the susceptibility, the vivacity, the natural turn for acting and
rhetoric, which are indigenous on the shores of the Mediterranean
Sea. In mental cultivation Scotland had an indisputable
superiority. Though that kingdom was then the poorest in
Christendom, it already vied in every branch of learning with the
most favoured countries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food
were as wretched as those of the Icelanders of our time, wrote
Latin verse with more than the delicacy of Vida, and made
discoveries in science which would have added to the renown of
Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or Napier. The
genius, with which her aboriginal inhabitants were largely
endowed' showed itself as yet only in ballads which wild and
rugged as they were, seemed to the judging eye of Spenser to
contain a portion of the pure gold of poetry.

Scotland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, preserved her
dignity. Having, during many generations, courageously withstood
the English arms, she was now joined to her stronger neighbour on
the most honourable terms. She gave a King instead of receiving
one. She retained her own constitution and laws. Her tribunals
and parliaments remained entirely independent of the tribunals
and parliaments which sate at Westminster. The administration of
Scotland was in Scottish hands; for no Englishman had any motive
to emigrate northward, and to contend with the shrewdest and most
pertinacious of all races for what was to be scraped together in
the poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland by no means
escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected,
but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.
Though in name an independent kingdom, she was, during more than
a century, really treated, in many respects, as a subject