WOVEN up with an occasional legend or superstition gleaned among the mountains from whence its soldiers came, the warlike details and many of the names which occur in the following pages, belong to the military history of the country and of the brave Regiment whose title is given to our Book.

It is generally acknowledged that but for the retention of the kilt in the British service, and for the high character of those regiments who wear it, the military name of Scotland had been long since forgotten in Europe, and her national existence had been as completely ignored during the Wars of Wellington as in those of Marlborough; nor in times more recent had the electric wire announced that, when the cloud of Russian horse came on at Balaclava and our allies fled, "the Scots stood firm."

It was the best public service of the great Pitt when he first rallied round the British throne, as soldiers of the Highland Regiments, the men of that warlike race, who had been so long inimical to the House of Hanover.

"I sought for merit wherever it was to be found," said he; "it is my boast that I was the first minister who looked for it and found it on the mountains of the north. I called it forth, and drew into your service a hardy and intrepid race of men, who, when left by your jealousy, became a prey to the artifice of your enemies, and who, in the war before the last, had well nigh gone to have overturned the State. These men in the last war were brought to combat by your side ; they served with fidelity as they fought with honour, and conquered for you in every part of the world."

Highlander and Lowlander are now so mingled by intermarriage that there is scarcely a subject in the northern kingdom without more or less Celtic blood in his or her veins; and to this mixture of race, which unites the fire and impatience of the former to the steady perseverance of the latter, Scotland owes her present prosperity.