"the auld enemies of England," and John Bull's contempt for the name of Scot, had changed into mutual respect and the most wholesome rivalry and struggle for pre-eminence in commerce, arts, and literature. Clanship has disappeared with its mischiefs and its virtues, but it has left, we think, some notable traces. Distant cousinship, neglected in other countries, is here had in remembrance, and forms a bond of many-linked kindness. The Scotch peasant of every district, but especially of the Highlands, often claims kindred with some family of rank; and his claim is not always sneered at. This begets a better feeling between the different ranks of society, than, we fear, now exists in England; on one side, consideration and kindness; on the other, respect without servility. Our blue-bonnet may not have the sturdy independence of the English yeoman, but he has more courtesy and respect for rank because he is better treated. The whipster is not of Scotch rearing who addresses the cottar with "You, sir," or speaks of our rustics as "clods," or by any newer equivalent designation. We believe such insolence is disappearing in England, but that country has a long, bad road to re-trace before even her rural districts can be happy in the old mutual confidence and respect of the rich man and the poor. We have said there was no love for England to smooth the working of the Union. Neither can it be said that since that event, our country has been dandled into life by partial or tender government. As a part of the United Kingdom, Scotland has been till lately much misgoverned, through the indifference and neglect of English statesmen, and the jobbing of Scotch subordinates. There have been two considerable Rebellions, not originating in the old national feud, which yet threatened a war of races; the last of them suppressed with a ferocity that savoured of revenge for previous discomfiture. We have had faction and jobbing at home, and no want of those who blew up the flame of English prejudice against us. Over and through all these impediments, with no natural advantages of position, soil, or climate, Scotland has become prosperous and happy through the energy and prudence of her people, and by means of that national spirit which directed all individual acquisitions, all selfish gains, to feed the tide of national prosperity. Wherever, at the uttermost ends of the earth, an opening is found for enterprize, there, surely, a Scot is to be found, struggling with the foremost; and, when among the green recesses of our own hills, the traveller lights on a dwelling of more elegance than the neighbouring cottages, there some native, returned from the burning East, has fixed his rest, to spread kindness and comfort around him, and to lay his bones at last among his own people.

The spirit is less fierce; it runs in other channels; but it flows as deep and strong as in the days of the old battle cry of "In

dependence." It has imbued our poetry, our whole literature, our music. From the days of Barbour, the songs of our hills and glens had turned upon subjects that excited the national feeling. The Archdeacon, speaking of an exploit of Sir John Soulis in Eskdale, says, he needed not describe it, for it is the subject of a popular ballad :

"Young wemen, when thai will play,

Syng it amang thaim ilka day;"

That ballad poetry, mixed with the gentler strains of Scotch pastoral, and with music as peculiar, has given to Scotchmen a bond of united feeling which time and distance cannot destroy.

A writer of the sixteenth century relates, how an English gentleman travelling in Palestine, not far from Jerusalem, as he passed through a country town, heard a woman, who was sitting at a door dandling her child, singing, "Bothwell bank thou bloomest fair." The gentleman hereat exceedingly wondered, and forthwith, in English, saluted the woman, who joyfully answered him, and said, she was right glad to see a gentleman of our isle, and told him that she was a Scotchwoman, and came first from Scotland to Venice, and from Venice thither, where her fortune was to be the wife of an officer under the Turk. (Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence. Antw., 1605.) The fountain is not exhausted nor the stream dried up. The men in whom the peculiar genius of Scotland has shewn itself with the greatest force are of our own time. Burns in one of his early letters writes :

"The appellation of a Scottish bard is by far my highest pride; to continue to deserve it is my most exalted ambition. Scottish scenes and Scottish story are the themes I could wish to sing. I have no dearer aim than to have it in my power to make leisurely pilgrimages through Caledonia; to sit on the fields of her battles; to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers; and to muse by the stately towers or venerable ruins, once the honoured abodes of her heroes."

He describes himself as "saying a fervent prayer for old Caledonia over the hole in a blue whinstone where Robert de Bruce fixed his royal standard on the banks of Bannockburn," and says in his own vehement way, "The story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest."

Burns and Scott divide between them the field of the old unnamed bards of Scotland. Burns was the heir of their sweet pastorals and tender and melancholy love songs. Scott inherited undisputed dominion in the romantic and the historical ballad. But each brought something of his own that carried him far above the region of his predecessors. It is not only that Burns's songs

have superseded the familiar time-honoured lays sung by the whole people. In his "Cottar's Saturday Night," in his "Tam O'Shanter," and other poems, he has thrown a poetical halo around the national character, and fixed an ideal of Scotch rustic life which will raise it above vulgarity for ever.

Scott says somewhere, that he was the first traveller that ever entered the remote district of Liddisdale in a wheel carriage. He was then collecting the materials of his Border Minstrelsy, and anxious to preserve the traditions of his beloved country. On passing lately through that district, we were assured that the old border traditions of Liddisdale are rapidly disappearing before the romantic fictions of Scott himself; and the glens and streams formerly remembered for the scene of some actual mosstrooping foray, are now associated with the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," or the adventures of Dandie Dinmont and Meg Merrilees. All who have visited Loch Katrine-and who has not? know that it is the same there, and that the boatmen on the lake, instead of chaunting a Highland legend, shew you the scene of the stag hunt the place where died the "gallant grey," and the path by which Fitz James climbed into sight of the lake; while the beautiful islet that once rejoiced in a hard Gaelic name is now known only as "Ellen's Isle."

