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should so long have escaped the many curious inquirers as to the events of that period. It is certain, at any rate, that if the Highland chieftains experienced the momentary feeling of loyalty expressed in this strange document, it speedily evaporated: For no sooner was the fated expedition of the Earl of Marr undertaken, than it was keenly supported by their credulous and unwary enthusiasm. The character and conduct of this unhappy enterprise, have already been criticised by a master in such speculations:* and the events to which it gave birth, have been detailed in different forms with great minuteness. The utter incapacity of Marr for the daring enterprise which he had undertaken, soon became manifest to his adherents, who had staked their fortunes upon the result of his undertaking; and posterity has confirmed the judgment which was then pronounced. The obstinate, but indecisive battle of Sheriff moor, was fatal to the spirit of the clans, who required success to sustain them in the perilous adventure in which they had embarked, against a power which delay was ever strengthening, and which, if it was to be overthrown at all, must have been struck to the ground by a single blow. The enthu siasm of the Highland levies, unused to discipline, and impetuous in all their movements, was not to be sustained through the protracted course of a doubtful warfare; and their spirit, as usual, melted away before obstacles upon which their ardour had never calculated, and with which their resources were inadequate to contend."

We extract the notice of Lord Lovat, not only as an interesting account of the enterprises in which that profligate character was concerned, but also as furnishing much information respecting the causes which stimulated his deluded countrymen in the rebellion of 1745.

"This too notorious person had been compelled many years before, to expatriate himself on account of offences which were scarcely less ridiculous than detestabic which mingled the black ingredients of crime with the lighter elements of insanity, in such curious and whimsical proportion, that the force of either species of satire would be exhausted in describing them. He had professed himself an admirer of the daughter of his kinsman and predecessor the former Lord Lovat ;-but when he found that obstacles occurred to the accomplishment of his design, he turned round at once with gay inconstancy to her mother, who chanced to be in his power, and, in spite of her wrinkles and resistance, forced her into au involuntary marriage with him, which

"See Lord Bolingbroke's letter to Sir WilJam Wyndham.

VOL. IV.-No. 1.

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he hastened to consummate with the most brutal violence. Insanity alone could have excused this revolting transgression of all laws-but Lord Lovat had not this excuse to plead. He had a purpose in view, a purpose of the most vindictive depravity, to which he sacrificed every feeling of nature, and every law of honour. The unhappy lady who could not become the victim of his lust, was made the instrument of his revenge. She was of the Athole family, against whom this youthful adventurer etertained a deep grudge, which was exalted to the most desperate fury by their resistance to his union with their young kiuswoman. By his barbarous treatment of the dowager Lady Lovat, he exulted in believing that he had offered a deep and inexpiable insult to her kindred. The quality of this unparalleled outrage, stamps the character, and developes the inmost recesses of this dark and crafty spirit. The bad passions not only predominated in his character, but they absorbed his every sense and faculty. He who could for a purpose of revenge not only subdue, but torture the manliest of passions, must indeed have reached the dark sublime of depravity, and had already given a sure pledge of the wayward tenor of his future life.

"It has been contended in palliation of this frightful outrage, that the forcible abduction, as it is called, of women, was in these times a crime of almost daily occur rence; and that the records of Scottish criminal jurisprudence are filled with dis cussions on this odious breach of the laws. Even were this apology supported by the fact, it seems rather to be a libel on the country which it pretends to characterise, than a justification of the individual whom it feebly essays to defend. The alleged frequency of such legal discussions, while it may show the turbulent and unprincipled character of a part of the population, proves no less distinctly the horror with which their crimes were viewed, and the jealousy with which they were avenged by the laws.-But is Lord Lovat's a case of ordinary abduction? Was his incitement to the act a generous and romantic passion, spurning obstacles and braving persecution, and which, even in the reckless generosity of its guilt, claims our sympathy, and conimands our respect? This sordid transgressor stands forward in all the harshness of unmitigated crime, without one alleviating circumstance to soften resentment, or propitiate regard; he appears the spoiler of virtue, without the incitement of passion, the profaner of a hallowed intercourse, without taste or relish for its enjoyments, the cold and callous sacrificer of all that was respectable in the honour of the other sex, and all that ought to have been dear to his best feelings,-to an unmitigable, insatiate, and remorseless spirit of revenge.

