From the Saturday Review. BURTON'S HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. * THE history of most countries, but that of Scotland perhaps more conspicuously than most others, may be written in two ways. There may be a history of the country itself as a geographical division an account of all the people who may have lived in it, beginning with the earliest times of which anything is either recorded in written documents or can be made out from antiquarian remains. Or there may be a history of the people now inhabiting the country, tracing them from the earliest seats in which they can be found, making their history, their settlements, their conquests, the leading idea of the work, dealing with the country itself simply so far as it became their country, and speaking of earlier or other inhabitants only so far as to make the story of their extermination, subjection, or incorporation intelligible. To take the particular case before us, one would be a History of Scotland, the other a History of the Scots. A History of Scotland is a history of the land which is now called Scotland, and of everybody who ever lived in it from the earliest time of which anything is known. In such a history one part of the country now called Scotland has as good a claim to notice at any time whatsoever as another. Agricola, who entered what is now Scotland, but who never saw a Scot, is here quite in place. But a History of the Scots would make everything centre round the true Scots who passed from Ireland into Northern Britain; Picts, Strathclyde Welsh, English and Danes of Lothian, would come in for mention each at the time when they come in contact with the true Scots, with just such an account of their earlier history as is needed to make their relation to the true Scots intelligible. All these nations, as they gradually come under Scottish rule and assume the Scottish name, obtain a right to be dealt with in a History of the Scots, but not before. If Agricola's name so much as occurred in such a history, the place assigned to him must be very small indeed. Each of these ways of writing has its advantages. The former is the more complete and is probably the more generally satisfactory. It is the way most likely to occur to a native writer and most likely to be ap * The History of Scotland from Agricola's Invasion to the Revolution of 1688. By John Hill Burton. Vol. I. II. III. IV. Edinburgh and London: Blackwood & Sons. 1867. preciated by native readers. People generally quite forget their nation in their country; they care more for the history of the soil which they tread than for that of their remote ancestors who never trod it. Englishmen in general feel more interest in Caractacus than they do in Arminius, and they would be puzzled at an English history which, instead of beginning with Julius Cæsar, began with whatever can be found out of certain Low-Dutch tribes near the mouth of the Elbe. But the other way is clearer and more philosophic; it better obviates that natural sort of confusion which identifies the present inhabitants of a land with all its former inhabitants, which looks on the artificial boundaries which ci ̈cumstances have given to modern Scotland, modern France, or any other modern country, as something fixed in the eternal fitness of things. On the other hand, the former way is more complete; the latter requires to be eked out by other histories. An Englishman curious about the early history of his own land would not be satisfied with a book which gave him nothing beyond a mere sketch of anything before the fifth century. This more philosophic mode of treatment is more likely to occur to a stranger, looking at a country and its inhabitants from the outside and assigning them their relative place with regard to other nations, than to a native, who naturally desires a full account of his country from the beginning, and is perhaps unconsciously swayed by the almost unavoidable tendency to confound the land and its inhabitants. We have made these remarks, because Mr. Burton has not only chosen the former and not the latter method of treating his subject, but has carried it out with greater fulness than perhaps any other writer of history of this class. He has chosen the plan which we hold to be the less philosophical, but which is more usual, more complete, and certain to be far more acceptable to the great mass of readers, especially of Scottish readers. A small minority may wish that he had chosen the other course, but, when he had chosen the course which he has, there can be no doubt as to his having taken the best way to carry it out in detail. From the point of view which he has chosen, it is right that he should tell us everything about the land which is now called Scotland from the earliest times. And this he effectually does. Some may think that he dwells too much upon purely antiquarian, as distinguished from strictly historical, details. We do not think so. In a work composed FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. V. 130. 