specialties as a means of obtaining clearness at an easy price to the intellect; and rather than leave them and grope at the truth, we carry them back step by step, until they have gone infinite ages beyond their real beginning. There is retribution for this as for other instances where indolent reliance supersedes independent judgment. Those of our historians who have had too much honesty to go headlong into the accepted fables of their predecessors, have had cruel difficulties in identifying ancient Scotland. At one time they find the territories of some Saxon king stretching to the Tay; at another, the King of Scots reigns to the Humber, or farther. It would have saved them a world of trouble and anxiety to come at once to the conclusion that Scotland was nowhere-that the separate kingdom marked off against England by a distinct boundary on the physical globe, as well as by a moral boundary of undying hatred, did not then exist.

A common language stretched along from north to south, varying perhaps in its substance and tone by imperceptible degrees in the ears of the travelling stranger, as the language of each of the two countries now does. Unfortunately, this simple view brings us to the verge of a perilous controversy. There are some topics which the temper and reason of the human race seem not to have been made strong enough to encounter, so invariably do these break down when the topics in question are started. Of such is the question, To which

of the great classes of European languages did that of the people called Picts belong? The contest, like a duel with revolvers over a table, has been rendered more awful by the narrowness of the field of battle, since some time ago the world possessed just one word, or piece of a word, said to be Pictish, and now one of the most accomplished antiquarians of our day has added another.

It

Keeping clear of this scene of peril, let us content ourselves with the obvious fact, that at an early age the eastern and northern parts of what now is Scotland were peopled by a race of very pure Teutonic blood and tongue. They formed a portion of that brotherhood of Saxon states, among which the amalgamations and splittings, and the drifting-in of fresh swarms among old settlers, make so complex and confused a web of Anglo-Saxon history. would happen, in these gains and losses of territory, that some ambitious Bretwalda of the south would extend his dominion or his influence far northward; and from such incidents the pedants of the feudal law, who could not look beyond their own forms and nomenclature into the conditions of an age when there was neither feudality nor a Scotland to be feudalised, invented a feudal superiority in the Saxon kings over the kingdom of Scotland.

The conquest of the south, of course, changed its position towards the north. England became Normanised, while Scotland not only retained her old Teutonic character, but became a place of refuge for

the Saxon fugitives. The remnants of Harold's family-the old royal race of England-came among the other fugitives to Scotland, and took up their position there as an exiled court awaiting their restoration, and looking to their brethren of Scotland to aid them in effecting it. At the head of these princely exiles was Edward the Etheling. His sister, the renowned St Margaret, married Malcolm the King of the Scots, who thus became more than ever the hope of the Saxon party. The names of their children have a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon sound: Edgar, the eldest, who succeeded to the throne; Edward, named after his maternal relation the Confessor; Edmond, and Ethelred. King Malcolm, in his marriage, is not to be altogether viewed as having, with chivalrous generosity, made a home for a persecuted princess in the only way in which such an arrangement could be decorously accomplished. He had hopes of solid results from the brilliant connection, and made a bold effort to render them good by an invasion of England; for there can be little doubt that Harding is right when he says of that fierce raid into Cumberland which ended in the battle of the Standard, that "King Malcolm of Scotland warred in England for his wife's right, pretending that she was right heir of England."

During the interval of two hundred years between their invasion of England and their invasion of Scotland, the Normans had been gradually extending their social influence northward. As the flower

of chivalry and the leaders of fashion they were personally popular in Scotland, where many of them became favourites at court, and formed rich matrimonial alliances. It is possible that the wise men of the day may have deemed it a good policy to plant in the country offshoots of that mighty race who seemed destined to rule mankind wherever they went; but if they thought that they would thus establish a Norman aristocracy, who in time would have a patriotic interest in the soil, and protect it from the designs of the aggrandising kings of England, their policy in the course of events turned out to be a failure.

In the mean time the country saw chiefly the bright side of the Norman character; for it is observable that the settlers had not so deeply rooted themselves as to cover the land with those castles which are everywhere the most remarkable and enduring memorials of their presence. Fortresses,

no doubt, existed before their day, but these were generally mounds or ramparts, within which people inhabited open dwellings of wood, turf, or wattles. The Norman was the first to plant the feudal castle -a building comprising within its four thick stone walls a rich man's dwelling, a fortress, and a prison, signifying that he who built it intended to consume the fruit of the soil, to make war upon his enemies, and to administer his own justice among the people. The castles scattered over Europe not only show how far the Normans have penetrated, as the

shingle on the beach marks the height of the tide; but their various architectural types indicate, like those of fossils in geology, the historical period of deposit. The annalists tell us how, after William's arrival, England was covered with Norman strongholds; and that country is rich in remains of the earliest type of castle-the great square block, destitute of the later adjunct of flanking works, and the round arch, marking the lingering predominance of Roman forms. If there ever were castles of this sort in Scotland, they were at least so rare that no specimen now remains at least I can find none after diligent search. On the other hand, of the later and richer type of feudal architecture the pointed Gothic buildings with outworks, peculiar to the reigns of the Edwards-there are many fine specimens. The same phenomena may be seen in Ireland and Wales. Over all three countries the tide of Norman conquest had rolled; and though in Scotland the tide was driven back, it left these characteristic relics behind.

Luckily for England, and for the liberties of the world, there were elements of national strength which in the end worked the tyranny of Norman rule out of the constitution. Of the misery which the Saxon people had to endure under the earliest Plantagenet monarchs we have scanty traces, for such things are not with safety committed to writing; but what we have is sufficiently expressive. Perhaps the following, taken from that sober unobtrusive narrative,