BOOKS.
BURTON'S HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.*
PERuers the history of Scotland since the Revolution of 1688 is rather one of manners and opinions, of social and economical changes, and of material progress, than of those public occurrences with which it has hitherto been the custom for history to deal. The battle of Xillicrankie, the massacre of Glencoe, and the two at- tempts of the two Pretenders, are the chief military events ; and they would seem to have been thoroughly exhausted by novelists as well as historians. In political matters, the Union is the most import- ant subject ; though the manner in which Scotland was irritated by perhaps ill-considered but not ill-intentioned attempts to amal- gamate her customs, and what was more, her taxes, to those of England, is a curious topic, and well worth studying. Her lite- rary and artistical history during the sixty years Mr. Burton treats of (1689-1748) is not remarkable. The religious or ecclesiastical history is very singular ; offering some of the most extraordinary
instances of fanaticism that the annals of mankind can furnish in so short a space of time, and pointing besides the great moral of toleration,—unless Popery with its secular power and its standing army of priests with military gradation and discipline should be held an exception. But the social characteristics and changes of the period, with what may be called material advancement, are the most striking and novel features. At the opening of Mr. Burton's History, and in the remoter districts even to its close, the Highlanders differ- ed little from what they were in the middle ages ; and though many of the greater chiefs partook of the general advance of the age in manners and education, the gentry retained the powers, the mode of life, and pecuniarily speaking file poverty, which characterized them from the first dawn of history. Thanks to the Reformation, the clergy, and the schools, greatly aided by the national charac- ter, the Lowland Scotch were perhaps more intelligent than any other people in Europe, if their views were narrower and their prejudices stronger. In the arts of civilized or at least of com- fortable life, the country was very backward. Jokes of a kind that would not bear repeating in our days attest the domestic accommodation of the towns; private letters of explanation or complaint, and public compositions of description or remark, ex- hibit the state of the best roads, the distress or delay which the most trifling accident produced, as well as the backward condition of agriculture and the assumed sterility of the soil. Churchill knew nothing of Scotland personally, and his pictures in the "Prophecy- et Famine," exhibiting the English notions of the day, may now loot like the grossest caricature to those who gaze upon- richly-cultivated lands set in a distant framework of mountains. Had they seen the same region in bad weather eighty or a hun- dred years ago, the lampoon might have passed as satire.
The plan of Mr. Burton's history is on the old-established sys- tem. The author takes up the usual classes of subjects, civil, mi- litary, and ecclesiastical, pursues each to its temporary close, and then proceeds to.the next. Manners, opinions, the social and econo- mical condition, are not handled as a distinct subject, though an interesting summary is given towards the end ; but art and litera- ture are treated in a final chapter. Theoretically, the author might be considered as &Eating civil, political, and military matters too fully ; but practically this is not the case. Partisanship and sen- timentality in historians or romancers have inspired an interest in the Jacobite heroes from Dundee to Balmerino ; so that the reader feels an attraction toward them which the actions they performed or the results that flowed from them would by no means create. The Act of Union is an important event, which deserves the full exposition Mr. Burton gives of it ; and the smaller occur- rences, though4escribed in ample detail, are interesting as showing I the obstacles successfully overcome in amalgamating two peoples, ; neither of them very flexible or disposed to yield up their own pre- conceptions. The ecclesiastical history is full, and, as we have already observed, both curious and instructive. It must be said, too, that although manners do not form a direct topic of the history, they are continually introduced. The minuteness of detail, the number of subordinate persons, and frequently the introduction of what may be termed news rather than events, enable the author to present much of daily life and common character, relieving what would otherwise be over-detail. The minuteness, too, is accom- panied by a thorough knowledge of the period and by consequent fulness of matter ; the result, no doubt, of that study of the times induced by previous occupations of the author. Hence, notwith- standing the length to which the narrative of only sixty years is extended, and the fact that except the Union and the Rebellion of 1745 the subjects are rather provincial than imperial, the His- tory is readable and interesting. The reader is carried if not hur- ried along, and without sense of fatigue. The style, though not conventionally polished, is vigorous, massy, and almost picturesque.