"The laws of his country did not look upon his offence, which included the guilt of

rape and rebellion, with a mild and forgiving eye. He was fugitated for not appearing to take his trial, and compelled to expatriate himself and take refuge in France. Some memoirs of this portion of his history have been preserved, and they are really valuable, as indicating the depth of human depravity-But he still looked forward to a return to his native country-and as a fugitive from its laws, he could expect this opportunity only from their subversion. He therefore embarked in the cause of the Stuarts with landable alacrity, devoted to it the whole force of his talent for intrigue, and even ventured so far as to return to Scotland in disguise, to prepare the way for an insurrection. But as he had neither heart nor principle in this or any other cause, it was easy to purchase his treason to it. The intelligent and sagacious agents of the government in Scotland, perceiving the use which in a momen, of emergency they could make of his daring character, and his influence over his clan, yet unextinguished even by the multitude of his crimes, opened a negotiation with him, and this whimsical renegade was, in the year 1715, found supporting the lawful government, and taking possession in its name of the town of Inverness.

"The rebellion was soon suppressed. The government, however, felt disposed to take measures for preventing the recurrence of such an event; and, as the spirit of clan-, ship appeared to form the source of the universal disaffection which pervaded the Highlands, every effort was made to weaken and subdue it. The measures adopted for this purpose, in the first instance, were not indeed the most politic or effectual. The clan act, which rewarded the loyalty of the vassal with the forfeited right of his superior, and, on the other hand, conferred upon the superior the property of the rebellious vassal, was but a poor contrivance, because the superior, or chief of the clan, was not likely to embark in any enterprise which was not encouraged by the majority of his dependants. The maxim divide et impera, how powerful soever in its application to the politics of a sordid and degenerate race, was misapplied to the rude candour and instinctive fidelity of the Highlanders; and a law which offered temptations only to the most despicable renegade, from the system of their social institutions, could not have great influence among a people who existed only in union, and whose every enterprise was a conspiracy. It is acknowledged, also, that the attempt of the legislature to terminate, by an abrupt and sullen enactment, the homage which the vassals had uniformly paid to their chief's in the shape of services, both civil and military, was followed only by the most contemptuous disobedience. The mandate for disarming the clans, was, if possible, still more impolitic, for it was obeyed only by the adherents of government, whom it was not intended to affect,

and cunningly eluded by the discontented clans, against whom, alone, it was intended to operate. What other consequence could be expected from an attempt to inflict the last penalty and degradation of conquest upon an unexplored territory, which had never been actually subdued, and which, even at the moment when this inconsiderate law was enacted, would have boldly refused, to the pretended victor, the slightest tribute or token of his achievement?

The Highlanders saw clearly enough the determination of government to destroy every vestige of their peculiar usages and institutions, and to reduce them (and this was deep humiliation in their eyes) to an equality with the people of the low country, whom they despised; but they did not discover, in the means employed, either the sagacity or the power which was to accomplish this fatal revolution. They continued accordingly to adhere to their ancient manners, and their jealousy of all intrusion within their ancient limits; and still indulging a hope, that better days were approaching-that their fortunes were again to prevail, and that the destiny of the Stuart family, with which they had united their own, was ultimately to regain its ascendant, they remained in a shy and suspicious estrangement from the government, politics. laws, and manners of their country. To confirm them in this course, the exiled family employed all the zeal of their adherents, and all the activity of their emissaries; and it was during this quiet and frowning interval, betwixt the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, that the spirit of the clans was maturing itself for the unhappy adventure, in the failure of which the fortunes of the family whom they so much cherished, were for ever broken and overthrown.

