ABSTRACT
’TIS sixty years since, or thereabouts, that Walter Scott threw open the Highlands of Scotland to an enthusiastic following over all the world. They had been as little known as the wilds of Kamtchatka. Now and then a quaint half-frightened traveller, or a lordly philosophical one, had found himself amid those savage wastes, and made such observations upon them as might be made in any savage country. Sir Walter rolled back the misty gates, and made the land of brown heath and shaggy wood familiar, we may say, to Europe. He called up the dwellers on the hills out of the silence as Roderick Dhu 1 called up his ambushed men. And had Sir Walter lived till now, here is a book* about the Highlands that would have brought tears to his loyal and kindly eyes. In the days of which he wrote our glens and mountains were faithful to a fallen race; they were as turbulent and as troublesome to the lawful authorities as Ireland at its most rebellious period has ever been. The clans poured down from their cloudy strongholds to fight a desperate and hopeless battle for Prince Charlie. 2 Apart from that fatal link of loyalty, the hand of each name and each man was against his neighbour. The scene has changed. It is no story of rash adventure in a wild half-civilised country which now lies before us. It is the simple record of some bright days in a life – very bright days, and many of them – during which a little party of cheerful people went roaming through the dark ravines and up the rugged hills. Wherever they went, blessings and kindly looks and tender courtesies attended them. The people came out from the Highland huts, dazzled and joyful, to see the Queen go by. The Highland gentlemen woke up to gather their men about them, and bethought themselves of the old forms of honour with which Highlanders once, in days when civilisation was unknown, received a royal stranger. A thrill of astonishment, delight, and grateful pride ran through the country. The tenacious North, long hostile, long indifferent, at length roused itself by degrees into a loyalty something resembling the sentiment of old. Queen Victoria is, as we have all known since we learned our letters, supreme over an empire upon which the sun never sets; but there is one corner of her dominions which holds her by a closer claim. The Queen of the Highlands has no ungrateful subjects. If the men of Aberdeenshire do not lose their heads over this record, it will be because these heads are very steady and not given to undue excitement; and we can but hope that her Majesty’s book will not impair the royal solitude she loves, by tempting yet another and another flood of tourists to follow her footsteps among the hills.
