BYWAYS OF SCOTTISH HISTORY" THE author of this work—in some

respects more interesting, if not positively more valuable, than any book dealing with Scottish history that has appeared for at least a decade—has adopted and applied the French theory that history ought to be a resurrection. He is less interested in the old and often dreary struggles between Englishmen and Scotchmen, Presbyterians and Prelatists, than in the manners and customs, trade and commerce, of a past which is in a sense dead, but whose works yet speak with impressive eloquence. The ordinary Scotchman has never taken the Asiatic plan of meeting the invasion of an enemy. That he should ever have bowed before the blast of a Border raid "with patient deep disdain," and turned him to his interminable metaphysics again, is inconceivable. Scotland would not be what it is, and modern Scotchmen would not be the energetic successful men of business they are, if Edward I.'s attempt at conquest had been met in such a fashion. Still, that there was a Scotland which married and gave in marriage, bought, planted, and builded in a quiet but very shrewd way, in spite of the War of Independence, and even of Reformation and Covenant, is beyond doubt. It is this Scotland chiefly, though not entirely, that Dr. Colville has set himself—and with very great success—to reproduce and illustrate. In this reproduction, at all events, lie both the chief charm and the chief value of such chapters as "The Scottish Tour in the Days of Charles I.," "Scotland under the Roundheads," "Town Life in the Eighteenth Century," "Scottish Trade in the Olden Time," and—first and not least —" Lowland Scotland in the Time of Burns."

The article on "Scotland under the Roundheads," which is based to some extent on a volume upon Scotland under the Commonwealth, which was recently published by the Scottish History Society, is essentially a revelation. It is evident that the occupation of Scotland by Cromwell and his officers, the most active of whom were Monk and Lilburne, was not by any

means a bed of roses for those who had to take part in it. In 1653 a crisis was reached. The war with Holland absorbed

all the energies of the English Government. Lilburne, who in the absence of Monk—seeking health at Bath—commanded in Scotland, thus wrote to Cromwell :—

"Our want of money seems to be an incouragement to our enimies, who conceives we are not able to subsist long at the vast charge the Commonwealth is at ; the foote eat biskett and cheese on Pentland hills, and hath not money to buy them other refresh- ments, being now 2 months and above in arreare, and our fortifications ready to stand still, nor do I know where to get £100 in the treasury ; this hath bens often represented above and hinted to Your Excellencie."

In the early days of the occupation the troopers had lived at free quarters in a rough system of local billeting, but latterly about £8,000 a month had been uniformly levied, which sum,

however, had to be largely supplemented from England. Yet Dr. Colville shows :—

"The untiring energy displayed gives one a high idea of the splendid stuff developed by the army of the New Model. In all directions there was the greatest activity. The mosstroopers of the • Byways in the Social Life and Rural Economy of the Olden Time, By Jame" Colville, MA., D.Sc. Edinburgh: David Douglas. Border were dragooned into decent dalesmen. The coast towns were made ready to meet the Dutchmen. Arbroath Abbey, for example, was turned into what was deemed a very tenable fort ; while the Scots navy taken in Dundee—sixty sail of ten, six, and four guns—along with one that had escaped to Aberdeen having six peeces and stoare of wines and other good commodityes: were pressed into the service. To checkmate the Dutch, who set the greatest store upon the Orkneys and Shetland for their Great Fishing, Overton fortified Kirkwall, making tenable the great utthedral kirk of St. Means (Magnus) and the Earl of Morton's house, where a regiment can lodge. Lilburne, writing to Cromwell, -Ale how the Dutch have esperially an eye upon Shetland. There have bin sometimes 1,800 saile in and about Birssie (Bressay) Sound,' the narrowest part of which he proposes to secure with a strong fort. For a time the Lews had been thought well worth securing, and here Cobbett worked hard at making a xtrength in Stornoway. It was found, however, that the course sf trade did not at all lie in that direction. Montrose's destructive raid had taught the lesson that there was a real danger from Ireland through the West Highlands, where smother Colkitto might one day appear; and so Ayr and Brodick, Dunstaffnage and Dunolly, were strongly held. Inverness was relied upon as the chief defence for the central Highlands, and in an interesting letter we read the story of the building of a ritadel, and particularly of the great feature of dragging a forty- Ion pinnace across six miles of dry land for service on Loch Ness, to the admiration of the spectators."