As a close of the history of Scotland from the time of its no- minal to its real amalgamation with England,—which, however, was at least a fall generation later than 1748,—Mr. Burton's work supplies a want, and supplies it in a desirable way. The expulsion of the Stuarts and the bringing in of the house of Brunswick not only roused those selfish passions which such great mutations of power and wealth must always excite, but it represented an- tagonist opinions which are hardly yet extinguished. Hence, writers upon the' events of Scottish history especially have been – • History of Scotland from the Revolution to the Extinction of the last Jacobite Insurrection (1689-174£0. By John Hill Burton. In two volumes. Published by Longman and Co.
partisans of one side or the other. From this defect Mr. Burton is remarkably free. He has of course his opinions, and those opinions are by no means favourable to the Stuarts, but his opin- ions do not disturb his judgment of men and things. He gives his own conclusions without bias from those of others, and without the extremes of either side. Those conclusions, too, are grounded on the broader and juster ideas of the present day. He does not, for instance, fall into the sentimental cant of making every un- successful Jacobite a martyr to his convictions, or shut his eyes to the great crime of rashly raising revolt. His character of the celebrated Dundee may be taken as an instance of the double-sided spirit which he brings to his task.
"The actual career of Dundee, without decoration, is an affluent fountain of romance. His handsomeness, his early historical career, his name asso-
ciating him with the great Marquis of Montrose his military capacity so great within its little sphere, the sad sympathy Offered to those who throw their lot into a desperate cause, and thio heroic glory of his death—all toge- ther make a true history of brighter colours than many a romance. Solid truth could not go about with so many of the attributes of heroic fiction without being insensibly mingled with that social circle and enjoying some of its decorations. Many of the attributes of this hero-fiend are fabulous ; but his sera was so much later than that of the semi-mythic heroes with whom he is often associated, that we know a few vulgar truths about him, affording a correction of the fictitious glories.
" Tradition attributes to him many brilliantly epigrammatic speeches, to which his authentic writings give the lie, by showing that he had not suf- ficient command of grammar to have put his thoughts in the clear emphatic shape in which they are preserved, if he had ever formed them in his mind. It is said that he studied at St. Andrews, and knew something of mathema- tics : but any smattering of education he may have received was early rubbed out in the camp of the mercenary soldier. He was a younger son of a Scot- tish laird, and, according to a common usage in a country which could not exercise its energies near at hand without arousing the trading jealousies of its affluent and powerful neighbour, he was sent to serve abroad. He fought in the French service and in the Dutch ; probably both were much alike to him, until he rose high enough to see schemes of personal ambition over the shoulders of his comrades. These lairds' sons, from their habits of command, their hardy nurture, and the consciousness that, poor as they might be, they were still gentlemen, made valuable officers in the great European wars of the latter part of the seventeenth century. The last service in which young Graham was engaged before he returned to Britain was that of the Prince of Orange, and he is said to have left it because he was refused the command of a regiment. He was a man of much more farseeing ambition than the ge- nerality of his order. He felt within himself capacities of a higher stamp, and aspirations also ; for though he belonged to the herd of mercenaries, his ambi- tion, with all his defects, was of a higher order than that of the Dugald Dalge- ties, who contented themselves with the consciousness that they had much bet- ter pay, booty, liquor, and arms, than the pike-trailers under their command. He became a fanatic of the order he found himielf in,—the order of the cava- lier, who is devoted to his monarch and his monarch's allies, aristocratic and hierarchical. His fanaticism was that of the gentleman. It is not common perhaps to associate the reproachful term fanatic' with a word so expressive of estimable social qualities as this word gentleman '; but as there is no he- sitation in applying it to religious opinions carried to excess, surely there can be no desecration in applying it to social qualities when they become offen- sively prurient. "Graham's abilities evidently did not step beyond warfare. We have no means of deciding whether they were capacious enough for great military operations, but all can see that he executed the small affairs falling to his lot with consummate skill. He might have been, for all we know, a poor or- ganizer of such campaigns as Marlborough's, and incapable of ihe anxious calculations which the governor of one of the great Vaubian.fcirtresses had daily to work. One thing is certain, that his utter disregard of human life —his cruelty to his enemies, and his recklessness of the safety of his followers— would have prevented him from being a great British general, however largely he might have operated in the service of countries where there is less responsi- bility and human life is of no account beside the military object to be attained. But, however he may have borne comparison with the great leaders of Eu- ropean warfare, he had a genius for small partisan operations which laughed to scorn the drudges brought up in their pedantic school. When he saw them in isolated independent contests with enemies of a new kind, on unusual ground, and where both sides might be subject to influences totally different from those of the mercenary Continental campaigner, still following the clock-work routine which long service had mechanically trained them to, he was too much of an original thinker to follow them. Whatever respect he might have had for the rules of accepted military discipline in armies where they were known and used, it was his merit that he rejected them when they were useless or offensive, and at once adapted his method of war- fare to the men he had to lead. It is impossible to look at the portrait of the lively, haughty, impetuous, handsome cavalier, beside that of his opponent, old Mackay of Scourie, without being reminded of the venerable pedantic au- thority so excellent in its accustomed place and in the pursuit of its daily routine, but so liable to be overwhelmed in ruin when, in the moment of ex- citement and emergency, it meets with originality of conception and fierce reckless determination of purpose."