"During the sullen period which intervened betwixt the two rebellions, and which discovered the anomalous spectacle of a large body of the British people, neither thoroughly reconciled to the government, nor daring openly to dispute its authority, the Scottish Hghlands exhibited many ex amples of that untamed violence which, without implying an open rebellion against the laws, indicates a sad relaxation of their power. It was impossible during the period referred to, for any adventurer from the Lowlands to attempt a settlement in a Highland district, and instances occurred of the most atrocious outrages, committed to prevent, or to chastise such an intrusion. But the Highlanders were not contented with repelling their countrymen of the south from their own ancient habitations: for they insisted on making the most unceremonious visits to the low country, for the purposes of plunder. They abandoned themselves to a system of depredation upon that part of the low country adjoining the Highland border; and among the noted characters who engaged in adventures of this sort, no one makes a more conspicuous

figure than the celebrated Roв Roy, whose unfortunate offspring gave occasion to the criminal proceedings of which an account follows in this volume. But of him, and of his family, we shall have more to say in the sequel.

The predatory exploits of the border Highlanders, did not escape the notice of government. A sort of militia was raised to suppress them; and as this force was composed of native Highlanders, it was believed that they would be able to explore the recesses of the banditti; and from their knowledge of the country and its inhabitants, to defeat their schemes, and bring them speedily to justice. The sort of police levy which was thus raised, was denominated the "Black Watch," and the com. mand of the different companies was given to Highland gentlemen, whose attachment to the established government could be relied upon. Out of this institution, the celebrated 42d Regiment arose, which has rendered itself famous by so many brilliant exploits, and associated with its name what ever is gallant or splendid in modern warfare. Under the original organization, the Black Watch did not escape the reproach of sharing sometimes in the spoils of the freebooters, whom they were destined to intimidate. Their conspicuous valor, how. ever, soon recommended them to the employment of government in its more important operations abroad; and the effect of the institution upon the whole, was rather to cherish the military spirit of the people than to subdue their excesses.

"Lord Lovat, of whose youthful celebrity, we have already had occasion to speak, was one of those chieftains to whom the recent measures of government, with respect to the guardian military force of the Highlands, was most obnoxious. In his subsequent career, this singular person did not forfeit the reputation which he had acquired almost at his entrance on the world. Under pretence of obedience to the will of government, he had contrived to train his whole clan in rotation to the use of arms; and had availed himself of his influence and power in such a manner as to show that he meditated the universal oppression of the neighbouring clans. He had the haughtiness, without the honour of a Highland chieftain-the vices, without any of the redeeming virtues of that mixed character. He had the daring enterprise which belonged to his race and to his country,but so completely spoiled by the taint of bad associations, and the alloy of foreign manners, that it became difficult to determine whether cunning or ferocity most predominated in his character. He had the faculty of appropriating, by a sort of un. erring attraction, all that was bad in the nature which he inherited, and in the habits with which he was conversant;-he was a Machiavel in a region noted for its simplicity, and a courtly barbarian in the centre

of Parisian refinement. Yet his various qualities were not well mixed or subordi nated; they counteracted each other in a manner which secured his victims against the absolute consummation of his projects, and at last involved his ardent, but reckless daring, in utter perdition. He tyrannise over his clan, he insulted and oppressed his neighbours, he enacted the most ferocious despotism in his family, and meditated the deepest duplicity towards the government of his country. The honours heaped upon him for his services in 1715, had no effect in securing his attachment, and he quickly engaged in courses which roused the strongest suspicion of his fidelity. He was accordingly degraded and punished, by taking from him his independent company and pension. There was no length, of course, which he was not prepared to go in revenge. The pretender promised him a dukedom, and other honours calculated to seduce both his avarice and his ambition; but he was too politic at once to commit himself, and it was not till after the battle of Prestonpans, when success promised to legalize the cause of rebellion, that he gave a loose to his cherished partialities, in a form which well sustained the atrocious consistency of the ravisher of the dowager Lady Lovat. He did not choose to embark personally, or to give his ostensible countenance to an enterprise which he still considered as critical and hazardous; but he urged his son to the fatal undertaking, and wantonly drove him on to sustain the guilt and the shame of this desperate enterprise. But all his arts were unavailing to screen himself from that vengeance which was fast overtaking the mul titude of his crimes; and after the fatal engagement at Culloden he had the sad mortification to meet the ruined chief, in whose rash undertaking he had embarked his fortunes, and to mingle with him the accents of despair. He was doomed at last to terminate a life, protracted in infamy, upon the scaffold; and he closed it in a characteristic manner by a cold and sullen sneer over a catastrophie which signalized even his last moments, and seemed to show that there was no period of his career, which was not doomed to be in one way or other fatal to his species."

