notwithstanding the high price of labour in England, and they are determined rather to give up the making of any article than to degrade it. They do not manufacture for those who estimate works of ornament by their magnitude, and who would buy pictures at so much a foot. They have been happy in the encouragement and support of many illustrious persons who judge of the works of art by better principles; and so long as they have the honour of being thus patronised they will endeavour to support and improve the quality and taste of their manufactures.' (Mr. L. Jewitt, p. 218.)

6

Here, said Mr. Gladstone in his Address' at Burslem, we have a clear proof that something which resembles heroism has its place in trade.' We cannot expect all artists and still less all tradesmen to be heroes: the competition for cheapness in useful, nay even in ornamental, articles is not without its advantages, and questions of price are among those which no manufacturer can afford to neglect; but artist or manufacturer, every producer of any work to which art can in any way be applied, be it a cotton print or an enamelled vase, has duties to perform as a public instructor-it is a position which he can no more avoid than can the man who writes a book-and as an instructor he is bound not to produce bad works, however well they may sell. That this duty is becoming more and more generally recognised it is impossible to doubt, but so long as shop windows shall continue to exhibit ornamental' goods which appeal to the bad taste of purchasers, it will be evident that there are manufacturers who have yet to study and imitate the principles which guided Josiah Wedgwood.

ART. IX.-The History of Scotland; from Agricola's Invasion to the Revolution of 1688. By JOHN HILL BURTON. 4 vols. Edinburgh and London: 1867.

PRINCIPAL ROBERTSON in his review of Scottish history di

vides it into four periods-the first from the origin of the monarchy to the reign of Kenneth II.; the second from Kenneth's alleged conquest of the Picts to the death of Alexander III.; the third from the date of that calamity to the death of James V.; the last from thence to the union of the crowns under James VI.

The first of these periods he considers a region of 'pure fable and conjecture,' which ought to be totally neglected, or abandoned to the industry and credulity of antiquaries.' Truth, he thinks, begins to dawn in the second period, with a light, feeble at first, but gradually increasing, and the

' events which then happened may be slightly touched, but merit no particular or laborious inquiry.' With the third period, however, authentic history begins; contemporary records exist from which the manners of the age can be gathered, and the characters of the actors can be pictured: here every Scotsman 'should not read only, but study the history of his country.' While in the fourth period Scotland is truly described as so mixed up with the great changes then agitating every nation in Europe, that without some knowledge of Scottish history it is difficult to form a just appreciation of the most momentous events, or the most prominent figures of the sixteenth century. A similar conception of Scottish history would seem to have been present to the mind of Mr. Burton. He appears to have fully adopted Robertson's sentiment that nations, as 'well as men, arrive at maturity by degrees, and the events 'which happened during their infancy or early youth, cannot be ' recollected, and deserve not to be remembered.' Accordingly, he has treated the first of the above periods almost exclusively from the antiquarian point of view; and, however we may admire his industry,' we can trace little of that credulity' which Robertson imputes to the antiquarian race. In truth no Scottish historian with whom we are acquainted has shown a franker contempt for Scottish legend, or a greater indifference to Scottish prejudice. Mr. Burton has applied those principles of historical inquiry which Niebuhr first laid-down, and which Sir George Lewis made familiar to us; and under this searching light the so-called history of centuries has vanished away like the mist on a Scottish hill. Not till the days of Malcolm Canmore (1057-93) does he recognise the dawn of true history. That prince is the first king of the Scots who has anything like an individuality about him-who is more than a name and a pair of dates with a list of battles between.' The controversy which disturbed the dinner-table at Monkbarns moves Mr. Burton but little. He shows, indeed, hardly less contempt than the Antiquary himself for the list of Pictish kings enumerated by Sir Arthur Wardour- that bead-roll of 'unbaptised jargon that would choke the Devil!' and as to the Pictish people he seems utterly indifferent as to what they were, where they came from, or where they went to, doubtful in fact whether they ever had any separate existence whatever from other savages, except so far as their use of paint may be considered distinctive. Mr. Burton may offend some antiquaries by this indifference; while, by his acceptance of the theory that Scotchmen were originally Irishmen, he will certainly rouse the wrath of thorough-going patriots, who

