language, to store his mind with the wild, romantic, and beautiful effusions of the Gaelic Muse.

It is equally singular and true that one can scarcely meet with a poor man in any part of Scotland who is not possessed of the knowledge particularized in the commencement of this chapter, and to this he frequently adds a little acquaintance with Latin. The results of this system of education, which I shall briefly explain, are of the most beneficent nature. If the poor remain at home, their deportment is sedate, upright, and orderly; if they attempt their fortunes in other countries, they bear with them a superior understanding, and a knowledge sharpened by poverty, which enables them to do honour to any situation, and frequently to improve those arts, studies, and pursuits, by which the power, prosperity, and character of a country, are at once extended and secured.

The emigration of the humbler classes of the Scotch is a subject of frequent remark. Poor, but cultivated, they quit their native country in the pursuit of fortune in other climes not more congenial to merit, but more in want of talent, and better capable of rewarding it. How happy is it that we live in an age and under a constitution which are propitious to genius, under which humility of origin

presents no insurmountable barrier to the advancement of any one, who, to intellect, unites integrity, industry, and prudence.

In the fair pursuit of fortune they spread themselves in the most remote regions of the earth. The celebrated FieldMarshal Keith, who, on account of his having joined King James's party in the old rebellion, when he was about eighteen or nineteen years old, at the instigation of his mother, after the battle of Sheriff-muir was obliged to escape to France, and who afterwards had a great share in the revolution which raised Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, to the throne of all the Russias, and was afterwards the chief counsellor and companion of the King of Prussia, is said to have related the following anecdote, illustrative of the erratic disposition of the Scotch :-Being sent upon an important mission to a Turkish officer of high rank, he was received with all the honours and solemnities usual upon such occasions in the east, and which so much encumber and procrastinate the issue of matters of business. The Turk, to his surprise, seemed to feel, as he did, a wish to terminate their negotiation as speedily as possible; and upon his learning that the Marshal spoke French, a language with which he too was acquainted, he proposed dismissing their respective attendants, and concluding the objects of their interview in privacy, which the Marshal acceded to.

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As soon as the retinues of both these personages had retired, the Turk, to the utter astonishment of the Marshal, walked up to him, and in broad Scotch said, "Weel, man, when was ye last at Aberdeen?" On an explanation, which immediately followed this extraordinary interrogatory, it appeared that this eastern chief was no other than the son of a Scottish peasant, who remembered to have seen Marshal Keith in Aberdeenshire, and who, in the pursuit of ameliorating his condition, had wandered into Turkey, where by his good conduct he had raised himself to Asiatic honours..

The same enterprising spirit has led them to colonize where one might naturally suppose only the most powerful inducements of rapid accumulation of riches could have attracted them. A number of Scotchmen have for the last four years been settled on the mountains of Caucasus, to whom his Imperial Majesty of Russia has granted, with that noble liberality which always characterizes his mind *, a charter

* I have thus spoken of the Emperor Alexander, because I think, in justice, I cannot speak otherwise of him. With my countrymen I know that at present he is not a favourite, but they forget his former noble conduct when he was a free agent, and attribute to his inclination the humiliating scenes in which he has recently acted so conspicuous a part, at a period when it is sufficient only to mention that a French General rules at Petersburgh, and that French agents have complete dominion in all the Russian ports of the Baltic, to prove that, for want of military strength, he is no longer an independent Sovereign. This is neither just nor liberal towards an unfortunate Prince.

SCOTTISH MISSIONARIES.

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of extraordinary rights and privileges, by which, in order to induce them to extend their trade and manufactures in a district thinly peopled, and bordering on the territories of many uncivilized tribes of Mahometans and Heathens, they are placed on the same footing with the Evangelical Society of Sarepta. His Majesty secures to them the perpetual possession of ample allotments of land, as near as possible to the village which they have founded, and they are exempted from a variety of imposts. The free exercise of their religion is confirmed to them; and the administration of their internal affairs is for ever vested in a chief magistrate to be chosen amongst themselves, who is authorized to admit as settlers amongst them every description of Mahometans and Heathens, being freemen, and taking the oath of allegiance to his Imperial Majesty.

Why has the Irish peasantry been so frequently rendered the object of an angry policy? a peasantry derived from the same stock as the Scotch, speaking the same language, whose customs and manners were originally the same, and whose natural talents are, to an extraordinary degree, strong and vivacious? why, but for the want of the same benign spirit of instruction? Were any one who had visited Ireland to make their amelioration the subject of his pen, I am persuaded that the conclusion of all his reasoning would be, education without proselytism.

Let us compare, by the assistance of a venerable author, the present with the past condition of the Scottish peasantry. In the year 1698, that illustrious Caledonian patriot, Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun, who so nobly declared that he would readily lose his life to save his country, and would not do a base thing to serve it, tells us, "There are at this day in Scotland two hundred thousand people begging from door to door; and though the number of them be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present great distress, (a famine then prevailed,) yet in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of these vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land or even those of God and Nature; fathers incestuously accompanying with their own daughters, the son with the mother, and the brother with the sister. No magistrate ever could discover that they had been baptized, or in what way one in a hundred went out of the world. They are frequently guilty of robbery, and sometimes of murder. In years of plenty many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and on other public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together."

These dreadful evils were not mowed down by the sword,