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.

THE ENGLISH AND SCOTS.

LANGUAGE.-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, its 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 either 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 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 elegance 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 an uniformity almost permanent. Hunting has ever been a favourite diversion both with the English and Scots, and hawking has only been superseded by the gun; but it was still practised with unabating ardour, and cultivated scientifically as a liberal art. Treatises 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 and his retinue. On their departure, the earl set fire to the palace, an honour that excited the ambassador's surprise; but the king informed him it was customary with Highlanders to burn those habitations they

deserted. The earl's hospitality was estimated at the daily expense of a thousand pounds sterling.

During the present period, several games were invented or practised to diffuse archery, for the promotion of which, bowls, quoits, cayles, tennis, cards and dice, were prohibited by legislature as unlawful games. Tennis, however, was a royal pastime in which Henry VIII., in his youth, delighted much; but the favourite court amusements, next to tournaments, were masques and pageants: the one an Italian diversion subservient to gallantry, the other a vehicle of gross adulation.

The diversions of people of rank continued much the same for about five centuries after the Norman conquest. But in the⚫ course of this period card playing was first introduced into Britain.

ANNO DOMINI 1400 að A.D. 1548.-Civilization indeed had not hitherto made such progress in England as entirely to abolish slavery. Yet few land-owners or renters were to be found who did not prefer the labour of free-men* to that of slaves. This circumstance diminished their number, and the perpetual civil contests enfranchised many, by putting arms in their hands. Within a few years after the accession of the Tudors, slaves were heard of no more.† Scotland was not so happy. The unfortunate death of the Norwegian Margate, had involved the realm in a long and bloody contest with its powerful neighbour;

* The value of free-men who would labour in agriculture was so well known, that statutes were passed to prevent any person who had not twenty-shillings a-year (equal to ten pounds sterling, modern money) from breeding up his children to any other occupation than that of husbandry. Nor could any one, who had been employed in such work until twelve years of age, be permitted to turn himself to any other vocation. Public Acts.-The condition of the slaves in England was as completely wretched as the despot, who owned them, might please to make. His goods were his master's, and on that account were free from taxation; and whatever injuries he might sustain, he had no power to sue that master in any court of justice.

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A reflection made at the close of the 15th century is the more remarkable (by Philip de Comines) as it was given voluntarily, at the close of the longest and most bloody civil war with which the English annals can be charged. In my opinion," (says the judicious observer quoted) "in all the countries in Europe where I was even acquainted, the government is no where so well managed, the people no where less obnoxious to violence and oppression, nor their houses less liable to the desolations of war, than in England; for there the calamities fall only upon the authors."

and, although the gallant and free spirits of the Scots had preserved the independence of their country, notwithstanding their inferiority in numbers, wealth, and discipline, it could not prevent the preponderance of a most odious and tyrannic aristocracy. Perpetual domestic war loosened every tie of constitutional government; and a Douglas,* a Crichton,† or a Donald of the Isles, by turns, exercised such despotism and inhumanity, as no monarch in the fifteenth century would have dared to practise.

* Oppression, ravishing of women, theft, sacrilege, and all other kinds of mis. chief, were but dalliance. So that it was thought less on in a depender on a Douglas to slay or murder; for so fearful was their name, and so terrible to every innocent man, that when a mischevous limmer was apprehended, if he alleged that he murdered and slew at a Douglas's command, no man durst present him to justice. Lindsay of Pettscotie.

+ In consequence of James I.'s opposition to the aristocracy, he was induced to silence his ministers, officers, and counsellors, not from haughty nobles who rivalled his power, but among the lower class of barons or private gentlemen From these James selected accordingly several individuals of talent, application, and knowledge of business, and employed their counsels and abilities in the service of the state without regard to the displeasure of the great nobles, who considered every office near the king's person as their own peculiar and patrimonial right, and who had in many instances converted such employments into subjects of hereditary transmission. Among the able men whom James thus called from comparative obscurity, the names of two statesmen appear, whom he had selected from the ranks of the gentry, and raised to a high place in his councils; these were Sir William Crichton the Chancellor, and Sir Alexander Livingston of Calender; both men of ancient family, though descended from Saxon ancestors; they did not number among the greater nobles who claimed descent from Norman blood. Both, and more especially Crichton, possessed talents of the first order, and were well calculated to serve the state. Unhappily these two statesmen, on whom the power of a joint reigning devolved, were enemies to each other, probably from ancient rivalry; and it was still more unfortunate that their talents were not united with corresponding virtues; for they both appear to have been alike ambitious, cruel, and unscrupulous politicians, It is said by the Scots' Chronicles that, after the murder of the king, the parliament assigned to Crichton, the chancellor, the administration of the kingdom, and to Livingston the care of the person of the young king.

The Lords of the Isles, during the utter confusion which extended through Scotland during the regency, had found it easy to reassume the independence of which they had been deprived during the vigorous reign of Robert Bruce. They possessed a fleet with which they harrassed the main land at pleasure; and Donald, who now held that insular lordship, ranked himself among the allies of England and made peace and war as an independent sovereign. The Regent had taken no steps to reduce that kinglet to obedience, and would probably have avoided embarking in so arduous a task, had not Donald insisted upon pretensions to the Earldom of Ross, occupying a great extent in the north-west of Scotland, including the large isle of Sky, and laying adjacent to, and connected with his own insular domains. The regent Albany, however, after the battle of Marlow, compelled him to submit himself to the allegiance of Scotland, and to