402 BURTON'S HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. And He writes throughout in a on the plan which Mr. Burton has chosen, | interesting. his antiquarian chapters are perfectly in thoroughly straightforward and unaffected place. During a considerable part of the way. Vivid and picturesque description is period with which he has to do, antiquarian not his strong point, but no one would carry remains are almost the only means of learn- away from his book the memory of any pasing anything at all. For some centuries, sage which is mean, ridiculous, or in any if he had not discussed the primæval antiqui- way unworthy of the subject. And towards ties, he would have had nothing to discuss. the end of his book, when he has to deal Nor do we at all grudge the space which, with the great case of Queen Mary, his in other parts of the work, he devotes not treatment of the subject becomes a model only to the consideration of the laws, the of argument, at once clear and powerful, local institutions, the social state of the but at the same time never overstepping country, but also to points like language, the bounds of the judicial function of the architecture, fortification, which hardly en- historian. This last portion is the gem of ter into the received notion of history, but Mr. Burton's book, but with his whole subwhich we hold with Mr. Burton are essen- ject throughout he is thoroughly acquainted. tial to any complete view of the history of He does not make the same display of any country at any period. In all these learning as another very able writer on matters Mr. Burton has given us, for its Scottish history, Mr. E. W. Robertson; but scale, one of the completest histories that we suspect that the difference is mainly in we ever saw of any country. We are not the style and form of the two books, and sure that he has worked in these matters that Mr. Burton gives us the results of as quite so artistically as he might have done. much reading as Mr. Robertson. We were a little surprised, when just on Mr. Burton is certainly fairer and more the threshold of the Reformation, Mr. Bur- skilful than Mr. Robertson in his way ton stopped to give us a sketch of the med- of dealing with controverted times. We iæval language and mediæval architecture will not say that Mr. Burton does full jusof Scotland. Several chapters of this kind tice to Edward the First; but he distinctly are thus intercalated before the narrative tries to do so, and be succeeds probably goes on again. We cannot help thinking as far as any Scottish writer is likely to that a portion of their contents might have succeed. In dealing with the wars between been brought into closer connexion with England and Scotland, as with the wars the general narrative. For instance, it is between England and France, absolute well known, and Mr. Burton brings out the impartiality is not to be looked for in a fact very strongly, that Scottish architec- writer belonging to any of the nations conture before the War of Independence is cerned. essentially English, differing from other English architecture simply as the architecture of one part of England differs from that of another, while, after the War of Independence, Scottish architecture has a character of its own, but one coming much nearer to French than to English. It would be hard to find an instance where the political history of a country is more clearly written on its buildings. Now such a speaking architectural fact as this, one to which Mr. Burton does thorough justice, would surely have come in with more effect, and have been more likely to be remembered, if it had been worked into a general description of the effects of the elder English and of the later French connexion than placed as it is in a series of antiquarian chapters inserted in the middle of the reign of Mary. A writer who is determined not to be partial to his own countrymen often ends by doing his own countrymen less than Thus Thierry is distinctly hard Lord justice. William and his Normans; on Brougham is distinctly hard on Henry the Fifth and his Englishmen. Mr. Burton, in dealing with these matters, naturally looks on many points in a different way from that in which we look upon them. But he is always fair: he never shrinks from facts; he brings into prominence several neglected facts on both sides alike. There is not a trace of that malignant abuse and misrepresentation of the great English King which is so common in inferior Scottish writers. Mr. Burton gives his readers, as an historian always should give them, the means of coming, if they choose, to a different conclusion from himself. And in all the latter part of his medieval history, we not only Mr. Burton's merits as an historical writ-appreciate his fairness, but he thoroughly er are great. Through the greater part of his narrative he goes along at a good equable pace, never rising very high nor sinking very low, but always clear, sensible, and carries our sympathies with him. The English claim to superiority over Scotland was thoroughly good from 924 to 1328. After its distinct renunciation in the latter