar of Russia exclaimed in amazement, when he had interpreted to him at the Mansion House that an unknown uniform denoted _un frère aîné de la Trinité_.

We know how more than one “Dyke” was run across the country as a barrier against naked hosts of the North. But this part of the Highland line had a natural boundary in the Forth, of which the saying was that it “bridled the wild Highlandman.” Swimming is an accomplishment given by Scott to Malcolm Graeme and other of his heroes; but it was not common among Highlanders of the last generation; and I am doubtful how far a poet had authority for the statement--

We _swam_ ower to fause English ground
And danced ourselves dry to the pibroch’s sound.

The young Forth, known in its cradle as the _Avon Dhu_, soon gathers strength as it drains the flats of Flanders Moss, which is taken to be the dregs of a forest cut down by Roman soldiery; and its only safe passage, even that impracticable in spate weather, was by the Fords of Frew, where Rob Roy made his bold escape from Montrose’s horsemen. This point proved so important as to be guarded by a fortalice, when there was no wale of bridges on the Highland line. Scott confesses to an anachronism in accommodating Aberfoyle with a bridge in Rob Roy’s day. The first bridge was at Stirling, one of great antiquity, as shown by the part it played in Wallace’s victory over the English knights heedlessly divided on the crossing. A public-spirited tradesman of Stirling, Robert Spittall, “Tailor to King James IV.” built a bridge over the Teith at Doune, as an inscription upon it records. Once across this, an invading army from the North had still to pass the Forth, its bridge guarded by Stirling Castle.

The value of this double line of defence for the Lowlands was well shown in 1715. When Mar lay so long idle at Perth with the largest Jacobite army ever mustered could he have held it together, his inactivity was caused not only by want of skill and decision, but by the fact of the Forth fords being swollen by a wet winter, while Argyll had broken down the Teith Bridge at Doune. Mar found it easier to ship a detachment across the Firth of Forth than to get over the river near its source, an enterprise in which sly Rob Roy seems to have been in vain expected to guide him. When he did advance on Stirling it was by Allan Water, above which he met Argyll on Sheriffmuir, for that strange battle in which both sides were half-losers, half-winners.

Argyll’s moral victory appears to have been partly due to the Ochil boglands being frozen so as to bear the heavy regular dragoons. A little later and the frost would have been hard enough to make the unbridged rivers passable, as the Highland army could retreat from Perth across the ice-bound Tay. When Charles Edward advanced upon the Lowlands it was in a dry September that let him easily over the Forth, to march on in bravado within cannon-shot of Stirling Castle. To hinder his retreat he found Stirling Bridge broken down, which was repaired in haste for Cumberland’s march to the north.

Sheriffmuir, if we may trust historians like Blind Harry, was arena of an older and a bloodier battle, when Wallace is said to have exterminated an English army ten thousand strong; and scattered standing stones here are taken by the country-folk as memorials of that victory. The little town of Dunblane, with its restored Cathedral and its monuments of nobility, was well known to armies marching north and south on the road up Strathallan into Strathearn. Prince Charlie and Butcher Cumberland were lodged here in turn; and local legend makes the latter narrowly escape an end worse than that of Pyrrhus. A servant lass whose heart had been won by the Prince’s graciousness when she cleaned his boots, undertook to souse the Duke with boiling oil thrown from a window as he rode out of Dunblane; but the scalding douche lighted on his horse’s haunch, so that he got off with being flung into the mud.

Doune Castle guarded another road into the Highlands by way of Callander. In the ’45, as Captain Waverley found, it was held by the Jacobites to secure their passage of the Teith, and seems to have been the only spot in which they heard the mouse squeak rather than the lark sing. For a time it had for commander that “Black Knee” nephew of Rob Roy, who earned golden opinions in the neighbourhood by the considerate way in which he exercised his authority, not allowing dubious auxiliaries like Donald Bean Lean to have their will of the poor country-folk’s cattle and chickens. Even then it was in no case to stand a hot siege; and Scott found it “a noble ruin, dear to my recollections from associations which have been long and painfully broken.” It once made a stronghold for royal blood, the Dukes of Albany and the “bonnie Earls of Moray,” none of them so well remembered as the boy who came to dream among their memorials, and to retrace on pony-back the ways of audacious caterans and adventurous knights.

Well-known was all this country to young Walter Scott, when he spent long holidays at Cambusmore and other friendly mansions hereabout, his hosts as little thinking as himself how this idle callant was one day to increase the value of property in Menteith. Indeed, it is extraordinary how much at home he shows himself in most parts of Perthshire, so far from his native eyry. Through that heart of Scotland as we wandered together, the tales by which I have tried to cheer the reader’s way are mostly to be found transfused into his romances or tacked on them as illustrations in his lively introductions and notes. If I have forborne to repeat hackneyed epithets about the scenery of this region, it is because I take for granted that its features are familiar in Scott’s verse, which, let certain critics shut their ears as they will, still plays to general admiration the drum and trumpet part in the orchestra of British poets, not without interludes of sweeter strain that will be remembered long after more elaborate compositions have been whistled down the winds of fame.