The remarks on the virtues and ac complishments attributed to the Highlanders are excellent.

"If the Highlanders have, in recent times, been without political supporters of their interest, they have not wanted enthusiastic advocates of their fame. Several fearless attempts have been made to confer upon them a superiority over their southern neighbours, not only as to the qualities in which they decidedly excel, but as to various other points in which their pre-eminence is far more doubtful. Mrs. Grant, in her "Essays on the Superstitions of the

Highlanders," and in her other publications, has distinguished herself by an amiable quixotism in the cause of her favourite people, and she has been powerfully seconded by her ingenious critic in the Edinburgh Review, to whose paper the reader is referred, as containing a more striking and compendious view of all the paradoxes that have been uttered on this subject, than is any where to be found.*

"These ingenious writers have not hesitated to maintain, that the Highlanders are more polished in their manners and sentiments than the people of any other country, that they are skilled in all the graces of polite conversation,-and almost universally possessed of a deep knowledge of poetry, and great sensibility to its beauties.--It required a certain extravagance of thought, no doubt, to have made such assertions, and still greater ingenuity to render them plausi ble for a moment.

"The key to the whole theory is, that the Highlander is, or was, a sort of savage, or at least a being little removed from a state of primitive barbarism,-and that vulgarity is the vice, not of the savage state, but of an imperfect condition of refinement. It is the vice, say the apologists of the HighJanders, not of extreme indigence, but of an uncultivated opulence ;-the disease, not of a band of savages, but of a crowd of conceited and luxurious manufacturers. The progress of national prosperity, therefore, is, according to this theory, unpropitious to the refinement of manners;-and the generous feeling and polished spirit of a gentleman are to be found in the mass of society only, at that humble stage of improvement which philosophy would pronounce to lie upon the very confines of barbarism.

"The error of this theory, which ascribes to the rude inhabitants of the mountains, virtues which they could never possess, may be easily exposed. A rude tribe may boast its warlike virtues; but it can never excel in the arts of peace, or in the accomplishments of society. To say that the Highlanders were not rulgar in their sentiments, or their manners; nay, that they were peculiarly distinguished from their neighbours by an exquisite refinement, is to construct a poor sophism upon an abuse of language. The term vulgarity, is uniformly referred to the usages and manners with which we are conversant. The vulgarity which is abhorred in polite society, is the aggregate of the distinguishing qualities which predominate in the lower ranks of that species of life which is known to us by immediate observation; of course, the term is not applicable to savage or semi-barbarian manners, which are known only from description. But rank and subordination are not unkuown in rude, more than they are in civilized societies;-and the lower classes in

**Edin. Review, vol. 18 p. 484. et seq.

both will have their peculiarities-their comparative ignorance-their grosser selfishness-and all the other disagreeable qualities which make them appear mean and vulgar, when compared with their su periors. We do not, indeed, perceive the vulgarity of those whose manners are strange to us, and whose very aspect has something novel and characteristic in it, with the same acuteness with which we discover kindred qualities in the lower ranks of that population with which we are familiar. The most offensive customs of the lowest classes of the Greeks and Romans have in them little that is repulsive, when transmitted to us through the representations of learned and ingenious men, and consecrated as it were by the reverence paid to antiquity; and we may venture to assert, that the notion of vulgarity was never attached in the mind of a modern scholar to any part of the population of the ancient world. But can we doubt that it was ton. spicuous and offensive to those who were compelled to come into immediate contact with it?-That awful distance of time which now dignifies the meanest usages of jan tiquity, has been supplied in the case of the Scottish mountaineer, by a distinction of language, manners and institutions, which long separated him from the rest of his countrymen-and gave an impression of novelty and wildness to his whole character and aspect, that effectually shielded him from the reproach of vulgarity.

