THE CONCLUSION OF MR. LANG'S HISTORY.* Wrrn this volume Mr.

Andrew Lang brings to a close his greatest historical enterprise,—his history of his native country from the Roman occupation till the last effort to preserve Scotland as an independent country and nationality failed in the overthrow of the Young Pretender at Culloden. As the first volume appeared in 1900, it may be said with safety that Mr. Lang's achievement represents ten years' hard work,—no unimportant segment in one of the most varied and successful literary lives of our time. Until Dr. Hume Brown has completed a work not unlike Mr. Lang's in many respects, it would be rash to say which of the Scottish scholars of the time has done most to throw fresh light on the history of seventeen centuries crowded with incident and beaten upon by the storms of an exceptionally fierce partisanship. But it

is jastifiable already to say—and bearing Hill Burton, and still more Tytler, in mind—that these four solid volumes constitute the greatest critical history of Scotland that has yet been, or is likely to be, published. We say" critical" advisedly, because the word indicates both the weakness and the strength of Mr. Lang's work. Owing no doubt to temperament, and to an historical scepticism which is quite good-natured but is also quite resolute, he never gets carriod away by any cause, • political or religious, and therefore never throws into any chapter of his work that ingenium perfervidum which, not for the best of reasons—considerin4 the historical origin of the phrase—is supposed to be the life-blood of Scotland. It would not be uncharitable to Mr. Lang to say that he does not "love" John Knox, or "preachers," or " Seceders "—like Matthew Arnold, be has an instinctive sympathy with lost causes—although his persistent realisation of the comedy of human life prevents him from being other than impartial even to them, according to his knowledge. So no one need look in these volumes for a "rousing" history of the Reformation or of Dissent.

Then Mr. Lang's historical eagerness—which in other fields has impelled him to penetrate such dissimilar mysteries as those of the Clyde Crannoge and the final fate of Edwin Drood—has repeatedly gone off at a tangent in these volumes in order to run some thecny or scoundrel to earth. This mode of conducting historical investigation is rather provoking ; but one gets to like it ; besides, it always tends, not only to entertainment, but to historical elucidation. For Mr. Lang's style of work invariably provokes criticism ; one can hardly, for example, conceive of him dogmatising on any event in the history of a leading Reformer or Covenanter without his views being subjected to a severe, but not unfriendly, dissection by such an expert as Dr. Hay Fleming. Mr. Lang's volumes may not tell the whole truth about the history of Scotland, but they do undoubtedly supply the material for ascertaining the truth by means of skilful cross-examination. Add to what we have said the "personal equation" in Mr. Lang's case—what Stevenson termed his "incommunicable humour," his very genuine " tarn " for pathos, and his inability to be serious for too long a time—and it is not too much to say that his work is not only the 'most critical, but the most readable history of Scotland that has ever been published. One perpetually comes upon such palpable hits as this:— " ' The Marquis of Atholl,' says Macaulay, 'was the falsest, the most fickle, the most pusillanimous of mankind '—so much so that

at Bath he only pretended to drink the waters The General (Mackay), a brave man, but a most entangled writer, was much sniped at by the Highlanders as he arrayed his little army. He made a speech, in one vast and wandering sentence, about what his men owed to the Protestant religion and their own safety.

A forbearing of one another in love has always been an unpalatable doctrine, and has seemed infinitely less essential to the Christian life than matters like the Usages, the Mixing of Water with the Wine, the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, the use of the Chrism both in Baptism and in Consecration, and similar matters which now convulsed the episcopal clergy and congregations."

The fourth volume begins with the year 1689, and with an account of the purely political events that preceded the victory and death of Dundee at Killiecrankie. It is perhaps quite unnecessary to say that Mr. Lang sympathises with this great soldier and gallant partisan, and it may be doubted whether that sympathy has ever been expressed with a pathos at once more naturally easy and less intermingled with that sentimentality which is apt to hang on to the skirts of chivalric emotion :— "The great soldier who died for a master so miserable sleeps in the old church of Blair. He had given his 'clay of shearing darg ' to the King, happy in the opportunity of his death. Not even he could restore that Prince who, from a brave and beautiful lad, had sunk, under religious bigotry and the licence of Court life, to be a false poltroon on whose word no man could rely, in whose mercy none dared trust. We quit the great Dundee with the words put into his mouth by Sir Walter Scott—'The memory which the soldier leaves behind him, like the long train of light that follows the sunken sun, that is worth caring for.' He has no monturient raised by men's hands, but his memory keeps her dwelling in the light of setting suns on the hills of Atholl."

Following perforce in the footsteps of Macaulay, Mr. Lang investigates once more • the mysterious history of the Massacre of Glencoe. The conclusions which he arrives at after laborious research are those generally accepted,—that neither Stair nor his master, William, can be acquitted of that knowledge of the Massadre which means virtual complicity.

The one did not suggest an onfall by treachery, and as regards the other, the story "is an inexplicable blot on the character of a great, brave, wise, tolerant, and very useful man, and there is no more to be said."

