DOMESTIC MANNERS.

The domestic manners of the Scots have seldom attracted historical notice, and their advances in refinement are to be collected or conjectured from their peculiar customs, their progress in the arts, and their improvement in the various comforts of life. Their morals, contrasted with those of their ancestors, are arraigned as degenerate, by the historian Bothius, who accuses their intemperance, censures their luxury, and laments their departure from the frugal moderation and rugged virtues of the ancient Scots. His description, however, of these premature obdurate virtues is far from attractive and what he denominates vicious intemperance, and excessive luxury, may be fairly interpreted an increasing refinement, and superior elegance of social life. The nobles, who resorted seldom to the cities, preserved in their castles their former rude, but hospitable magnificence, which increased their retainers, and strengthened their power, secured their safety, or enabled them to prosecute their deadly feuds. The people were divided into factions by those lords to whom they attached themselves, whose interest they espoused, and whose quarrels they adopted, and the clans peculiar at present to the Highlands were probably once universal in Scotland.

In the Highlands and on the borders clans were perpetuated by a constant warfare, that inured the people to the fierceness and rapine of a predatory life. As thieves and plunderers, their characters were proverbial; yet their depredations, committed generally on hostile tribes, assume an appearance of military virtue; and their mutual fidelity, their observance of promises, and in the Highlands their inviolable attachments to their chieftains, are circumstances sufficient almost to redeem their character. The Chattan clan, during the

minority of James V, had made a destructive incursion into Murray, but after their return were assailed and oppressed by superior forces; and two hundred of the tribe rather than betray their chieftain, or disclose his retreat, preferred and suffered an ignominious death.*

LANGUAGE, ENGLISH AND SCOTS.

The mutability of language to the learned, whose fame depends on its duration, an incessant topic of serious regret, seems to be counteracted by the art of printing, which, in proportion as it disseminates a taste for letters, re-acts as a model on colloquial speech, and operates, if not entirely to repress innovation, at least to preserve the stability and perpetuate the radical structure of language. Such stability the English language has acquired from printing, and at the distance of three centuries, still exhibits the same phraseology and syntactical form varied only by those alterations essential to the progressive refinement of speech. The language of this period, if necessary to discriminate its peculiar style, was unpolished and oral; its character is rude simplicity, neither aspiring to elegance nor solutions of ease, but written as it was spoken, without regard to selection or arrangement; reduced to modern orthography, it is only distinguishable from the common colloquial discourse of the present period by a certain rust of antiquity, by phrases that are abrogated, or words that are neither effaced or altered. These, however, are not numerous; and we may conclude from the composition of the learned, that the language of the people differed little from the present unless in

*See Characteristic Traits of the Ancient Scots Highlanders. -Passim.

pronunciation, which, to judge from orthography, was harsh, and such as would now be denominated provincial or vulgar. Whatever has since been superadded, either by a skilful arrangement, or the incorporation of foreign or classical words and idioms, is more the province of critical disquisition than historical research; yet it merits observation, that the first attempts at ele. gance in the English language are ascribable in poetry to Surry; in prose, perhaps to Sir Thomas More, whose English style, as it was modelled on his Latin, is constructed with art, and replete with invasions approaching to that which, in contra-distinction to the vulgar, may justly be denominated a learned diction.

Thus history has already furnished sufficient specimens both of the Scottish and English languages which descended from the same Gothic original, and nearly similar in former periods, divaricated considerably during the present. This is to be attributed to the alteration and improvement of the English, for the Scottish were more stationary; nor is there in the language a material difference between the compositions of James I, and those of Bellenden, Dunbar, and Douglas, each of whom by the liberal adaption of Latin words enriched and polished his vernacular idiom. But for the union of the crowns, which in literature rendered the English the prevalent language, the Scottish might have risen to the merit of a civil dialect, different rather in pronunciation than in structure; not so solemn, but more energetic, nor less susceptible of literary culture.

DIET, AND COOKERY.

The diet of the Scots was worse and more penurious at this time than that of the English. The peasants subsisted chiefly on oatmeal and cabbages, for

animal food was sparingly used even at the tables of substantial gentlemen.

An English traveller who experienced the hospitality of a Scottish knight, describes the table as furnished with large platters of porridge, in each of which was a small piece of sodden beef; and remarks that the servants entered in their blue caps without uncovering, and instead of attending, seated themselves with their master at table. His mess, however, was better; it consisted of a boiled pullet with prunes in the broth; but his guest observed 'no art of cookery,' or furniture of household stuff, but rather a rude neglect of both.

Forks are a recent invention, and in England, the table was only supplied with knives; but in Scotland, every gentleman produced from his girdle a knife, and cut the meat into morsels, for himself and the women, a practice that first intermixed the ladies and gentlemen alternately at table. The use of the fingers in eating required a scrupulous attention to cleanliness, and ablution was customary, at least at court, both before and after meals. But the court and nobility emulated the French in their manners, and adopted probably their refinements in diet. The Scottish reader will observe that the knight's dinner was composed of two coarse dishes peculiar to Scotland; but others of an exquisite delicacy were probably derived from the French, and retained with little alteration by a nation otherwise ignorant of the culinary arts. The Scots, though assimilating fast with the English, still resemble the French in their mess tables. The English at this period were reckoned sober: the Scots intemperate ; they are accused at least, by their own historians, of excessive drinking, an imputation long attached to their national character.

FIELD SPORTS, GAMES AND DIVERSIONS.

The sports of the field are in different ages pursued with a uniformity almost permanent. Hunting has ever been a favorite diversion both with the English and Scots, and hawking has only been superseded by the gun; but it was still practised with unabating ardor, and cultivated scientifically as a liberal art. Trea tises were composed on the diet and discipline of the falcon; the genus was discriminated like social life, and a species appropriated to every intermediate rank, from an emperor down to a knave or a peasant; nor were gentlemen more distinguished by the blazoning of heraldry, than by particular hawks they were entitled to carry. The long-bow was also employed in fowling, a sport in which dexterity was requisite; but archery was a female amusement; and it is recorded that Margaret, on her journey to Scotland, killed a buck with an arrow in Alnwick park.

The preservation of the feathered game was enforced in the present age by a statute, the first that was enacted of those laws which have since accumulated into a code of oppression.

The Scottish monarchs hunted in the Highlands, sometimes in a style of eastern magnificence. For the reception of James V, the queen his mother, and the pope's ambassador, the Earl of Athol, constructed a palace, or bower of green timber, interwoven with boughs, moated round, and provided with turrets, portcullis, and drawbridge, and furnished within with whatever was suitable for a royal abode. The hunting continued for three days, during which, independent of roes, wolves, and foxes, six hundred deer were captured; an incredible number, unless that we suppose that a large district was surrounded, and the game driven into a narrow circle to be slain, without fatigue, by the king