"To talk of the superior knowledge and talents for society of an ordinary Highlander of the lower classes, appears a startling paradox. Where were his means for acquiring knowledge in his rude and sequestered state, without communication, but with the narrow circle of his kinsmen ; and compelled by the precariousness of his supply of food, to exhaust his whole thoughts, and to exercise a constant activity in quest of the means of subsistence, and of the slender comforts which his condition afforded, or his habits required? It has often been remarked, that the era of knowledge and refinement begins only after immediate physical wants have been supplied, and a surplus has been created to secure the society against the recurrence of any imminent casualty;-in short, after the semibarbarous state has terminated. But at what period had the Highlanders reached this condition before they were assimilated to the manners and usages of the low country,

when their peculiarities were almost wholly effaced? If the fanciful picture which has been drawn of their superior knowledge and politeness in a state of primitive seclusion had any foundation in nature, they would form the single exception on record to the general maximThat knowledge and refinement have their growth only in the security of opulence, and the stability of political institutions."

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The author proceeds to show how completely hostile to human improvement and happiness were almost the whole of their ancient institutions, and very successfully combats the positions advanced by their admirers in favour of a state of society which could subsist only among a barbarous people, and whom, as long as it prevailed among them, it would keep barbarous.

We have already devoted too many of our pages to this pleasing essay, to have it in our power to say any thing on the anecdotes connected with the magnanimous freebooter, ROB ROY, and his fa

mily. Our purpose, indeed, in taking up the volume, did not include the discussion of individual character. To exhibit the manners and habits of a whole population, and their effect upon their moral and political condition, was the principal object we had in view: and we conclude with observing that in our opinion the author has completely succeeded in demonstrating the ancient character and institutions of the Highlanders to have been in diametrical opposition to every thing which renders society cultivated, refined, and amiable.

G.

ART. 2. Rhododaphne; or the Thessalian Spell. A Poem. 18mo. pp. 194. Philadelphia. M. Carey & Sons.

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sion.

The story, though founded on magic, is simple, and the language by no means ambitious or overwrought; but the feelings it brings into play are of that sweet and pure description which, existing, perhaps, only in a state of society equally removed from the extremes of incivilization and refinement, will always delight us as the attributes of the innocent and happy condition of man, before he congregated in cities, and surrendered the genuine pleasures of the pastoral life for the bustle and intrigues of crowded society: while, without having recourse to any aids but those afforded by a fiue sense of the soft, melodious, and correct in versification, the author has contrived to show how perfectly possible it is to write with vigour and animation without violating the laws of grammar, or departing, in any considerable measure, from

1818.

the models of poetic diction left us by poets whose works were the pride of an age at least as refined as our own.

The scene is laid in Thessaly, a country celebrated almost from time immemorial as the birth-place of magic; Horace, Ovid, and Apuleius have established its necromantic fame; and Lucan's Erictho is alone sufficient to stamp it as a region devoted to the arts of sorcery and divination. Menander is reported to have written a drama, in which he introduced the "incantations and magic ceremonies of women drawing down the moon." Pliny attributes the belief in magic to the united influence of three potent causes"medicine, superstition, and the mathematical arts," excluding music, generally supposed by the ancients to possess powers of the most extraordinary description. The belief, indeed, in the magical influence of music and pharmacy may be traced to the earliest ages of poetry, and the Circe of Homer and the Medea of Apollonius are beautiful exemplifications of their combined influence.

But to the poem. It opens with a description of the Temple of Love at Thespia, a town of Boeotia, at the foot of mount Helicon :---a few introductory lines, and the author proceeds in the following

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