more sharply marked within the borders of Scotland itself than
between the countries. Galloway and Buchan, Lothian and Lochaber,
are like foreign parts; yet you may choose a man from any of them,
and, ten to one, he shall prove to have the headmark of a Scot. A
century and a half ago the Highlander wore a different costume,
spoke a different language, worshipped in another church, held
different morals, and obeyed a different social constitution from
his fellow-countrymen either of the south or north. Even the
English, it is recorded, did not loathe the Highlander and the
Highland costume as they were loathed by the remainder of the
Scotch. Yet the Highlander felt himself a Scot. He would
willingly raid into the Scotch lowlands; but his courage failed him
at the border, and he regarded England as a perilous, unhomely
land. When the Black Watch, after years of foreign service,
returned to Scotland, veterans leaped out and kissed the earth at
Port Patrick. They had been in Ireland, stationed among men of
their own race and language, where they were well liked and treated
with affection; but it was the soil of Galloway that they kissed at
the extreme end of the hostile lowlands, among a people who did not
understand their speech, and who had hated, harried, and hanged
them since the dawn of history. Last, and perhaps most curious,
the sons of chieftains were often educated on the continent of
Europe. They went abroad speaking Gaelic; they returned speaking,
not English, but the broad dialect of Scotland. Now, what idea had
they in their minds when they thus, in thought, identified
themselves with their ancestral enemies? What was the sense in
which they were Scotch and not English, or Scotch and not Irish?
Can a bare name be thus influential on the minds and affections of
men, and a political aggregation blind them to the nature of facts?
The story of the Austrian Empire would seem to answer, NO; the far