The " Old Mortality " of Walter Scott made the extreme ideas of the Cameronians familiar to the world, and drew down upon him much denunciation from some persons. The reality, however, seems to have exceeded the fiction. Prepared to suffer them- selves, they were equally prepared to persecute others, and deemed the toleration of any other opinions than their own a deadly sin. When the Revolution and the tolerant spirit of William the Third gave them the privilege of exercising their peculiarities in peace, they were put to it for want of ministers. Each man claiming for himself that infallibility which the Romanists vest in their church, minister after minister was left behind, as too timorous or too worldly, till at last the sianitest of the sect became " non-hearers "—that is, persons who attended no public worship at all.
"Such captious contests dwindled away before the days of glory at Inch- inshauch ; which, to Mr. MacMillan, were something like what the day of the inauguration of the Supreme Being was to Robespierre. Beginning on the 27th of July in 1712, high festival was held by a crowd of the followers of the primitive Covenants, gathered from all parts of the border districts. The Covenants were renewed, along with the other testimonies of the Cove- nanters. Along with their acknowledgment of old standards, they adopted a testimony of their own, adapted to the occasion. In this document, which has a generic resemblance to the other countless testimonies, they prbtest against all schism and sinful separation from the Church of Scathing.; a
fault which they do not take to themselves, since they stand forth sist y a ill A3:1- true members. They detest and abhor the oaths of allegiance, assurance, and abjuration. They solemnly bind themselves in their stations and voca- tions to extirpate prelacy, and all rites, ceremonies, heresies, and false doc- trines ; concluding their denunciation of all who differ with them, and their obligation to put down all such differences, in these gentle words—we 'shall, in the strength, and through the help of Christ, endeavour to deny all ungod- liness and worldly lusts, and from henceforth to live righteously towards our neighbour, soberly in ourselves, and to walk humbly towards our God.'
Thus was organized the first secession from the Church of Scotland. But, alas for human popularity, whether secular or religious,—even MacMillan and his clerical pupils were unable to comply with the exactions of the sternest of their sect. After having been thus lifted in glory over the beads of their denounced predecessors, they were themselves denounced ; and many rigid lay fathers of the congregations left a penitentiary testimony againAt their own unintentional backsliding, when they were led away by the plausi- ble protestations of that man of deceit and, guile, who had deceived their trusting hearts at the Auchinshauch Wark. It would be impossible, if it were of use, to follow the Cameronians through their divisions and subdivisions. A portion of them, looking sternly back on the successive array of clergymen who had, by outbidding each other, en- deavoured in vain to minister to the intense rigidity of their spiritual de- mands, came to the conclusion that no man might be found from whom they could fittingly receive ministerial functions. They isolated themselves as 'non-hearers,' and set forth in their testimonies that the guilt of abstaining from the rites of religion was not theirs, but must be laid on those shepherds who had foully deserted the sacred task of leading their flock in the right way. They gave themselves forth in abundant testimonies, which, however earnest they may have been, are far more curious than solemn. Though thus, however, fragments were repeatedly broken off and scattered, the sect or church of the Cameronians lived on. It is now known as the Reformed Presbyterian Church, numbering upwards of forty congregations; who, it is believed, listen to doctrines of a very different temper and spirit from those with which a few of-the clergy between the Revolution and the accession of the house of Hanover endeavoured to propitiate the stern Hillmen."