year, it ought never to have been heard of again. | ers represent them. Mr. Froude for inThe conduct of the later English Kings stance, will have it that the Scots were good towards Scotland was often simply detesta- for very little till they took to pulling down ble. That of Henry the Eighth was perhaps the worst of all. Mr. Burton stops several times to contrast him with the great Edward. Edward, at all events, made war as a statesman; Henry made war simply as a savage. And Mr. Burton well brings out two points in the history of the War of Independence. We do not suppose that he would be exactly pleased if we said that the Scots faithfully discharged their duty to their overlord by always setting on the rebellious Normans and English under Robert Earl of Carrick and others. But that is certainly the impression which we get from his pages. The whole affair was a Lowland business. We do not suppose that the true Scots had any love to Edward, but they had a very distinct hatred to Edward's enemies. The Highlanders were hardly in a state to be allies of anybody, but they were always the bitter enemies of the "Saxon" or English part of Scotland, and the Lord of the Isles was constantly the ally of England on the very same principle on which the King of Scots was constantly the ally of France. We do not say that Mr. Burton draws all this out as formally as we have done; but the facts are all in his book, and they are very often supplied with pertinent comments. The other point is one which we never saw so clearly brought out before. This is Edward's scheme for the government of Scotland. It was to be something like the government of Ireland at this moment. There was to be a viceroy, but Scotland was to be represented in the English Parliament. We do not say that Scotland was to be adequately represented. But neither was it adequately represented in the Parliament of Oliver Cromwell or in the Parliament of Queen Anne. Perhaps Mr. Disraeli is, after all, doomed to redress the torts of all three. But there are few things which more strongly set before us the wide reach of Edward's statesmanship than that a King, in days when Parliamentary representation in his original kingdom was still in its merest infancy, should think of conferring any Parliamentary representation at all on a conquered country. Other points well brought out by Mr. Burton are that Scotland was, before the War of Independence, by no means so poor a country as is generally thought, and that, both before and after the War, the Scots were a freer people and much less under the control of their nobility than most writ churches. We reject, from our purely English point of view, so unworthy a view of what, putting a misleading nomenclature aside, was really the most English part of England. We are sometimes told that if Edward's conquest had been lasting as, if Edward had lived, it doubtless would have been - Scotland would have been simply another Ireland. The truer way of looking at the matter is that there were two Englands and two Irelands. The northern England, in some points the truer England of the two, has its Ireland geographically continuous and not divided by the sea; that is the only difference. This is not a mere analogy. The English King at Westminster and the other English King at Edinburgh had to keep in order the very same troublesome subjects. As "Scotus" anciently meant an Irishman, so in later times the Highlanders are sometimes, with strict ethnological truth, called Irish. This is the plain state of the case; the fact that the King at Edinburgh or Stirling, though essentially English, had a long pedigree of real Scottish ancestors made no practical difference. The English Kings were always trying to identify themselves with Brutus and Camber, and no one knows who.. Whether, in this state of things, it would have been any very great loss if the two English Governments had become one, may be doubted. We say doubted, because there are arguments the other way. Our common country has in many respects gained in the long run by the development of two distinct types of Englishmen, the Northern type being none the less worthy of the English name because they disclaim it. The volumes which Mr. Burton has at present published contain the history from the beginning, or from before the beginning, down to the abdication of Mary. Some further portions, especially that where Mr. Burton is strongest of all, the history of Mary herself, we reserve for notice in a second article. IN our first notice of Mr. Burton's book we said that the last part was the best. The last chapter alone would be the making of an historian. Mr. Burton stands at what might seem to be the disadvantage of telling a story which most people have just been reading in the later volumes of Mr. Froude. For in this case it is a disad vantage. To write, as Mr. Brewer is called of mere narrative, but in arrangement of on to do, the history of Henry the Eighth narrative, Mr. Burton maintains his supremafter Mr. Froude, may be called an advantage or a disadvantage, according