tures-with no field for enterprise nor means of advancement; the upper classes subservient and jobbing -the lower dispirited and hopeless. The Union-carried by corrupt means, and for a long time abhorred by the people-did not mend the matter. The feeble attempts at foreign trade-where every failure of a voyage to Darien or Africa told as a national disaster-the introduction of new and irksome taxes-the wretched jealousy of England, fettering the infant efforts of trade and thwarting the establishment of the natural manufacture of a pastoral country-brought the people to despair. The universal misery, joined to the indifference of the government and the petty jobbing of its Scotch department, led to disaffection and revolt. Rebellion after rebellion-the last put down with a savage vengeance that spoke the amount of previous fear-had reduced Scotland, in the middle of the eighteenth century, as low as a nation not uncivilised can descend. But she had got to the bottom of the wheel. From that time-to speak precisely, from the suppression of the Rebellion in 1746, and the abolition of feudal jurisdictions which immediately followed-through a period now extending to a century-through a protracted and often a disastrous war -through a revolution which overturned half the thrones of Europe and shook the frame of society even in Britain, Scotland has gone on in rapid yet steady progress in all that constitutes the prosperity of a kingdom. The study of agriculture, forced upon her people by her inferior soil and uncertain climate, has made her a teacher to other nations. Trade and manufactures she cannot be said to have improved, but rather to have created. She has taken an honourable place in Science, Literature, and Art:her gentry have found occupation wherever wealth or fame is to be won: her peasantry, prudent, sober, industrious, have added to their hereditary virtues somewhat of the self-respect and independence of the English yeoman. Their comfort and happiness have increased immeasurably, and, we firmly believe, their virtue along with them. In fortunate distinction from some greater realms, the ranks of society have for the most part preserved their proper relation, without tyranny or haughtiness on the one side, or meanness on the other; there is in general no alienation nor coldness between them.

We have thought it possible to mark in some degree the progress of this mighty improvement, by a few extracts from these works, with such earlier information as we have in our power.

We are told by the minister of Loudon, in Ayrshire, writing in 1792 (Old Stat., iii. p. 108), that—

'John, Earl of Loudon, who succeeded his father in 1731, and deserved the name of the father of agriculture in that part of the shire,

remembered

remembered when there was neither cart nor waggon in the parish but his father's and his factor's. Now there are above 250 in the parish, besides waggons for leading grain, peats, &c. Formerly they carried home their grain in sledges or cars, and their coals on small horses.'

The minister of a lowland parish of Angus enters into an amusing comparison of the state of the country at two periods, both of which he had witnessed himself::

In 1760 land was rented at 6s. an acre; in 1790 land is rented at 30s. In 1760 no English cloth was worn but by the minister and a quaker; in 1790 there are few who do not wear English cloth; several, the best superfine. In 1760 men's stockings in general were what was called plaiding hose, made of white woollen cloth. The women wore coarse plaids. Not a cloak nor bonnet was worn by any woman in the whole parish. In 1790 cotton and thread stockings are worn by both sexes, masters and servants; some have silk ones. The women who wear plaids have them fine and faced with silk: silk plaids, cloaks, and bonnets are very numerous. In 1760 there were only two hats in the parish [he does not think it necessary to explain that they were his own and his friend the quaker's]: in 1790 few bonnets [meaning men's caps, known as "Kilmarnock bonnets"] are worn; the bonnet-maker trade in the next parish is given up. In 1760 there was only one eight-day clock in the parish, six watches, and one tea-kettle: in 1790 there are thirty clocks, above a hundred watches, and at least 160 tea-kettles, there being scarce a family but hath one, and many that have two. In 1760 the people in this parish never visited each other but at Christmas. The entertainment was broth and beef. The visitors sent to an alehouse for five or six pints of ale [Scotch pints, reader, each equal to four English], and were merry over it, without any ceremony. In 1790 people visit each other often. A few neigh

bours are invited to one house to dinner. Six or seven dishes are set on the table, elegantly dressed. After dinner a large bowl of rumpunch is drunk; then tea; again another bowl; after that, supper; and what they call "the grace drink."'—Ibid., vol. v. p. 226.

