ART. III.-SOCIAL LIFE IN SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century. By HENRY GREY GRAHAM. 2 Vols. London: A. & C. Black. 1899. TH THE eighteenth century is one of the most stirring in Scottish Hae,' which may be sung on certain Politics, song and sentiment, however, are not the whole of a nation's life. History is not past politics merely, but a good deal more. Perhaps no one has done more to prove that it is than the brilliant author of the much-quoted but exceedingly questionable saying: History is past politics and politics are present history. At any rate the writers of the new school of history, which has grown up chiefly under his inspiration, are seeing with increasing clearness that the history of a people is not solely the clang of battle or the march of troops, nor wholly the doings of sovereigns and statesmen, but the development of a nation's life and character. As at present conceived history, indeed, has a much broader significance than past politics, and covers not only politics in the ordinary sense, but trade and commerce and industry, religion, thought, art and literature. As a record it is the literary presentation of a nation's life in all its various forms and relations, and in their different developments. Hence we have, and are having in increasing numbers, literary histories, religious histories, social histories, intellectual histories, histories of town life, of art, of politics, etc. None of these represents the entire life of a people or a period, but each contributes towards its presentation. In short, such is the expansion which the idea, denoted by the term 'history,' has undergone since Gibbon and Hume and Burton wrote, that it is doubtful whether any one will, in future, undertake to write what professes to be an exhaustive history of a nation or people, except it be that of a small and obscure nation, or of one about which little is known, or whose records are exhausted, or whose existence has been of but short duration. The task which Mr. Graham has essayed has, unless we are mistaken, been attempted but once before. Dr. Rogers' book, however, though it runs to three somewhat bulky volumes and contains much that is entertaining, is not of much account. The scissors have been largely used in its compilation, and it is too superficial to be called a history. In his Ochtertyre Papers Mr. Ramsay has set down his own impressions and observations, and has contributed largely to our knowledge of the social life of the century, but to write a history of it never seems to have entered his mind. Mr. Graham has made a good use of what Mr. Ramsay has written, as well as of what has been written by a great number of others. Indeed, there are few books or pamphlets written in the eighteenth century, and bearing upon his subject, which, so far as we can make out, he has not read. A more thorough search in the volumes of the Burgh Records' Society and similar works might have supplied additional illustrations, and, possibly on one or two points, modified the conclusions he has arrived at. A number of local works, such as Maughan's Roseneath, Chalmers' Dunfermline, Hewat's A Little Scots' World; several publications of the Scottish History Society, as Cunningham's Diary, Bishop Pococke's Tours, and other works might have been used; but the number of those which have been used is extraordinary, and many of them are anything but delectable reading. The work is on one point, at least, professedly incomplete. On the literature of the period Mr. Graham, as he tells us, has scarcely touched. There are other chapters which might be written. Something still remains to be said on the municipal institutions, industries, trade organisations, social life in the smaller towns, art and architecture, and sports and pastimes. References to these topics occur here and there but they are probably reserved for larger treatment in a future volume, which, if equal to these, will not, it may safely be said, fail to be welcomed. In spite of their omission, however, the two volumes before us are of exceptional merit. They make the past live, and furnish a picture of almost photographic accuracy of the condition of the country and society during the period they cover. The aspect of the country during the eighteenth century, more especially during the early part of it, was not attractive. According to Procopius, the ancient idea of the country was that no man could live in it for half-an-hour on account of the unwholesomeness of the air, and the vipers and all manner of noxious beasts with which it was infested. There is reason to believe, too, that some of the ancient Welsh poets were in the habit of regarding the country beyond the Wall as the realm of Arawn, the King of Hades.* The few Englishmen who visited the country in the Eighteenth century were not disposed to quarrel with these ideas. One of them passing through Dumfriesshire in 1704, summed up his impression of the country by saying: 'Had Cain been born a Scotchman, his punishment would have been not to wander, but to stay at home.'t Dr. Carlyle of Inveresk, who was in the same county about twenty years later, says: "The face of the country was particularly desolate, not having yet reaped any benefit from the Union.'