barous. That irregular manner of life, and thofe manly pursuits from which barbarity takes its name are highly favorable to a ftrength of mind unknown in polished times. In advanced fociety the characters of men are more uniform and disguised. The human paffions lie in fome degree concealed behind forms, and artificial manners; and the powers of the foul, without an opportunity of exerting them, lofe their vigour. The times of regular government, and polished manners, are therefore to be wished for by the feeble and weak in mind. An unfettled ftate, and thofe convulfions which attend it, is the proper field for an exalted character, and the exertion of great parts. Merit there rifes always fuperior; no fortuitous event can raife the timid and mean into power. To thofe who look upon antiquity in this light, it is an agreeable profpect; and they alone can have real pleasure in tracing nations to their fource.

The eftablishment of the Celtic states; in the north of Europe, is beyond the reach of their written annals. The traditions and fongs to which they trufted their hiftory, were loft, or altogether corrupted in their revolutions and migrations, which were fo frequent and univerfal, that no kingdom in Europe is now poffeffed by its original inhabitants. Societies were formed, and king

doms erected, from a mixture of nations. who, in process of time, loft all knowledge of their own origin.

is pure

If tradition could be depended upon, it is only among a people, from all time, free of intermixture with foreigners. We are to look for thefe among the mountains and inacceffible parts of a country: places, on account of their barrennefs, uninviting to an enemy, or whole natural strength enabled the natives to repel invafions. Such are the inhabitants of the mountains of Scotland. We, accordingly, find, that they differ materially from those who poffefs the low and more fertile part of the kingdom. Their language and original, and their manners are those of an antient and unmixed race of men. Confcious of their own antiquity, they long defpifed others, as a new and mixed people. As they lived in a country only fit for pafture, they were free of that toil and bu finefs, which engrofs the attention of a commercial people. Their amufement confifted in hearing or repeating their fongs and traditions, and thefe intirely turned on the antiquity of their nation, and the exploits of their forefathers. It is no wonder, therefore, that there are more remains of antiquity among them, than among any other people in Europe. Traditions, however, concerning remote periods, are only to be regarded, in

fo far as they co-incide with cotemporary writers of undoubted credit and veracity.

No writers began their accounts from a more early period, than the hiftorians of the Scots nation. Without records, or even tradition itself, they give a long lift of antient kings, and a detail of their transactions, with a fcrupulous exactnefs. One might naturally fuppofe, that, when they had no authentic annals, they should, at least, have recourfe to the traditions of their country, and have reduced them into a regular fyftem of history. Of both they seem to have been equally deftitute. Born in the low country and ftrangers to the antient language of their nation, they contented themselves with copying from one another, and retailing the fame fictions, in a new colour and . drefs.

John Fordun was the firft who collected thofe fragments of the Scots hiftory, which had efcaped the brutal policy of Edward I. and reduced them into order. His accounts, in fo far as they concerned recent tranfactions, deferved credit: beyond a certain period, they were fabulous and unfatisfactory. Some time before Fordun wrote, the king of England, in a letter to the pope, had run up the antiquity of his nation to a very

remote æra. Fordun, poffeffed of all the national prejudice of the age, was unwilling that his country should yield, in point of antiquity, to a people, then its rivals and enemies. Deftitute of annals in Scotland, he had recourfe to Ireland, which, according to the vulgar errors ofthe times, was reckoned the first habitation of the Scots. He found, there, that the Irish bards had carried their pretenfions to antiquity as high, if not beyond any nation in Europe. It was from them he took thofe improbable fictions, which form the first part of his history.

The writers that fucceeded Fordun implicitly followed his fyftem, though they fometimes varied from him in their relations of particular tranfactions, and the order of fucceffion of their kings. As they had no new lights, and were, equally with him, unacquainted with the traditions of their country, their hiftories contain little information concerning the origin of the Scots. Even Buchanan himself, except the elegance and vigour of his ftile, has very little to recommend him. Blinded with political prejudices, he feemed more anxious to turn the fictions of his predeceffors to his own purposes, than to detect their mifreprefentations, or inveftigate truth amidst the darkness which they had thrown round it. It therefore appears, that little can be collected from their own

hiftorians, concerning the first migration of the Scots into Britain.

That this ifland was peopled from Gaul admits of no doubt. Whether colonies came afterwards from the north of Europe is a matter of meer fpeculation. When SouthBritain yielded to the power of the Romans, the unconquered nations to the north of the province were distinguished by the name of Caledonians. From their very name, it appears, that they were of thofe Gauls, who poffeffed themfelves originally of Britain. It is compounded of two Celtic words, Caël fignifying Celts, or Gauls, and Dun or Don, a hill; fo that Caël-don, or Caledonians, is as much as to fay, the Celts of the hill country. The Highlanders, to this day, call themfelves Caël, their language Caëlic, or Galic, and their country Caëldoch, which the Romans foftened into Caledonia. This, of itself, is fufficient to demonftrate, that they are the genuine defcendents of the antient Caledonians, and not a pretended colony of Scots, who fettled first in the north, in the third or fourth century.

From the double meaning of the word Caël, which fignifies ftrangers, as well as Gauls, or Celts, fome have imagined, that the ancestors of the Caledonians were of a different race from the reft of the Britons,