Another minister, writing of a rural parish in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, compares the time at which he writes with forty years earlier :

In 1750 the land rent of the parish did not exceed 1000l. In 1790 the land rent rose to 2850l. In 1750 every farm was distinguished into croft and field land. The former, which seldom exceeded a fifth of the whole, lay near the farm-house, was frequently manured and constantly in tillage. The latter, which lay at a distance from the farmhouse, was never manured, but sometimes in tillage, though oftener in pasture. In 1790 the distinction between croft and field land, entirely abolished, and every part of the farm treated in the same manner. [This is but an imperfect explanation of the wretched system of out-field and in-field, so universal in the best districts of Scotland a hundred years ago.] In 1750 most of the farms run-rig, that is, the lands of one farmer intermixed with those of another. No inclosures, but a very

few

few about gentlemen's houses. Every field contained a number of balks, or waste spaces between the ridges, full of stones and bushes. The ridges crooked; very high in the middle, and often unequal in breadth. In 1790 all the farms divided, and some of them subdivided with hawthorn hedges. No "balks" now to be seen; the whole field cultivated. The ridges straight, reduced to a proper swell in the middle, and to a regular breadth, In 1750 no wheat bread; no sugar and tea used, but by people of wealth and fashion, and not much by them. In 1790 wheat bread used by all; sugar and tea occasionally by many. In 1750, when a farmer's family went to the kirk or to a market, he and his sons wore suits of home-made cloth, plaiden hose, and blue or black bonnets; his wife and daughters were dressed in gowns of their own spinning, cloth cloaks and hoods, worsted stockings, and leather shoes. In 1790, when the farmer's family goes to the kirk or to a market, he and his sons wear suits of English cloth, worsted or cotton stockings, and hats. His wife and daughters are dressed in printed calico or silk gowns, scarlet or silk cloaks, silk bonnets, white thread stockings, and cloth shoes.'—Ibid., vol. v. p. 251,

A Galloway minister, after mentioning the sudden invasion of 'clocks, watches, and tea-kettles,' adds

'In farmers' houses (it is sixty years since) there were no windows of glass. The light was admitted through openings on each side of the house, and that in the windward side was filled with straw in blowing weather.'-Ibid., vol. xvi. p. 295.

We have a good account of old Highland life given by an Heritor, a friend to statistical inquiries,' but whose views of the then recent improvements by disgorging the population of the glens into the feverish alleys of Inverness, are not to be received without scruple :

Till the beginning of this century [the eighteenth] the whole heritors and wadsetters [clansmen who had advanced money to the chief, and held lands in pledge of the loan] in this parish [Boleskine in Inverness-shire], lived in houses composed of cupple trees, and the walls and thatch made up of sod and divot: but in every wadsetter's house there was a spacious hall containing a large table, where he and his family and dependants ate their two meals a-day, with this single distinction, that he and his family sat at one end of the table and his dependants at the other. And it was reckoned no disparagement for the gentlemen to sit with commoners in the inns such as the country then afforded, where one "cap," and afterwards a single glass, went round the whole company. As the inhabitants experienced no want, and generally lived on the produce of their farms, they were hospitable to strangers, providing they did not attempt a settlement among them. It was thought then disgraceful for any of the younger sons of these wadsetters to follow any other profession than that of arms and agriculture; and it is in the remembrance of many now living, when the meanest tenant would think it disparaging to sit at the same table with a manufacturer,,...As there

were

were extensive shealings or grazings attached to this country, in the neighbourhood of the lordship of Badenoc, the inhabitants in the beginning of summer removed to these shealings with their whole cattle, man, woman, and child; and it was no uncommon thing to observe an infant in one creel and a stone on the other side of the horse, to keep up an equilibrium. The only operations attended to during the summer season was [preparing] their peats or fuel, and repairing their rustic habitations. When their small crops were fit for it, all hands descended from the hills and continued on the farms till the same was cut and secured in barns, the walls of which were generally made of dry stone [without mortar] or wreathed with branches or boughs of trees; and it was no singular custom after harvest for the whole inhabitants to return to their shealings and to abide there till driven from thence by the snow. During the winter and spring the whole pasturage of the country was a common. The cultivation was all performed in spring; the inhabitants having no taste for following green crops or other modern improvements. From the year 1746 the minds of the inhabitants seemed to have taken a different turn,' &c.—Ibid., vol. xx. p. 23.