It has been indicated that this volume is valuable chiefly as throwing light upon the economical condition of Scotland in periods which are either unknown to or ignored by the ordinary historian. In such chapters, indeed, as deal with "Scotland in the Time of Burns," and "Town Life in the Eighteenth Century," Dr. Colville very effectually continues a work which was begun by Robert Chambers and John Hill Burton, and to which contributions, not perhaps of the most artistic kind, have been made by a living writer, Mr. Mackintosh, of Aberdeen. Here is a picture of Scotland in the days of James VI. and Protection,—that Protection for which Cromwell substituted Free-trade :— " The natural resources of Scotland were but poorly developed. There was little or no timber. On the rocky scaurs hung birch, hazel, and rowan, and in the marshy haughs by the riverside, willows and alders grew out of the reach of the starved cattle; but all this served only to supply a few rods, a ryce (wattle) fence, gate, or sled, and cabers, sufficient to keep the lowly turf- houses from collapsing. The worst possible land system, what with bad seasons and thriftless husbandry, left little or no corn for export. An old rhyme says that certain districts were early identified with special products :— .1Cyle for a man, Carrick for a 000,

Cunningham for butter and cheese, And Galloway for woo.'

The cattle trade, doubtless from facility of transit, was one of the first to be developed between the two kingdoms. It dimensions at this time may be judged from what Baillie says speaking of General Leslie's southward movement in 1638, in describing an accident that might have proved a calA mity. This was the arrest by the Mayor of Newcastle of all the horses bought by the Scottish dealers at Maton or Methven Fair, in Northumberland, for that 'hindered all the drivers of neat and sheep to go through England.' Coal and salt were now the staples to help the old limited course of exchange in hides, fish, and corn. At an early date, a wooden tramway conveyed the output from the open coal- benchs at Tranent to the shore for salt-making,and here Brereton found pans eighteen feet by nine, and altogether a better equip- ment for the industry than at Shields. Owing to easy access to coal thfure,were salt pans all along the Forth almost to Stirling. Most of tliksalt, much praised for its whiteness, went to Holland. The trade -Was in the hands of the Dutch. A petition to the Council from Glasgow in 1617, to restrain the freighting of foreign ships, safe the country is now empty of shipping, being sold to foreigners for lack of trade. Bo'ness was the great port for coal and salt. At Craross, on the opposite shore of the Firth (of Forth), Sir George Bruce had made one of the nine wonders of the day. Near the ruined abbey he sank a coalpit that ran for about a mile under the sea, where he made a shaft, and sur- rounded the outlet of it among the rocks with a singular wharf, insulated at high-water. Taylor, the Water Poet, visited it, as did also the King in 1617. At his own request, the latter was taken down the pit, and on making his exit at the odd outlet of the shaft in the sea, he could not help raising his favourite alarm of Treason.' This shaft was destroyed in the great storm of 3625. From ninety to one hundred tons of salt were made here, supplying most of Scotland, and even reaching England and Germany."

