with a slight and rapid hand, that ampler space might be reserved for the detail of events more recent and import- ant. In a work intended for the instruction of youth, simplicity, perspicuity, and conciseness, are the essential qualities: if he has succeeded in combining with these such a degree of interest, as may render it not unacceptable to readers of maturer taste and judgment, he has accom- The Exercises he has endeavoured to make so clear and distinct, that the young student will have no difficulty in finding a precise answer to every question; and so copious, A fuller History of Scotland, on a scale somewhat simi- lar to that of Goldsmith's larger History of England, is a CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF SCOTISH HISTORY. DES FROM THE INVASION OF AGRICOLA, A. D. 80, TILL THE TERMINATING IN THE SUBJUGATION OF THE SCOTS BY THE PICTS, Years. Years. A. D. Kenneth, reigned 16 A. D. 1292 John Baliol, reigned 4 863 Constantine II,, 4 18 1296 Interregnum, 10 1306 Robert Bruce, 23 1329 David II. 961 Duff, 965 Culen, 1488 James IV., 970 Kenneth IV., 22 1513 James V., 992 Constantine ÍV., 1 1542 Mary, HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. BOOK FIRST. CHAP. I. OVER the earliest part of Scotish history, as over that of every other European nation, a cloud of impenetrable obscurity hangs. A long period must necessarily elapse before the ori ginal settlers in a country, scanty in numbers, and struggling with difficulties, attain such a degree of tranquillity, comfort, and civilization, as to have leisure to register their transactions; and, during that period, the events that led to their migration are forgotten, or viewed through the delusive medium of distant tradition. Yet the antiquary and the philologist are sometimes able to trace the origin of nations, which had lost all distinct record of their own descent; and thus to direct, by the sure light of truth, the researches of history, which had formerly been bewildered in the mazes of conjecture. 1. At what period Scotland was originally colonized must for ever remain uncertain. Yet we know that the great stream of population flowed from east to west, and that the first impulse which had been given to mankind after the Deluge, reached, at a very remote period, the British isles. For som ages the continent of Europe was peopled by one great Asiatic tribe, which spread through its wide extent, and even impelled its adventurous swarms to the adjacent islands. In the stone monuments which are still to be seen in Britain; in the names which its mountains, rivers, and other permanent features of nature bear, and which they retained amidst the successive tides of foreign population by which it was afterwards inundated, or partially overflowed,-we have a decisive proof that it was once occupied by a branch of the Celts,-the primitive inhabitants of Europe. "From the coast of Kent," says Gibbon, "to the extremity of Caithness, the memory of a Celtic origin was distinctly preserved in the perpetual resemblance of language, religion, and manners." A |