The mighty and pervading change which had revolutionised even the wilds of Stratherrick and the recesses of Killin, seems to have reached later the fertile plain of Moray, unless we are to allow for some exaggeration in the following account drawn by a very amiable but eccentric minister :

'The people over all this country are most strictly economical and as little expensive or luxurious as possible. They are disposed to every kind of humane and generous action, as much as their circumstances will admit of. The lower rank of farmers and labourers, though not content perhaps with their situation, and though they do not enjoy all the comforts of life, yet do not complain more than their opulent neighbours. There are numbers of them, however, who are generally without small beer and milk, and almost none of them have meat, butter, cheese, or spirits, and all their poultry and eggs are sold in the Elgin market. Their dress, furniture, and habitations are still of the cheapest kinds that can be procured. They use no candles; and urine they substitute for soap. Almost the only pleasure they indulge in, is meeting occasionally to the number of fifteen or twenty-five, for the purpose of conversing about some of the abstrusest doctrines of Calvinism, in which they display their eloquence in the only kind of spouting of which they have any notion, that of a theological oration and a prayer, varied by occasional reflections on the degeneracy and oppressions of the age.'—Ibid., vol. ix. p. 177.

.

An Argyleshire incumbent, the Rev. Mr. Dugal McDougal, after describing the introduction of sheep farming, and the consequent decrease of the population, says :—

The partiality in favour of former times, and the attachment to the place of their nativity, which is natural to old people, together with the indolence in which they indulged themselves in this country, mislead them

in drawing a comparison between their past and their present situations. But indolence was almost the only comfort which they enjoyed. There was scarcely any variety of wretchedness with which they were not obliged to struggle, or rather, to which they were not obliged to submit. They often felt what it was to want food: the scanty crops which they raised were consumed by their cattle in winter and spring. . . . To such extremity were they frequently reduced, that they were obliged to bleed their cattle, in order to subsist for some time upon the blood; and even the inhabitants of the glens and valleys repaired in crowds to the shore at the distance of three or four miles, to pick up the scanty provision which the shell-fish afforded them. They were miserably ill-clothed, and the huts in which they lived were dirty and mean beyond expression. How different from their present situation!'-(Ibid. vol. iii. p. 185.) The tourist who remembers the cottages of Argyle before fleets of steamers carried down the citizens of Glasgow to ruralize among its lochs and mountains, may estimate the wretchedness which this worthy minister thought so wonderful a contrast to their situation some fifty years ago.

It was not to be expected that a change so great and so rapid should meet with undivided approbation. The good old time, the time of our fathers, is always sure to have some affectionate supporters. The disuse of ale and the substitution of whisky and of tea are frequent subjects of regret in the Old Statistical. One of its writers-evidently an aged gentleman, who speaks of forty years ago as within his own ken-laments the unnatural demand for labour produced by ditching, trenching, and dyking, together with the manufactures at Aberdeen; and the decrease of sub-tenants.' He regrets that this is likely to drive the farmers 'to betake them to the new husbandry, which requires fewer hands, and yet produces more corn. The dress of all the country

people in the district,' he continues :

was some years ago, both for men and women, of cloth, made of their own sheep's wool, Kilmarnock or Dundee bonnets, and shoes of leather tanned by themselves. Then, every servant lad and maid had a quey or steer, sometimes two, and a score or more of sheep, to enable them to marry and to begin the world with. Now, every servant-lad almost, must have his Sunday's coat of English broadcloth, a vest and breeches of Manchester cotton, a high-crowned hat, and a watch in his pocket. The servant-maids are dressed in poplins, muslins, lawns, and ribbons; and both sexes have little else than finery to enter the world with, which occasions marriage to be delayed longer than formerly.' And then he suggests the introduction of woollen manufacture, by which means 'large sums would be kept in the country, which are now sent out of it for apparel, and the human species also be multiplied.'-(Old Statistical, vol. x. p. 245.) That minister of Cluny was none of the sect of modern philosophers!