So much has been printed of late regarding the Union between England and Scotland that Mr. Lang has very little that is really fresh to say. He balances very carefully, however, between those who maintain that the Union was an unmixed blessing not only to the predominant but to the subordinate partner, and those—they are not unrepresented in the present day—who contend that the Act of 1707 resulted in the smaller kingdom becoming "the mikh-cow of the Empire." Mr. Lang thus—with perhaps a touch of cynicism —slims up the matter :—

"As De Foe remarks, everything worked together to produce the Union, and the many grounds of objection to it cancelled each other. 'The Union grew up between all the extremes as a consequence, and it was merely formed by the nature of things rather than by the designs of the parties.' The Union was a natural flower of evolution. Many of the objections to it—patriotic, historical, sentimental, and even economic—were far from being idle fancies, but the Union as the least of all possible evils was, in process of time, to become the greatest of all possible goods in this imperfect world."

Mr. Lang does not close his volume with the Union. Quite naturally and reasonably, he deals with the sequels of that event, the Darien Expedition and the Risings of '15 and '45, and so brings his volume to an end at the moment, as has already been said, "when the last armed attempt to make Scotland once more an independent and separate nation was broken at Culloden." Although Mr. Lang has inevitably, perhaps, little to say that is new of the Darien Expedition, he has much that is fresh, illuminating, and valuable to relate of the events that preceded Culloden, and still more of the character of "James III. and VIIL" It is not too much to say that Mr. Lang has revolutionised the popular conception of "the character of the last Stuart Prince of Wales horn in England," because he has been able to speak "with a measure of truth which has hitherto been withheld, partly from prejudice and partly from lack of many documents now accessible." For instance, we are told :— "He was an affectionate son, brother, and father. Why Thackeray accuses him of intemperance is a mystery, and the only mistress whom legend mentions in connection with him (at Bar, in Lorraine, 1714) was certainly not Fanny Oglethorpe. His manner appears to have been shy or stiff—the result, very probably, of his insecure position, which, with his poverty, exposed him to some humiliations James had a heart full of affection ; two or three times in his letters he speaks out. But his manner was unpopular, and his reserve was very close. Had he been a Protestant, James would probably have made a most respectable King, but his creed was a fatal obstacle ; and he had not the charm which endless audacity and uncomplaining good. humour in extreme hardships lent to his unfortunate eldest son. In person he was tall and slim, with eyes curiously like those of Mary Queen of Scots, which gave him in boyhood a pleasant, roguish air. But his constitutional melancholy soon betrayed itself in his expression. The Whig pamphleteers accused him of a coldness towards the fair sex which amounted to positive cruelty, while his melancholy was such that if you tell him it is a fine day, he weeps and says that be was unfortunate from his mother's womb.' Such was the prince as far as we can_ discern his character, for whom Scotland was to suffer many sorrows. Nobody could be less like the young Charles II,— audacious, gay, and prepared to swallow all religious and political formulas from the Covenant to endless Presbyterian sermons. The Jacobite songs celebrated young Jamie the Rover; a more roving blade would have had happier fortunes."

Of the result of James's marriage with the reckless Clementine Sobieski Mr. Lang writes :—

" It was a melancholy honeymoon—a defeated, disappointed, laborious bridegroom, earnestly toilsome as his own secretary ; a bride of half his age, who found that her crown was pinchbeck, that money was very scarce, that her lord was deep in affairs, and that he in no respect resembled her merry knight, adventurous Charles Wogan ; while her father, in disgrace for her escapade, was deprived of his duchies and had retired to a monastery. The poor child lost her spirits, lost her even temper, became irritable, and finally had a grievance which she would not reveal. The world—even the Jacobites—took her part; historians take her part ; it is natural. James, in his usual calm, patient way, tried to reason with his wife—a course proverbially futile; her jealousy poured the last drop into his cup of bitterness."

Upon the Rising of 1745 Mr. Lang has much to say that is disillusioning. For example:—

"Of trusty men, hardy and resolute soldiers, Charles had probably not more than 2,000 at the first—Lochiel's Camerons, the Macdonells of Glengarry, Keppoch, Clanranald, and the Appin

Stewarts. Sleat's Efacdonalds were held back by their chief; the delays of Lovat paralysed the Frasers ; the chief of the Mackintoshes was of the party of Government ; the Meeker's had lost their chief ; Cluny, with the Macphersons, was trammelled by his commission ; Seaforth would not bring out the Mackenzies ; the Munroes and Maekays were steady Whigs ; and Macleod deserted the Cause. The gentry of the South were powerless ; they had no • followings.' Yet the Prince shook the throne."

Mr. Lang is quite decided on the vexed question whether at Culloden the Reppoch Macdonalds deserted their chief :—

" The actual truth is now plain, and the Keppoch Macdonalds are entirely cleansed of the charge of deserting their chief in the action. It is evident that the clan charged with the chief, and that the company of his brother Donald (who also fell in fight) even outran the line. From undoubted evidence it is clear that as Keppoch's body was discovered when retiring,' the advance continued after the chief was down. To account for the casualties in the advance, as the infantry of the enemy did not fire, we must accept the evidence that grape-shot was galling the Highland left," As in his previous volumes, Mr. Lang deals here in special chapters, bearing such titles as "Heresy and Schism," "The Jacobite Churchmen and Statesmen," "Life in the Highlands," and "Life in the Lowlands," with the social, religious, and educational characteristics of Scottish sociological evolution. Such widely different events as the Porteous Mob, the kidnapping of Lady Grange, the rise of the "Marrow Men," the Seceders and the Moderates, and the season of revivals come within his net. They are not all equally to his liking, as witness the skilful manner in which (p. 318) he insinuates that Whitefield was a snob. But whatever Mr. Lang deals with he vivifies with the sidelights of his various reading.