These are the witcheries of genius; but it is a genius national in its essence, and heightening and spreading its nationality; it comprehends all classes, it makes itself felt by the most unimpressible; it affords a common ground for the most worldly and the most imaginative; for the utilitarian politician, and the poet in his finest frenzy. Harry Dundas and Robert Burns might meet there and feel for once alike.

If we seem to have kept out of view the other side of the picture—the national faults and prejudices of Scotland, it is not that we do not see and feel them. No one is so well aware of them as a countryman. The caricatures of Smollett, Scott, and Miss Ferrier are not less severe than those of Churchill and Foote ; and they are truer to nature. But it is not for our present object to dwell upon our national foibles. They are as nothing, we say it with all humility, when compared with the benefits that we derive from our nationality.

Ac

The question of the ancient independence of Scotland, which once shook two nations, is now a matter simply of antiquarian curiosity. Dr. Lingard and Sir Francis Palgrave may be right or wrong in their constitutional view; we do not much care. cording to our notion, our countrymen best proved their claim to independence by showing they were worthy of it. We would not willingly lose the memory of that independence, and of the struggle to defend it, because it seems to us to have been the foundation of what is best in the national character and genius.

ART. VI.-1. Notice sur le Speculum humanae Salvationis. Par * J. MARIE GUICHARD. Paris, 1840. 8vo. Mémoire par

2. La plus ancienne Gravure connue avec une date.

le Baron de REIFFENBERG, de l'Institut de France, Présenté dans la séance du 7 Mai 1845. 4to.

3. Opinion d'un Bibliophile sur l'Estampe de 1418 conservée à la Bibliotheque Royale de Bruxelles. Par M. J. A. C. Bruxelles, 1846. 4to.

4. Quelques Mots sur la Gravure au Millésime de 1418. Par C. D. B. Bruxelles, 1846. 4to.

THERE is a natural tendency in the mind of man to endeavour to eternize, a restless activity that leads him to reproduce, his mimic effort at creation. Hastening on to corruption and decay, fain would he leave behind him some memento of his earthly passage, or preserve the image of something loved or admired. In default of these two incentives, if not in conjunction with them, the insatiable desire to materialize the workings of his brain is ever active. The different branches of the fine arts are but so many various modes of embodying thought and feeling, dressing them up in a form appropriated to the infinite diversity of intelligences. Some individuals are more susceptible to impressions from mind as conveyed by words, others seek rather the medium of music, and others of painting. This latter art forms one of many that may alike be classed as appertaining to the science of delineation in general.

To us all things in this world are more or less valuable, according as they more or less embody that complex idea called mind. But each manifestation of mind is important, first in its own particular sphere, and then as forming part of a great whole; moreover, each one has its peculiar advantage or utility. A simple drawing oft-times conveys a more accurate representation than can be effected by painting. Engraving, which certainly cannot compete with painting, wanting the beauty of colouring, nor even with drawing for softness of expression, yet offers in some respects particular advantages over those two branches of art. It reproduces to an infinite numerical amount the compositions of those able masters in the art of design who enrich the age in which they live with the productions of their genius. Engraving multiplies the workings of talent; it contributes to diffuse a general taste for art, by presenting the cheap acquisition

of prints to those whose fortunes would not permit them to indulge a love for fine pictures.

The date of this useful invention is wholly unknown, and its early progress remains wrapt in obscurity; yet may we be sure that the art of engraving forms, in some rude manner, prevailed at the remotest period of time. The love of imitation, so natural to the human breast, prompted a rough attempt at portraying an object that struck the fancy, of tracing upon the sand some frail and fleeting manifestation of thought. Then arose the desire of retaining these impressions, and then of multiplying copies of them.

It is not alone as an abstract history of art that the study of engraving becomes interesting; we may also pry into its early records, as into a store-house filled with the ideas and sentiments of another age. A curious no less than an instructive spectacle is presented to us, when we mark the various purposes to which it was at different times applied, the arts to which it gave rise, and how amid so many changes it has pursued its course through centuries down to our time.

We may comprise all the various branches of this art in three great divisions: 1. Engraving in hollow or upon metal._2. Engraving in relief whether upon wood or upon metal. 3. Engraving in bas-relief, or of medals and fine stones. Under the division of engraving in relief are comprised,-1. Engraving on wood with a single block. 2. Engraving on wood with two or more blocks, or engraving in chiaro-oscuro. 3. Engraving in relief upon copper or upon steel.

The three branches we have mentioned, each of which partakes more or less of the nature of sculpture, carving, and chasing, belong to the most remote antiquity. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans engraved upon stone and upon metal. This art existed even among the Hebrews, a people little given to the fine arts; the cap of their high-priest was decorated with a plate of gold on which the name of God, Jehovah, was traced. Moses frequently makes use of the words engraving and to engrave. But, as M. M. Bartsch and Duchesne have observed, there is a wide difference between the term engraving as applied by the ancients, and the same term in the more complicated sense in which we understand it; although modern invention has only refined upon the primitive art, not substituted another in its stead. Engraving has not been discovered of later centuries; but improving upon a foundation already laid, the more important art of multiplying copies of engravings has been superadded.

There is every reason to believe that printing from wooden blocks prevailed among the Indians at the very earliest period of their history to which we have any clue. Then, as now, they