ABSTRACT
Perhaps one ought actually to be a Scotchman to conceive how ardently, under all distinctions of rank and situation, they feel their mutual connexion with each other as natives of the same country. There are, I believe, more associations common to the inhabitants of rude and wild, than of a well cultivated and fertile country; their ancestors have more seldom changed their place of residence; their mutual recollections of remarkable objects is more accurate; the high and the low are more interested in each other’s welfare; the feelings of kindred and relationship are more widely extended, and in a word, the bonds of patriotic affection, always honourable even when a little too exclusively strained, have more influence on men’s feelings and actions. (From Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian (1818: 393), Penguin Classics edition, 1994)
