recollections of former days, and fostered by the tales of the grey-headed veterans, who looked back with regret to the days when each man's arms clattered round him when he walked the hills. Among these men, the spirit of clanship subsisted no longer indeed as a law of violence, but still as a law of love. They maintained, in many instances, their chiefs at their own expense; and they embodied themselves in regiments, that the head of the family might obtain military preferment. Whether and how these marks of affection have been rewarded, is a matter of deep and painful enquiry. But while it subsisted, this voluntary attachment to the chief was, like the ruins of his feudal castle, more interesting than when clanship subsisted in its entire vigour, and reminded us of the expression of the poet :

"Time

Has mouldered into beauty many a tower,
Which, when it frown'd with all its battlements,
Was only terrible."-

Some such distinction between Highlanders and Lowlanders in this respect, would long have subsisted, had it been fostered by those who, we think, were most interested in maintaining it. The dawn of civilisation would have risen slowly on the system of Highland Society; and as the darker and harsher shades were already dispelled, the romantic contrast and variety reflected upon ancient and patriarchal usages, by the general diffusion of knowledge, would, like the brilliant colours of the morning clouds, have survived for some time, ere blend

ed with the general mass of ordinary manners. In many instances, Highland proprietors have laboured with laudable and humane precaution to render the change introduced by a new mode of cultivation gentle and gradual, and to provide, as far as possible, employment and protection for those families who were thereby dispossessed of their ancient habitations. But in other, and in but too many instances, the glens of the Highlands have been drained, not of their superfluity of population, but of the whole mass of the inhabitants, dispossessed by an unrelenting avarice, which will be one day found to have been as shortsighted as it is unjust and selfish. Mean while, the Highlands may become the fairy ground for romance and poetry, or subject of experiment for the professors of speculation, political and economical.-But if the hour of need should come- —and it may not, perhaps, be far distant the pibroch may sound through the deserted region, but the summons will remain unanswered. The children who have left her will re-echo from a distant shore the sounds with which they took leave of their own-Ha til, ha til, ha til, mi tulidh!

"We return—we return—we return-no more!"

[94]

ARTICLE X.

PEPYS' MEMOIRS.

[From the Quarterly Review, for January, 1826 :—On "MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEPYS, Esq., F.R.S. Secre tary to the Admiralty in the Reigns of Charles II. and James II.; comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. JOHN SMITH, A. B. of St John's College, Cambridge, from the original short-hand MS. in the Pepysian Library, and a Selection from his Private Correspondence. Edited by RICHARD LORD BRAYBROOKE. In Two Volumes. London. 1825.]

THERE is a curiosity implanted in our nature which receives much gratification from prying into the actions, feelings, and sentiments of our fellowcreatures. The same spirit, though very differently modified and directed, which renders a female gossip eager to know what is doing among her neighbours over the way, induces the reader for information, as well as him who makes his studies his amusement, to turn willingly to those volumes which promise to lay bare the motives of the writer's actions, and the secret opinions of his heart. We are not satisfied with what we see and hear of

the conqueror on the field of battle, or the great statesman in the senate; we desire to have the privilege of the valet-de-chambre to follow the politician into his dressing-closet, and to see the hero in those private relations where he is a hero no longer.

Many have thought that this curiosity is most amply gratified by the correspondence of eminent individuals, which, therefore, is often published to throw light upon their history and character. Unquestionably much information is thus obtained, especially in the more rare cases where the Scipio has found a Lœlius-some friend in whom he can fear no rival, and to whose unalterable attachment he can commit even his foibles without risking loss of esteem or diminution of affection. But in general letters are written upon a different principle, and exhibit the writers less as they really are, than as they desire their friends should believe them to be. Thus it may be observed that the man who wishes for profit or advancement usually writes in a style of bullying independence—a flag which he quickly strikes to the prospect of advantage; the selfish individual, on the other hand, fortifies his predominant frailty by an affectation of sensibility; the angry and irritable man attends with peculiar strictness to the formal and ceremonial style of well-bred society; the dissolute assume on paper an air of morality; and the letters of the prodigal are found to abound with maxims of prudence not a whit the worse for the author's own wear.

These discrepancies between epistolary senti

ments and the real character of the writer, become of course more marked when the letters, like those of Pope, are written with a secret consciousness that they may one day or other come before the public. It is then that each sentence is polished, each sentiment corrected; and that a letter, ostensibly addressed to one private friend, is compiled with the same sedulous assiduity as if it were to come one day flying abroad on all the wings of the press.

The conclusion is that there can be little reliance placed on the sincerity of letter-writers in general, and that in estimating the mass of strange matter which is preserved in contemporary correspondence, the reader ought curiously to investigate the character, situation, and temper of the principal correspondent, ere he can presume to guess how many of his sentiments are real; how much is designed as a gentle placebo to propitiate the feelings of the party whom he addresses; how much intended to mislead future readers into a favourable estimate of the writer's capacity and disposition. We have found ourselves guilty a hundred times of returning thanks to ingenious individuals, who have sent for our acceptance very handsome hotpressed volumes of poetry and of prose, with a warmth which might to the ordinary acceptation have included much applause; whereas, on our part, the civil words were merely intended to extinguish the debt imposed on us, and to give some value for the certain number of shillings which we must have been out of pocket had we