to languish into extinction, the wish for instruction, will diminish, as the power of procuring it increases. But at present, while the desire continues in full ardour, and the power is entirely with: held, if the spiritual wants of this wellmeaning people were attended to, the union, industry, and good morals, that are the invariable result of strong im pressions of religion, would soon enable - them to procure for themselves this hal, lowed and much desired luxury.

New settlers, that can barely exist. till they draw subsistence from the bosom of the earth, may in a very few years have abundance of food and clothing; but then, from the remoteness of their situation, they have nothing that they can turn into money, to answer so desirable a purpose.

How auspicious an omen would it be to the beginning of a new reign, if the

golden sceptre of a compassionate sove

reign were extended to these remote, yet faithful subjects! How earnestly would they pray for him, whose munificence should enable them to worship together in their native tongue, and to learn, through that medium, to." Fear "God, and honour the king!"

The taste for knowledge, which would return to them (the highlanders) with this best knowledge, would do much.to revive and preserve their national character. How far this last is calculated to make them good soldiers, good subjects, affectionate relatives, and faithful adherents, I leave the patient, and candid reader of these pages to judge.

To nationality, and even to fond partiality, I plead guilty. Those may have insensibly kindled emotion, sufficient to give a glow to my language, on some occasions, unsuitable to the calmness of cool discussion or sober narrative: Yet I think my facts prove more than my

reasonings; and of the authenticity of those there is no room to doubt. To borrow a phrase from Scotch law, they are of "notour authority."

Of those visionary facts which I relate, merely as illustrations of the power of an imaginative habit of mind to im- pose upon the senses, and mislead the judgment, it is enough for me that I have not the merit of inventing them, and that I relate them merely as I heard them. I do not write for those that require to be told, that they are here preserved merely as indications of the state of mind existing in that period of civilization, the memorials of which I have endeavoured to preserve.

I have been minute, because the fine shadings of character can only be traced through minutiæ ;-I have been tedious, because investigation of what few comprehend must always be tedious: Yet I am satisfied, because I have, however

imperfectly, preserved much that would otherwise perish. And I flatter myself, that the genuine lovers of truth and nature will regard with an eye of favour the lineaments thus feebly pourtrayed, on account of their resemblance to the original, however defective the execution may be.

ESSAY X.

Upon the popular and well-known Song of Macgregor na Ruara.

THE title of this song, or monody, as it may more properly be called, is Macgre-gor na Ruara. Macgregor does not in this instance imply a sirname : it is merely a patronymic; the poem affording internal evidence,. that the warrior. whose fate it deplores was a cadet of the Clan Grant, to whom the district of Glenlyon had at one time belonged; and who had been, as the poet supposes, unjustly deprived of his inheritance, and forced to wander as an outlaw, in continual danger from the vigilance of his pursuers.