One of the most striking chapters in Dr. Colville's volume is that dealing with an old Scottish political pamphlet bearing the ominous title of "The Complaynt of Scotland," and that because it reveals certain undercurrents of Northern life. This, an anonymous production, was written in all probability about the end of 1548, at all events very shortly after the battle of Pinkie, so disastrous to Scottish arms, which was fought in 1547, and which makes the author think "the world verray near ane ende." It is impossible to settle the disputed question of the authorship, which has been claimed both for Sir David Lindsay and for Robert Wedderburn, who was vicar of Dundee in 1553. Whoever he was, he was a little of a Reformer, a great deal of a patriot, but, above all, a Cassandra prone to "a Carlylean emphasis of statement." He belongs, indeed, to the class of Scotchmen of whom the best latter-day specimen was Fletcher of Saltoun, the politician—rather than statesman—that would not consent to the incorporating union between England and Scotland, which was consummated in the reign of Queen Anne. He describes England as the auld ennemie, and its inhabitants . as auld =ball doggis. As was

the fashion in these days, this curious Tract for the Times was to a large extent in the form of a dialogue, in which the parts are played by Dame Scotia and Labour. It is. rather curious at this time of day to read that— "As in the speculation that preceded the French Revolution,, we find eager inquiries into the foundation of human society— the Social Contract and Return to Nature of Helvetius, Diderot and Rousseau—so in our sixteenth century of civil discontent,, we see these old elements of Socialism in ferment. 'Labour' goes on to argue that the working-class is the most important,, because the directly productive part of the body politic—witness the concession of popular tribunes to the Roman plebs. Nay, he is in fact the eldest eon, for is not farming the oldest industry and root source of all nobility ?

'When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman ?

The nobility and gentry boast of their origin. There vane. ignorant consaitis gars them ymagyn and beleif that their prede- cessouris and al their nobillitie and digniteis has descendit fra the angellis and archangellis and nocht fra ouer for father Adam."

The writer of "The Complaynt" is, however, essentially conservative in his ideas, as indeed is every Cassandra from the dawn of history to the time of the late Mr. Greg. He is all in favour of a return on the part of the people to simplicity of life, if not of austerity in morals, and he prefers the rule of the wise few to that of the unwise, or at least unthinking, many. Dr. Colville has done well to publish the leading ideas in it in a popular form, although he perhaps. goes too far when he says that it is "worthy of the anther- of Utopia himself."

Geographically, if not politically, "the knuckle-end of England," Scotland was compelled, in order to maintain her independence of her powerful neighbour, to make friends of the mammon of nnrighteousness in the shape of that neigh..

'hour's enemies. The friendship, which occasionally took the- form of a close alliance between France and Scotland, is one of the commonplaces of history; there has been a curious.

revival of it in the present day. Dr. Colville, in the course of his explorations of "byways," has come upon a host of asso- ciations between Scotch and Dutch, in addition to the familiar resemblance between the original languages of the two peoples. Scotch and Dutch traded with each other; occa- sionally, as in fishing, they were rivals in the same area. Even in physical conformation Scotland and Holland resemble each other. "As we steam out to Flushing we have the countless sea-gulls and the ugly mud-flats of the lower Clyde," although Dr. Colville, with patriotic- diplomacy, adds, "without the picturesque outlines of the.

Kilpatrick Hills looking down upon us." He recalls the

fact that the German overseer in Olive Schreiner's Story, of an African Farm, in introducing the knave Blenkins to the Boerwoman " Tant " Sannie, advised him to call himself a. Scotsman. The Transvaal Boer is a Dutchman of the antique type that fraternised with the Scot of the seventeenth cen-

tury. "The social life of old Scotland is reproduced in the speech of the Transvaal. A Boer kreets (greets, cries), gaana

(goes), mends the fire with tangs (tongs), hoests (coughs), calla whooping cough a kinkhoest, Broilers or snivels, knows what

a steek (stitch) in time means, taps his beer with a kraan, loups when he runs, admires a breed shouder and sound limbs

(Scottish lith, Dutch lid) and prides himself in being Nock or gleg r the uptak like the Scot." The worst epithet that the

virago-wife in "Tam o'Shanter " hurls at her husband is " skellnm." It is with this phrase, in the form of " schelm,"

that Mr. Kruger pelts Mr. Cecil Rhodes. There is nothing more interesting in Dr. Colville's delightful and quaintly erudite book than the historical parallels he institutes and establishes. It is a mine of good reading.