The following extract is quoted by Mr. Burton to illustrate his text, but it would seem to have emanated from a testifier who lived well into the last century. Whitefield, and Simson, a divinity professor charged with teaching erroneous or heretical doctrine, did not become famous till some time after the accession of the house of Brunswick.
"The following paragraph, from 'The testimony of William Wilson, sometime schoolmaster in Park,' may stand as a model of exhaustive enume- ration—'I leave my witness and testimony against all sectarian errors, heresies, and blasphemies ; particularly against Arianism, Simsonianism, Socinianism, Quakerism, Deism, Burogianism, Familism, Scepticism, Armin- ianism, Antinomianism, Libertinism, Brownism, Baxterianism, Anabaptism, Millanarism, Pellagiamsm, Campbellianism, Whitfieldianism, Latitudinarian- ism, and Independency ; and all other sects and sorts that maintain any errort heresy, or blasphemy, that is contrary to the Word of God, to sound doctrine, and the power of godliness ; and all erroneous speeches, vented from pulpits, presses, or in public or private discourses ; and against all toleration given or granted at any time in favour of these or any other errors, heresies, or blasphemies, and blasphemous heretics ; particularly the tolera- tion granted by the sectarian usurper Oliver Cromwell; the anti-Christian toleration granted by the Popish Duke of York ; and the present long-con- tinued toleration, granted by that wicked Jezebel the pretended Queen Ann.' " The narrative of events'is accompanied by descriptions of the localities, which serve to give variety to the details at the same time that they inform the reader. This is a picture of the old Highland tracks before Wade formed the military roads: " To have some conception of the change created by these great works, it is necessary to realize the previous facilities for transit in the Highlands. The old mountain-track, as specimens of it still exist, is found by the travel- ler so slightly distinguished from the natural surface of the hill, that he cannot easily conceive himself treading on the path which the people of the country have used for unknown centuries as their means of transit. The vegetation on it is stunted ; the stones are whiter than elsewhere ; in the black mossy clay between them may be found the impress of the feet of cattle. These are all signs so faint that the apprehensive traveller feels in- capable of so absolutely ascertaining their absence or presence as to be sure that he is preserving the road; but if he look beyond the traces immediately beneath his eye, he will find that the path has a general distinctness in the expanding features of the scenery, and its direction may be caught in the distance through the dark heather, where the greater amount of bare stones imparts to it a whiteness, faint but distinct, like the milky, way in the sky. The rapid ascents and descents, the. broken staggery ground, above all, the occasional abrupt slant of the road as it winds round in the slope of some declivity, make the conducting of droves of cattle along it—the main purpose for which it is used—appear to the unini- tiated a feat of campaigning enterprise second only to that of taking cavalry across some great mountain range. Burt, the clever engineer officer who assisted in the construction of Wade's roads, and gave a lively account of his experience of the Highlands, crossing such a track, described it as consisting 'of stony moors, almost impracticable for a horse with his rider, and likewise of rocky way, where we were obliged to dismount and sometimes climb, and otherwhile slide down." But what vexed me most of all,' continues the en- gineer, the pride of his profession rising in revolt within him, they called it a road.' There were, of course, no bridges; and the traveller was subjected to the capricious fluctuations of mountain streams, which, swollen from the tiny brook of the day before into the roaring river, might compel him to re- trace his weary steps when he believed his journey to be nearly accomplished, or tempt him to retain the advantages of his previous exertions by risking his life in an effort to cross the stream. As these roads were not only the path- ways befween contiguous glens, but the main arteries which connected the great dietriet of the Highlands with the rest of the realm, sudden floods ren- dered the main streams frequently impassable, and thus isolated large terri- tories from the rest of the world. Not only in the Spey or the Tay, on which there were then no bridges, but in streams far smaller, the swelling would be so sudden from the bursting of mountain springs, that instances have been knoin-where the inexperienced traveller entering the ford, a shallow stream clattering on its pebbles where his dog might walk behind him, had to con- tend- with a furious torrent ere he reached the opposite bank."
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