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THE land of the thistle
and the heather, the castle and the crag, is at best but a narrow
land—two hundred and eighty-eight miles between extremes from north
to south, and fifty-two from east to west. Its place in history,
however, is well assured, and its influence is wide as the world.
Its physical aspect is exceedingly diversified and picturesque. The
sky bends in beauty, the soil teems with verdure, the air rings in
elastic tension, the waters sparkle with life and health. It is a
land where youth may drink in exhilaration with every breath,
manhood find food for high endeavor in every battle of life, and old
age flourish like the evergreen pine. With a coastline of
twenty-five hundred miles so deeply indenting the main land on three
sides as to bring every foot of it within forty-five miles of the
sea, with nearly eight hundred islands closely environing it and
furnishing many a quiet inlet and many a bold outlook to the ocean,
and with an alternating panorama of highland and lowland, of lake,
river and mountain, through all its borders,--Scotland would seem to
be the spot of all the earth ordained by Providence for the
dwelling-place of a hardy, athletic, gallant race.
Such, in fact, have
been its destiny and its history. It is not the country, but the
heroic people inhabiting it, that has given Scotland its name in
history and its influence on the world's civilization. And the
object of this monograph is to sketch in briefest outline a few
salient points in the character of the people, the work they have
done and the influence they have exerted.
Who has not admired
the genius and gloried in the heroism of that long line of "Scottish
worthies" who fought as if they were fighting the battles of all
mankind and gave their names to history as an everlasting
remembrance? Who has not followed them down from century to century
and often felt his indignation ablaze at the recital of their wrongs
and their sacrifices for truth and for conscience' sake? What
associations crowd upon us, what memories awake, what inspirations
kindle, at the mention of such names as Bruce and Wallace, Knox and
Melville, Argyle and Murray, rray, Gillespie and Henderson, Erskine
and Chalmers, Scott and Burns, Livingstone and Alexander Duff!
It is instructive to
notice the part which the little nationalities of the earth have
played in the grand drama of civilization. We hear much about the
"great powers" and how they shape the destiny of the world. History,
both ancient and modern, has much to tell us of their majesty, their
broad domain, their almost omnipotent sway. The old world powers of
the Orient—Assyria, Chaldea, Egypt, Medo-Persia, Macedonia, Rome—all
figure largely on the pages of the past, each claiming in its turn
the mastery of the world. In more recent times the great races of
Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Russia, Prussia, Turkey, England,
have almost monopolized the map of Europe, where they still struggle
for the balance of power. Is this the sum of the old-world civilized
history? The whole tale is not told until we have looked at the
little nationalities—Palestine, Greece, Venetia, Switzerland, the
Netherlands, Scotland—each on its narrow strip of soil and with its
wide influence on the world. Where has the human race risen to
higher glory in the prowess of the individual man or in the
achievements of the body politic than in these "pent-up Uticas" of
the rocks or seas? Here is a belt of once-independent states, small
isolated nations, stretching diagonally across the very heart of the
civilized world from south-east to north-west, on the very lino of
march which civilization followed when it•left the East and made the
history of modern Europe. There is something sublime in the
influence which has gone out over all time from these apparently
insignificant corners of the earth. There is something which seems
to point to an invisible and almighty hand that can work alike by
many or by few, and that often with the smallest means accomplishes
its greatest works.
Strike from history
these five or six lesser nationalities, and who then could tell the
whole story of arts and arms, of literature and philosophy, of
national independence, of civil and religious liberty? The
I1'taccabean deliverers of Palestine, the Greeks at Marathon, the
Venetian masters of the seas, the Swiss compatriots of William Tell,
the heroes of the Dutch republic, the Scots of Stirling Bridge and
Bannockburn, belong to all nations and to all time. They have done
much to make the larger nations what they were, and to make the
world what it is. Palestine gave the world a religion—the first, the
last, the best, the only divine, religion. Greece gave it art,
literature, philosophy, the highest which human genius unassisted
ever attained. Venice gave it the earliest essays in that skill of
finance and commerce which has since ruled all civilized nations.
Switzerland and Holland gave it the earliest practical demonstration
of those republican institutions which to-day constitute the civic
glory of the American national Union. Scotland, besides other great
gifts, has bequeathed to it the finest example to be found in all
Christendom of a thoroughly-educated, law-abiding, free and
Christianized people.
In some respects
there is a marked parallel between Scotland and Greece—the one at
the extreme north-west, the other at the extreme south-east, of
Europe ; the one jutting out high upon the Atlantic, the other
overlooking the Mediterranean waters—Scotland being somewhat the
larger of the two. Both are peninsular terminations of a larger
territory and deeply interpenetrated by surrounding seas. They are
wholly different in climatic influences, the one looking southward
over sunny and pacific seas which greatly modify the conditions of
all animal and vegetative life, the other facing northward over wild
and tempest-tossed waters with no protecting barrier against the
storms of the frozen ocean. Each alike, however, is marvelously
beautified by every changing mood of hill and valley, forest and
mountain-chain. Each alike is, or was, the native home of a race of
heroes, the birthplace of a long and glorious history in the days of
its independence. Europe had but one Greece, the abode of the Muses,
the battle-ground of the giants, the alma mater of science,
philosophy and literature. And Europe has had but one Scotland for
that older realm of beauty. Byron perhaps sang too sad a requiem in
the line,
"Tis Greece, but
living Greece no more;"
for when the iron
yoke of the Turk shall be broken—as broken it will be—Greece is yet
to awake to a new and nobler destiny. Scotland, however, needs no
requiem. Her separate nationality is indeed gone, but no iron yoke
has ever crushed her spirit. 'Tis Scotland—living Scotland—still;
and the later glory outshines the earlier.
The sceptre of
dominion has passed from the old capital and passed into other
hands, but the heroic race is still there in all its pristine vigor,
undegenerated, unconquered, well worthy of the national emblem, and
now as ever ready to make good its old motto: "Nemo me impune
lacesset." The rugged hills and granite rocks that had so often
given it shelter in the hour of disaster were not more
indestructible than was the hardy lifeblood which flowed through
Scottish veins during all those years of conflict. That persistent
purpose of a brave and united people who loved liberty as they loved
life itself, that undefeated and unconquerable national spirit which
had showed itself so strong in Wallace and Bruce, at Iast asserted
its power and its right to the soil in the just and equal terms of
the national compact with England. This compact of incorporation
healed all past breaches and made the larger and the smaller
kingdoms one and inseparable for all time. Nothing of honor, nothing
of independence, nothing of true national glory, was lost to the
Scot in becoming a North Briton: it was an alliance of equals for
the common weal and the common defence of Britain. Unlike other
regions of the Old World when smaller nationalities have been
crushed under the heel of despotic power, the traveler of to-day in
Scotland finds no memorials there of subjection and degeneracy: all
there is life and freedom. The same glorious race that existed a
thousand years ago is still at home upon its soil, only more
advanced in all the elements of true national greatness, and the
no-bier, too, because of all the fiery trials of the past. |
