been known to name or permit him to be named as king in his presence. "Carry my compliments to him," said the King," and say that I respect his steadiness of principle; or, as he may not receive my compliments as King of England, present them as those of the Elector of Hanover."-And he never afterwards saw the gentleman from whom the anecdote is derived, without enquiring after the health of the venerable recusant, and reiterating his wish to be remembered to him. The same kindness to the memory of those who hazarded themselves for the Stuart cause has been inherited by the present administrator of royal authority, and to him, as to his father, their descendants have been and are prompt to repay it.

We have little more to say upon the labours of the editor, excepting that he has given a good life of the Lord President, and that his duties as a commentator are carefully and respectably performed. We observe that, in a note, p. 289, he has ascribed to Mr Rawlinson, an Englishman, the invention of the filea-beg: in this he is quite correct; but this was only a slight and obvious improvement on the ancient belted plaid. That dress was formed in a very primitive manner, by wrapping one end of a web of tartan round the loins, so as to form a petticoat, and disposing of the rest around one shoulder, to be drawn over both in case of a storm. This dress, though well-fitted for the hunter or herdsmen, was inconvenient to Jabourers. Mr Rawlinson observed that, in the belted plaid, the most necessary part of a man's

dress was indivisibly united to that which is most occasional, as if a Lowlander's great coat was sewed to his breeches. He recommended to the Highlanders whom he employed, to wear a short petticoat, secured with a buckle, and separated from the plaid, which could be then laid aside at pleasure. This innovation is called the filea-beg, or kilt; and it is an improvement which by no means affects President Forbes's remarks on the antiquity of the Highland dress.

We now and it is more than time-draw to a conclusion. We have shown the power of clanship in its most unamiable form, as devolving on a man whom neither faith nor gratitude could bind, -a tyrant to his family, a terror to his vassals ; selfish enough to shelter his own safety by imputing to his son the crime to which he compelled him, and a traitor to the political interests which he embraced and abandoned alternately. Such a character ranks with the Ras Michael and Fasil of Bruce, and rather belongs to the Galla, or the Agows, than to the Scottish Highlands. It might have been our lot to present patriarchal authority in a very different light, as exercised by Allan Cameron of Lochiel, who, to the high spirit, courage, and loyalty of a Highland chief, added the manners of an accomplished gentleman and the morals of a good Christian. Beloved by his neighbours, he was the terror of the oppressor and the refuge of the oppressed; he suppressed in his clan every license which could disturb the public, while his bounty and encouragement rendered peaceful indus

try more profitable to them than the hostile and predatory habits of their ancestors. And when he took his last and fatal step it was with no view of selfinterest-no desire of individual fame or honourbut in the pure spirit of one who devoted himself to a cause which he well knew to be desperate, because he deemed himself called upon, by his honour and allegiance, to obey the summons of the prince who threw himself upon so rash a hazard.

Clanship, therefore, like other modes of government, differed in complexion, according to the character by whom the authority was exercised; but it may be observed in general, that though despotic in principle, its duties were reciprocal; and that the chief who neglected to protect and maintain his people, was in danger of being disowned and deserted by them. Clanship, however, with its good, and evil, is now no more. Its harsher features disappeared, after the promulgation of the laws in 1748, which struck at the root of the chiefs' authority, both patriarchal and feudal. The execution of young Robert Roy, Serjeant More Cameron, and other leaders of predatory bands of Highlanders, with the banishment of the yet more distinguished Barrisdale, checked their habits of violence. A milder race arose ;—the Highlanders with whom our youth was conversant, cultivating sedulously the means of subsistence which their country afforded, and converting the broadsword into the ploughshare, and the spear into the herdsman's crook, yet preserving an aptitude to military habits, and an enthusiastic energy of character derived from the

recollections of former days, and fostered by the tales of the grey-headed veterans, who looked back with regret to the days when each man's arms clattered round him when he walked the hills. Among these men, the spirit of clanship subsisted no longer indeed as a law of violence, but still as a law of love. They maintained, in many instances, their chiefs at their own expense; and they embodied themselves in regiments, that the head of the family might obtain military preferment. Whether and how these marks of affection have been rewarded, is a matter of deep and painful enquiry. But while it subsisted, this voluntary attachment to the chief was, like the ruins of his feudal castle, more interesting than when clanship subsisted in its entire vigour, and reminded us of the expression of the poet :

"Time

Has mouldered into beauty many a tower
Which, when it frown'd with all its battlements,
Was only terrible."-

Some such distinction between Highlanders and Lowlanders in this respect, would long have subsisted, had it been fostered by those who, we think, were most interested in maintaining it. The dawn of civilisation would have risen slowly on the system of Highland Society; and as the darker and harsher shades were already dispelled, the romantic contrast and variety reflected upon ancient and patriarchal usages, by the general diffusion of knowledge, would, like the brilliant colours of the morning clouds, have survived for some time, ere blend

ed with the general mass of ordinary manners. In many instances, Highland proprietors have laboured with laudable and humane precaution to render the change introduced by a new mode of cultivation gentle and gradual, and to provide, as far as possible, employment and protection for those families who were thereby dispossessed of their ancient habitations. But in other, and in but too many instances, the glens of the Highlands have been drained, not of their superfluity of population, but of the whole mass of the inhabitants, dispossessed by an unrelenting avarice, which will be one day found to have been as shortsighted as it is unjust and selfish. Mean while, the Highlands may become the fairy ground for romance and poetry, or subject of experiment for the professors of speculation, political and economical.-But if the hour of need should come and it may not, perhaps, be far distant—the pibroch may sound through the deserted region, but the summons will remain unanswered. The children who have left her will re-echo from a distant shore the sounds with which they took leave of their own-Ha til, ha til, ha til, mi tulidh! "We return- -we return-we return--no more!"