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pressing haughty contempt, when communications. are not intended to be polite?

There being thus, in fact, in titles of all sorts, considerable room to come and go upon, it is probable that the Scots adventurers made the best of the very considerable number of rather empty titles scattered over their barren acres. An instance of their assumption has been recorded as a flagrancy. A certain Monteith of obscure origin having got access to Richelieu, the Cardinal asked him which family of Monteiths he belonged to. As the story goes, remembering that his father was a fisherman on the Forth, he said he was "Monteith de Salmonnet;" and the anecdote is verified by the existence of a solid folio volume, first printed in French and afterwards translated into English, being a history of the civil wars of Britain in the seventeenth century, by Robert Monteith de Salmonet-a title as emphatic and distinct as that of the proudest De Chateau Rouge or De la Tremouille. But even this audacious case is not entirely beyond vindication. The right to a cast of a net was a feudal privilege or servitude inheritable by the head of the family, like any seignorial right; and, in a country where people spoke of the succession to the hereditary gardenership of the lordship of Monteith, it was not necessarily an act of flagrant imposition to make something dignified out of the piscatory privilege.

The history of almost every man's rise in the world consists of a succession of graspings and hold

ings of positions taken up timidly and uncertainly, and made by degrees secure and durable. In the development of this tendency, it will be the policy of the immigrant to find, for any social title of a dubious or fugitive character which he may enjoy in his own country, some seeming equivalent, but of fixed character and established value, in the land of his adoption. Scotland, with its mixed and indefinite nomenclature of ranks, would thus afford good opportunities for the ingenuous youth transferring himself from his dubious home-rank into something more specific in the symmetrical and scientifically adjusted court precedency of France. The practice of the Lairds and Goodmen of presenting themselves by the territorial names of their estates, with or without their family patronymics, gave an opportunity for rendering the possession something equivalent to the French De and the German Von. The families that had lost their estates adhered to the old title with the mournful pride of deposed monarchs. If these had often the sympathy of their peculiar world with them, yet no one could, with a shadow of justice, blame the actual possessors of the solid acres for also claiming the honours attached to them. John Law of Lauriston, who ruled France for a few months with the capricious haughtiness of an Eastern despot, among the many strange chances which led to his giddy elevation, owed much to that which gave uniformity and consistency to the others—namely, that, although

he was an Edinburgh tradesman, his possession of a small estate, happily named, in the neighbourhood of his business, enabled him to take rank in the noblesse. History affords one very flagrant case of the potent uses of the territorial Of. In Galloway there long existed a worshipful family called the Murrays of Broughton. They were not ennobled by a peerage, but belonged to the opulent and proud class of territorial aristocracy who often do not consider the peerage any distinction, and so they were thoroughly entitled to consider themselves within the category of noble in France and Germany. There happened also to be a small croft or paddock on the wayside between Noblehouse and Dumfries called Broughton, and its owner, some say its tenant only, being named Murray, took on himself very naturally and fairly the style and title of Murray of Broughton. Having found his uses in this title, he left it dedicated to perpetual infamy; for he it was who, having incited poor Prince Charles Edward to the Scottish expedition, and by his zeal obtained the office of "Secretary to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales," afterwards used the information he had thus obtained to buy his own personal safety, by bringing his companions in rebellion to the block. So thoroughly had his notoriety impressed on the contemporary mind the notion of his representing the old Galwegian house of Murray of Broughton, that it is believed even by local antiquaries.

It will not do too rigidly to sift the pretensions by which men, young, poor, obscure, and struggling, have sought notice in early life, and found their way to honours and possessions which they have worthily and honourably enjoyed. Imagination is strong and criticism weak in matters of genealogy, and doubtless many of the adventurers who planned and built their fortunes in France, as fully believed themselves cadets of the noblest family bearing their name, as if they had carried with them the certificate of the Lion Office.

Whatever social position the Scottish adventurer might assume, there is little doubt that his claim to be somebody would be pretty substantially maintained by the proud reserve which naturally belongs to his race. We can, in fact, see at the present day the qualities which made the fortunes of these men. These qualities are now exercised in another sphere -in England, in the colonies, and especially in our Indian empire, where Scotsmen are continually rising from obscurity into eminence. On the brow of the industrious crofter on the slopes of the Grampians we may yet see the well-becoming pride and self-respecting gravity that, in the fifteenth century, took the honours and distinctions of France as a natural right. Whence comes his pride? He has no rank-he is poor-and he is no representative of an illustrious house. No, but he is founding a house. He rises up early, and late takes rest, that his son may go to college and be a gentleman; and

when he reads contemporary history in the public press, he knows that the grandfather of the eminent law lord, or of the great party leader, or of the illustrious Eastern conqueror, whose name fills the ear of fame, laboured like himself in the fields close at hand.

It may be surely counted not without significance among ethnical phenomena, that though France has all along shown in her language the predominance of the Latin race, three infusions of northern blood had been successively poured into the country; first, the Franks-next, the Normans -and, lastly, the Scots. It seems not unreasonable that these helped to communicate to the vivacity and impetuosity of the original race those qualities of enterprise and endurance which were needed to make up the illustrious history of France. The more, however, that the standard of national character was raised by the new element, the more would it revolt at a continued accession of foreign blood. A country, the highest distinctions and offices of which were given by the despotic monarch to strangers, to enable him to keep down the native people, could not be sound at heart; and one hails it as the appearance of a healthy tone of nationality when murmurs arise against the aggrandising strangers.

It was not, indeed, in human nature, either that the French should not murmur at the distinctions and substantial rewards bestowed on the strangers, or that they themselves should not become domi