‡ * Rhys' Arthurian Legend, 11, 245. Autobiography, 24. + Brown's Sanquhar, 256. Oliver Goldsmith, who wrote later still, says: 'Hills and rocks intercept every prospect;' and again, Shall I tire you with a description of this unfruitful country, when I must lead you over their hills all brown with heather, or their valleys scarce able to feed a rabbit? Man alone seems to be the only creature who has arrived to the natural size on this poor soil. Every part of the country presents the same dismal landscape. No grove nor brook lend their music to cheer the stranger or make the inhabitants forget their poverty.' But here is Mr. Graham's description, the lines of which have been filled in from many sources: 'The few Englishmen who journeyed to North Britain, from a spirit of adventurous curiosity or from stress of business, entered upon the expedition with the air of heroic courage with which a modern traveller sets forth to explore the wild region of a savage land. If the tourist entered Scotland by way of Berwick and the Lothians, he did not at first meet much to shock him by ugly contrast. If he entered by Dumfriesshire and the moors of Galloway, he was at once filled with dismay by the dismal change from his own country-the landscape a bleak and bare solitude, destitute of trees, abounding in heather and morass and barren hills; soil where cultivation was found only in dirty patches of crops on ground surrounded by heather and bog; regions where the inhabitants spoke an uncouth dialect, were dressed in rags, lived in hovels, and fed on grain, with which he fed his horses; and when night fell, and he reached a town of dirty thatched huts, and gained refuge in a miserable abode that passed for an inn, only to get a bed he could not sleep in, and fare he could not eat, his disgust was inexpressible. After he had, and finally reached his English home, he wrote down his adventures as a modern explorer pens his experience in Darkest Africa.' 'Meanwhile, to the stay-at-home Englishman, Scotland remained a terra incognita. Rumour exaggerated all its terrors, and prejudice believed in them long after they had passed away. Not even in the wild scenery did the traveller see anything of beauty or sublimity, but rather forms of ugliness and gloom, which deepened his dislike of the land. . . . Captain Burt was quite disposed to speak fair of the country and people, but a Highland landscape only awakened abhorrence in the cultivated Englishman, who preferred Rosamond's Pond to any loch, and Primrose Hill to any mountain. huge naked rocks, being just above heath, produces the disagreeable appearance of a scabbed head." That is his ruthless comment. cludes what he calls "the disagreeable subject" of the outward appearance of the mountains by saying: "There is not much variety in it, but gloomy * Forster's Goldsmith, Vol. I., 433, 438. "The He con spaces, different rocks, and heath high and low. To cast one's eye from an eminence towards a group of them, they appear still one above the other, fainter and fainter according to the aerial perspective, and the whole of a dismal brown, drawing upon a dirty purple, and most of all disagreeable when the heath is in bloom." The love of nature in its wild aspects did not inspire the clever engineer.' In this last remark, Mr. Graham is scarcely fair to Burt. What the latter complained of was not the wild aspects of the scenery, but its dull monotony. Wild nature may be impressive, but if the picturesque element be absent, it is scarcely inspiring or attractive. The chief glory of Scottish scenery in the present is its picturesqueness; but what there is of that is mainly due to the hand of man-to the trees he has planted, often in great profusion, and usually with admirable skill, to the immense improvements he has almost everywhere effected in farming, gardening, and domestic architecture, and to the thousand and one touches which the resources of a wealthy and not inartistic civilisation has enabled him to add to landscapes, so as to convert barren hills and unfruitful valleys into scenes of loveliness and beauty. But when Burt wrote, all this was wanting. The aspect of the country was stern and savage, and when seen under a sour sky and drizzling rain, was, as it still is in some parts, inexpressibly depressing. Proprietors and tenants were both poor. The rent paid by the latter was from 1s. to 3s. per acre. In the earlier part of the century a Scots landowner, with a rent-roll of £500, was reckoned wealthy, with one of from £200 to £300, rich, and well off with one of from £80 to £100; while many gentlemen of good degree and long pedigree had to preserve their station with from £50 to £20 a-year. The old custom of paying the greater part of the rent in kind was still in vogue. In a number of instances so many days' work formed part of the rent. Here is the rental of the barony of Kerco and Ballathie in Perthshire, which Mr. Graham has culled out of the Edinburgh Evening Courant of March 15, 1742, and gives as a fair sample: £1785 Scots in money, 33 bolls bear, 48 bolls meal, 7 bolls malt, 14 salmon fishes, a mill-swine, 32 poultry fowls, 12 capons, and 48 dargues (days' work).' The rents were paid at the two terms of |