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tions than we have ever heard of, what would be the benefit of their being now brought to light? Does any vacancy in the imagination require to be replenished, and illuminated, by loathsome or fantastic shapes of wooden and earthenware gods as yet nondescript and undelineated? May we not be well content that all these lost detestable forms of thought and of matter, should be retained exclusively in the memory of those departed beings who once were, some of them the agents, and some of them the dupes, of the dire delusion; and of those long observers of this world, those heavenly spirits, whose wide capacities are so filled with a pure and divine element, that these odious reminiscences cannot defile them?-as the atmosphere of our planet maintains its general purity, in spite of all the smoke and mephitic exhalations that rise into it. What would be the use, again we might ask, of an indefinitely aggravated evidence of facts, that men have hated and destroyed one another through all ages? Or could the indefatigable reader really flatter himself that, somewhere or other, he should come upon a delightful historical tract of contrary evidence, and find that the golden age did once actually exist? But there would be no end to such questions; we will only ask further, Does any one important moral principle need an addition of facts, either to verify it, or to ascertain the proper rules of its application?

We do not know whether the above paragraph will appear quite pertinently prefixed to a slight notice of the work by which it has been suggested. A state of society forming so very extraordinary a picture, furnishing such strong illustrations of some principles in human nature, so conspicuous in our national history, and leaving so many visible monuments and vestiges, cannot be among the things that any man would wish consigned to oblivion. But at the same time, some portions of the present work, taken in conjunction with other works, written, and eompiled, respecting the same tract of territory and history, would afford, we are apt to think, a fair exemplification of the uselessness for any present valuable purpose, of a great deal of what can be recovered from the past, and a fair presumption as to the uselessness, if it could be recovered, of infinitely more that is fortunately beyond the reach of research. We refer especially, (so far as the present work is concerned,) to the greater proportion of a large assemblage of musty documents which Mr. Scott has appended to his introductory Border History, and to some of the details in the series of descriptive and antiquarian notices appropriated respectively to the subjects illustrated by the plates. Mere antiquaries, indeed, who are delighted with every thing that is old, because it is so, will doubtless account these matters the very spice of the whole preparation,-a greater luxury than even Mr. Greig's beautiful engravings.

With many of the descriptive notices, it will not require so highly rectified a taste in order to be pleased: ordinary readers will find some gratification in brief sketches of the character of the ruins and the surrounding scenery, combined with remarkable and romantic incidents which the places bring to recollection.

But the most interesting part of the literary portion of the work, is Mr. Scott's rapid, clear, and lively epitome of the Border History, from the earliest times that any thing is known of the restless inhabitants, down to the period when they were destined to sink in comparative repose and insignificance, under the complete consolidation of the union of the two kingdoms; a condition of things which Mr. S. regards with tolerable complacency, inasmuch as it did not take place till after innumerable adventures and exploits had furnished subjects for antique minstrels, and for the Last' of the tribe.

This introductory History, (of about 130 pages,) is just the kind of sketch that might have been desired by a person wishing for a general succinct exhibition of the transactions and peculiar character of the people of the borders, composed upon a scale of some reasonable proportion to the whole history of the island, and capable of being read without putting in abeyance a multitude of other desirable and deserving matters of knowledge. The laudable compression does not deprive the composition of that spirit and picturesque character which might be expected from Mr. S., in representing scenes in which he has long found so much poetic interest, and in parts of which his genius has repeatedly forced all sorts of readers, even those with the least predilection for such matters, to admit to their temporary favour. For historical verification he makes due reference to authorities; and we are well content to take his competent research and his accuracy upon credit, our object being little more than a slight notice of the general nature of the work, of which the main design is to give a graphical representation, much more comprehensive and elegant than in all former publications taken together, of the structures and ruins monumental of the reign of war and Popery on the Borders. Our pages, however, would be the better for the quotation of a few of the many entertaining and striking passages in the literary part.

Mr. Scott has given, in small dimensions, a very interesting picture of the state of the Border Britons, as it existed at the time, and is indicated, by relics and vestiges, to have existed before the time, of the Roman invasion. After marking the portions of territory respectively occupied by the three warlike tribes, the Ottadini, the Gadeni, and the Selgovæ, he describes their arms in their successive and improving forms, their rude

fortifications, and their modes of warfare; and assigns to the use of their worship, assumed to be Druidical, the circles of detached stones which abound in various places on the Border. Funeral monuments, also, of these Celtic tribes, are numerous, and consist of the cairns, or heaps of stones, so frequently 'piled on remarkable spots.'

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'On opening them, there is usually found in the centre a small square inclosure of stones set on edge, with bones and arms such as we have already described. There is frequently found within this stone-chest, or cist-vaen, as it is called by the Welch, an urn filled with ashes, and small beads made of coal. The manufacture of these urns themselves is singular. The skill of the artist appears not to have been such, as to enable him to form his urn completely, before subjecting it to the operation of the fire. He therefore appears to have first shaped the rude vessel of the dimensions which On the vessel thus he desired, and then baked it into potter's ware. formed and hardened, he afterwards seems to have spread a very thin coat of unbaked clay, on which he executed his intended ornaments, and which was left to harden at leisure. The scrolls and mouldings thus hatched on the outside of these urns, are not always void of taste. In these tombs, and elsewhere, have been repeatedly found the Eudorchawg, the Torques, or chain, formed of twisted gold, worn by the Celtic chiefs of rank. It is not a chain forged into rings, but is formed of thin rods of flexible gold, twisted into hoops, which pass through each other, and form oblong links.'