We all know where to look for descriptions of Perthshire scenery; and I am the less bound to labour on word-painting, since in my case it may be hoped, after the words of another poet, that “the pictures for the page atone.” The artist here has done his part for both of us. The author modestly presents himself, rather, as a gossiping companion to the guide-book, which, in its up-to-date form, dwells more on details of useful information, and has less room for giving strangers some notion what life was in this region before its flush of romance had died away like an Alpine glow.

But soon now we are out of Perthshire, crossing the Forth into Stirling, whose citadel, “the bulwark of the North,” has been our beacon as we gossiped our way down the green Menteith Mesopotamia. The “Sons of the Rock” may receive me with a frown, declaring their county and not mine to be the true heart of Scotland, which I admit to have been for a time its central ganglion, whence the nerves of civilisation thrilled out through Highlands and Lowlands. We can both agree that the fat Lothians and the smoky Clyde were mere excrescences, which made a narrow escape of becoming no better than English borderlands. Stirling cannot at least complain that I failed to do it due honour in _Bonnie Scotland_. Now once more let us mount its castled rock to look back on such a prospect of Perthshire that nowhere could one have a nobler standpoint for bidding--

Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow!
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below!
Farewell to the forest and wild-hanging woods!
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods!

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.

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PAINTED BY WILLIAM SMITH, JUNR.

DESCRIBED BY A. R. HOPE MONCRIEFF

Containing 40 Full-Page Illustrations in Colour.

PRICE =10s.= NET (_Post free_, _price_ 10_s._ 6_d._)

PRESS OPINIONS

“It is amazingly cheap at ten shillings net, for it contains an album of coloured pictures, by the aid of which we can realise the grandest scenery of the outer isles. Mr. Smith has done his work admirably, and has included the best-loved and loneliest places.”--_British Weekly._

“It is not merely as a Scot, but as one whose heart is in the Highlands, that he [the author] describes the beauties of loch and glen, of frowning hills and rugged coast. Nor is it merely with the outward and physical aspect of the Western Highlands and Islands that he is familiar. He has imbibed their very spirit. He knows their romantic history and their still more romantic legends. He understands the Highland folk and their ways. He is full of anecdotes and reminiscences which illustrate their peculiarities and prejudices.... Altogether, his book is charming.”--_Glasgow Herald._

A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

* * * * *

_OTHER BEAUTIFUL SCOTTISH BOOKS_

EDINBURGH

PAINTED BY JOHN FULLEYLOVE, R.I.

DESCRIBED BY ROSALINE MASSON

Containing 21 Full-Page Illustrations in Colour

SQUARE DEMY 8vo, CLOTH, GILT TOP

(_Post free_, _price_ 7_s._ 11_d._) PRICE =7s. 6d.= NET (_Post free_,
_price_ 7_s._ 11_d._)

“A brilliant presentment of the salient features of the city’s architecture and of the city’s history and romance.”--_Scotsman._

“The pictures are exceedingly beautiful, Mr. Fulleylove’s work being reproduced by the three-colour process in an exceedingly fine way. The letterpress, written by the daughter of Dr. David Masson, provides full and interesting reading, in which everyone will delight.”--_Edinburgh Evening News._

ABBOTSFORD

PAINTED BY WILLIAM SMITH, JUNR.

DESCRIBED BY W. S. CROCKETT

Containing 20 Full-Page Illustrations in Colour

SQUARE DEMY 8VO, CLOTH, GILT TOP

(_Post free_, _price_ 7_s._ 11_d._) PRICE =7s. 6d.= NET (_Post free_,
_price_ 7_s._ 11_d._)

“Whether judged by its charming coloured illustrations or by the extraordinary interest of its letterpress, it is worthy of its theme, and one of the most desirable mementoes we have of Sir Walter.... The illustrations are excellent, and the colouring is bright and effective without being tawdry.”--_British Weekly._

“Mr. W. S. Crockett tells the story of Abbotsford excellently well in a series of very readable chapters.... Mr. Smith’s twenty clever water-colours not only give many aspects of Scott’s home and its immediate surroundings, but include also some very charming pictures of Melrose Abbey and other famous spots in the district. Letterpress and illustrations together make an extremely pleasant book.”--_Literary World._

SCOTTISH LIFE AND CHARACTER

PAINTED BY H. J. DOBSON, R.S.W.

DESCRIBED BY WM. SANDERSON

Containing 20 Full-Page Illustrations in Colour

SQUARE DEMY 8VO, CLOTH, GILT TOP

(_Post free_, _price_ 7_s._ 11_d._) PRICE =7s. 6d.= NET (_Post free_,
_price_ 7_s._ 11_d._)

“Mr. Dobson is an artist of high repute, his touch is sure, his colour sense perfect, his grip of character unfailing, while it is sympathetic.”--_Daily Mail._

“The letterpress is popular and homely, and the illustrations very striking.”--_St. Andrew._

A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Heart of Scotland, by A. R. Hope Moncrieff