to the temper of the historian. But in the case of Mary Stuart, Mr. Burton has to put himself into competition with the best things which Mr. Froude has written. The history of Mary is the part of Mr. Froude's book where his narrative combines the greatest amount of life and vigour with the least amount of extravagance. It is the part where, by some happy accident, Mr. Froude's judgment is found on the side of fact and common sense. Yet, when we turn from Mr. Froude to Mr. Burton, we feel that we are turning from one who is, after all, only playing with his subject, to one who is, in every sense, master of it. Mr. Burton cannot compete with Mr. Froude as the mere teller of a story; and, wisely as we think, he makes no attempt at any such competition. But even here, if he never gives us anything like Mr. Froude's picturesque scenes, he never brings in any of the extravagant metaphors and other absurdities with which Mr. Froude defaces his best passages. Mr. Burton's Death of Darnley, cannot, as a story, be compared to Mr. Froude's Death of Darnley. But then Mr. Burton has not one word which is unworthy of the occasion, while Mr. Froude spoils his picturesque story with the ludicrous touch of Darnley being found "lying dead in the garden under the stars." When, however, we come to reasoning, nay to real vigour of expression as distinguished from mere narrative prettiness, we feel at once that Mr. Burton is an historian, and that Mr. Froude is not. It is just the difference between a taking book for drawing-room and a sound and lasting possession for the scholar's library. We confess that, great as were the merits which we saw in Mr. Burton's book throughout, yet the earlier portions did not lead us to expect anything like the impressive grandeur of this last chapter. We now only wish that he had had time or space or inclination to work out his whole story as he has worked out this one portion. The comparison is indeed instructive between the real scholar, who has clearly given his whole life to his work, who knows everything in the history of his country from the beginning, who clearly knows how to compare the history of his own country with that of other lands, and the man who has rushed at the history of a single century, while all that went before it is to him evidently an utter blank. acy over Mr. Froude as conspicuously as he does in all higher qualities. Mr. Froude's narrative is picturesque and all that, but Mr. Burton's is tragic; we read it with something like the interest with which we read the Agamemnon or the Edipus. Mr. Froude works in the evidence derived from the Casket Letters with his narrative of the preparations for the King's murder. Mr. Burton follows a more artistic method. He first tells the story in all those particulars about which no one ever doubted. In these particulars there are things indicative of guilt on Mary's part, but there is no direct statement. A reader who had never heard the story before would be asking all along whether Mary really had any hand in all this. A reader who does know is actually asking all along, whether Mr. Burton holds that Mary had any hand in it. He goes on with all the later events, the sham trial of Bothwell, the divorce, the marriage, all looking in the same direction, none perhaps alone proving the case. At last comes the discovery of the Casket, like the evidence of the shepherd of Citharon. Now all is out. Mr. Burton by unanswerable arguments, put with a vigour which almost reaches vehemence, but which is never unscholarlike or unjudicial, shows that the letters are genuine, and that Mary therefore was guilty. In this way the narrative of Mr. Burton raises a suspense in the mind, and carries on his reader with far more of real interest and excitement than, as far as picturesqueness of description goes, the far more vivid narrative of Mr. Froude. And yet in one point, not perhaps strictly We do not know exactly how far Mr. Burton may be running counter to general prejudice in his own country by thus vigorously and unshrinkingly setting forth the manifest truth on this matter. We know that with some Scotch people it is a point of national honour to believe Mary innocent, just as it is a point of national honour to believe whatever is written in Barbour and Blind Harry, or distilled from them into the Tales of a Grandfather. It is certainly the strangest point of national honour that ever taken up, as it involves the sacrifice of the great mass of the Scottish people to one woman who had nothing Scottish about her except her mere birth and lineage. The Scottish people, with a sound moral instinct, rose against their guilty Queen and deposed her. Their so doing was very much to the national honour, and it is rather hard to sacrifice the real honour of a nation to a sentimental feeling for a was murderess and adulteress, simply because she had a handsome face and a winning tongue. Her contemporary defenders, as Mr. Burton shows, took a different ground. All that they could say was that the charge of murder and adultery was not proved, and