The Author passes quickly over the tumultuous period of the Roman dominion over the border country; a dominion maintained at an enormous expense of military works, and so maintained, not because the invaders set any great value on the tract itself, but because they were resolved to make it such a broad and powerful frontier, as should put out of all hazard their northern English territories, on which they did set a value. The tract thus fortified, and denominated Valentia, was included between the wall of Hadrian, extending from the Firth of Solway to the mouth of the Tyne, and a similar wall constructed by Lollius Urbicus, during the reign of Antoninus, between the Firths of Forth and Clyde, of course greatly in advance of the first bulwark. These were ramparts of earth, with ditches, military roads, and forts or stations from point to point. The insufficiency of these works as a security against the fierce tribes of the north, determined Severus to undertake the grand wall, the remains of which are, at this day, the principal Roman curiosity of the Border, and bear the full character of that magnitude of design and power peculiar to the operations of that empire. It was carried along on the south side of the original rampart of Hadrian, which was left to form a kind of advanced line of defence. But neither these barriers, nor the multitude of strong camps, military roads, and well

protected lines of communication, by which the province of Valentia was made to present one vast frowning aspect of defiance, could avert the daring incursions of the Britons, which made it a scene of interminable warfare. It is not wonderful, therefore, that among the numerous Roman antiquities found, there are no relics of Roman luxury and superstition, (excepting sacrificial vessels,) neither theatres, baths, nor temples.' Of the stupendous wall, the subject of continual dilapidation for fourteen centuries, the least injured fragment is to be found, our Author says, at a place called Glenwhelt, in the neighbourhood of Giisland Spaw.'

A rapid glance is thrown over the events following upon the final abdication of the Romans; the inroads and ravages of the Scots and Picts, the progress, operation, and establishments northward, of the Saxon invasion, the furious and destructive invasion made upon them, in their turn, by the Danes, who were, however, destined to fall prostrate at last under the victorious arms of Athelstane. After a long series of all manner of barbarous violence, confusion, and change, England and Scotland acquired at length, and nearly with parallel progress, and at the same period, the forms of comprehensive and consolidated kingdoms; these tracts between them, occupied and divided in the proportion of the power of the two great competitors, were reduced to become their respective frontiers, and by the middle of the eleventh century, might be considered as finally settled, nearly according to their present limits. The adjustment might have been widely different, had either of the two monarchies attained its full establishment a little earlier.

The power of England could scarce be said to be wielded by one sovereign with uncontrolled sway, until William the Conqueror had repressed the various insurrections of the Saxons, subjugated for ever the tumultuary Northumbrians, and acquired a consolidated force capable of menacing the kingdom of Scotland. Had this event happened a century sooner, it is probable all Britain would, at that early period, have been united under one monarch. Or had a Scottish monarch existed during the heptarchy, as powerful as Malcolm Canmore at a subsequent æra, it is possible that he might have pushed his limits much further to the south than the present Borders, and would probably have secured to Scotland at least the countries to the north of the Humber. As it happened, the situation and balanced strength of both countries dictated the present limits.'

The Saxons on this northern territory appear to have paid very small attention to military architecture. After their conversion to Christianity, they were very zealous in the erection of ecclesiastical edifices; but even of these Mr. Scott questions whether there are now any genuine remains, a few relics, per

fectly in their style, having possibly been the work of later architects, who sometimes practised it after the introduction of what has been denominated with more than doubtful propriety, the Gothic style.

The feudal system established without ceremony by the Conqueror in England, had made its way more gradually in Scotland, with the great influx of Norman families into that kingdom, and by the strong recommendations which it carried in its nature, to the taste of the monarch, and even to that of the ecclesiastics, to whom it assured a firmer tenure, without any addition of burdens. Measures were taken to give it a more formal and complete ascendency during the temporary usurpa tion of Edward I. But it could never effect the extinction of the more patriarchal Celtic social order of septs, or clanship, of which an interesting description is given at considerable length, discriminating the good features and the bad. The good was infinitely more than countervailed, in this social constitution, by the perpetual inexpugnable possession of the fiend of war. It was held the absolute duty of the rival clans, to fight and slaughter one another, in revenge of every trivial wrong or insult, and in revenge, alternately, of the successive and accumulating revenges. The honour and force of each clan were pledged to maintain even a palpable and confessed wrong committed by any of its members on the neighbouring tribe. The state of highest pride and self-complacency in these clans, appears to have been that which they named deadly feud, a state of ferocious hostility into which any two of them might be plunged at any moment, and in which they fought as if each had deemed itself to be ridding the world of a legion of fiends.

For a long period preceding the invasion of Edward 1., the Borders appear to have been wonderfully quiet, as relatively to the two rival kingdoms, of which the royal families were kept in contented mood by frequent alliances, by offices, sometimes, of personal friendship between the monarchs, and by the courtesies which an obvious policy dictated to the Scottish kings as holding of the English Crown extensive domains in England. During this period, fruitful of monastic institutions, great benefit is judged to have been conferred on the people of the Scottish Border, by the establishment of the abbeys of Kelso, Melrose, Jedburgh, and Dryburgh, by means of which a large portion of the country most exposed to hostile inroad, was secured in possession and cultivation, by being placed under the sacred pro⚫tection of the church.'

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In this point of view,' says our Author, the foundations completely answered the purpose designed; for it is well argued by Lord Hales, that, while we are inclined to say with the vulgar that the

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