that even if it were proved, murder and adultery were not grounds for deposing a sovereign. Her crime, after all, was only one simple murther," while many of her enemies "did daily commit many horrible murthers." Even if she were guilty, "King David was both an adulterer and also a murtherer," and "God was highly displeased with him therefor, yet he was not therefore by his subjects deposed." The forms of Scottish law supply Mr. Burton with a clinching illustration of the line taken by Mary's advocates: " world for testimony until we fill up all gaps and explain all inconsistencies. These things are the strong securities with which the law their lives or their liberties. We all know surrounds the rights of living men, especially multitudes of things which are not judicially proved, which we could not judicially prove; yet the law requires that before we act on them, to the injury of our neighbour, they shall be so proved. If the life or liberty of a British subject could be made to depend either on proving Queen Mary guilty or proving her innocent, neither could be made out in such a manner as to secure a verdict. At the present day we have no evidence on which we could hang FelCharles I.'s time, or even the man who shot ton, who stabbed the Duke of Buckingham in Spencer Perceval. It would be the same with the death of Cæsar and the execution of Charles I. Such a way of going to work would blot out history, by making its parts extinguish each other, like the equivalents in an equation. If Queen Mary is entitled to the benefit of all doubts, the confederate lords who brought the charges and evidence against her are entitled to the benefit of all doubts to protect their character from the stigma of conspiracy. The judge may be bound to release the accused, although in his secret heart believing him to be guilty; but in history belief is all, and belief cannot be resisted when it comes, nor can a leaning to the stronger probabilities where there is doubt, let the effect on the fame of some long dead actor in the history of the world be what it will. But while thus tenacious of the privileges of an accused person, these enthusiasts demand a conclusion from which such a person is excluded by the act of seeking their protection. The verdict of "not guilty "founded on imperfection in the evidence, is no proclamation of innocence. Its tenor is generally more distinctly interpreted by an expressive form in use in Scotland. When the jury do not find reason to proclaim a case of calumniated innocence, but give the accused the benefit of defective evidence, they find a verdict of "not proven.' It would perhaps surprise some enthusiasts of the present day to find contemporary vindicators going no farther than the demand of a verdict of "not Still, with Mr. Burton's strong conviction proven." Their reason was the same material of Mary's guilt, she is not in his eyes a monone that influences modern trials. They mainster. The evil alike of indiscriminate panetained that there was no sufficient case made gyric and of indiscriminate invective is to out for depriving her of her queenly rights. Blot out all the finer shades of human charThe evidence was not conclusive, and she should have had the benefit of the doubt. acter to make people, in short, not human Those who believe in her as a saint martyred at all, but either angels or fiends. Thus by wicked men would find disagreeable revela- Mr. Burton expressly refuses his assent to tions in reading what is said by the early class of vindicators. Just before, Mr. Burton had been dwelling on the agreement between the evidence of the Casket Letters and the evidence given by Thomas Crawford before the Commissioners at York. He goes on: Such theories, and the impossibility of confuting them to the conviction of those who choose to maintain them, is one of the incidents of the rather forensic tone in which the great controversy about Queen Mary has been conducted. A leaf has been taken from the Old Bailey, and it has been maintained that she should be counted innocent until she is proved guilty. But in the legal sense this is impossible about long past events. To comply with it, - we would require to place Crawford in the wit ness-box, cross-question him, and search the the description of Mary given in the "Detection" of Buchanan. A great master of Latin rhetoric, honestly believing in Mary's guilt, had to set forth that guilt in a rhetorical invective composed in a language in which invective is perhaps more at home than in any other. His rhetoric is valuable as a witness to the state of popular feeling in Scotland at the time; of that popular feeling it is a most excellent representation; but his account is incredible; his portrait is not human. Therefore, argues Mr. Burton, Buchanan cannot be the author, that is the forger, of the Casket Letters. Those letters betray the innermost feelings of a guilty woman, but still of a woman, a human being with human feelings. Buchanan, had he made the attempt, would have blurred all this out with one undistinguishing daub of black: |