outstrip even antiquaries in vehemence and credulity But we pass for the present Mr. Burton's chapters on the early races and the early Church of Scotland; they are so full of vigour and originality that they deserve to be considered apart, and we hope ere long to have a suitable opportunity of reverting to them in connexion with Count Montalembert's last volumes on the Saints and Apostles of these Isles. Our immediate concern at this time is with the historical part of Mr. Burton's book properly so called.

The two points in Scottish history which deserve, and will repay, careful study-though doubtless in a very different degree-are the War of Independence and the Reformation. These great struggles have an interest altogether apart from and beyond the feuds and forays of the Kingly period. In them we see great principles at work; in the one creating a nation, in the other giving dignity and force to national life. In such themes Mr. Burton is peculiarly at home, and the light which he has thrown upon the real nature of the War of Independence is perhaps the most valuable part of his labours. He introduces the subject by a minute and careful statement of Edward's claims, and of the pleadings before him for the prize of the Scottish Crown. It was a barren prize to the successful competitor; it would have been the same to anyone who accepted it from Edward's award. That sagacious prince had no intention that his feudal superiority should be nominal. His best defence is that his designs went far beyond this. And we cannot but think it rash in English writers to peril Edward's reputation on so narrow an issue as the validity of this claim. It is hard to believe that he troubled himself much about the rights of the matter: valid or invalid, he saw in such a claim a ready and powerful means to a great end, and he used it accordingly. Indeed the whole question of the feudal superiority of the kings of England over those of Scotland has been debated with a wealth of learning and a warmth of temper utterly disproportionate to the subject. No better illustration could be found of the truth of Lord Macaulay's remark, that our historians and antiquarians have been always prone to conduct their researches in the spirit of partisans. While the Treaty of Union was in dependence, this question had a practical and important bearing. But now, when no shadow of its former importance remains, the vehemence with which the discussion has been carried on excites our wonder. As a rule the feeling has been keenest on the Scotch sidethough no Scottish writer has reached the unseemly extravagance of the author of the Greatest of the Plantagenets."

Tytler denounces the absurd and unfounded claim of the feudal superiority of England over this country.' Hume, more temperately, speaks of the claim as one which had hitherto lain in the deepest obscurity.' Lingard, on the other side, holds that the kings of England for centuries claimed, and occasionally exercised, the right of superiority.' Sir Francis Palgrave regards the documents collected by him from the Record Office as conclusive on the question.

Mr. Lingard in support of his belief in the antiquity of the claim goes far back into the Saxon times; he rests strongly, for example, on an inroad by Athelstan into Scotland in the year 934, in the course of which Constantine (a supposed Scotch king) was compelled to implore the clemency of the 'conqueror.' But raids of this sort, even if authentic, can never be relied on as the foundation for a claim of feudal superiority; and nothing but raids of this sort can be got from the Saxon times. Mr. Lingard's Saxon authorities are therefore open to two somewhat serious objections: the facts are by no means beyond dispute; and there was no law recognised by the parties to which those facts, if authentic, could be applied. This branch of the case is stated with perfect fairness by Mr. Hume :

'The whole amount of Edward's authorities during the Saxon period, when stripped of the bombast and inaccurate style of the monkish historians, is, that the Scots had sometimes been defeated by the English, had received peace on disadvantageous terms, had made submissions to the English monarch, and had even perhaps fallen into dependence on a power which was so much superior, and which they had not at that time sufficient force to resist.'

During the Norman period the case was different. No one can dispute that after the Conquest there existed, on the English side at least, a perfect comprehension of feudal law, and a perfect appreciation of the consequences which the rendering of homage by the Scottish kings might entail. From hence, therefore, the question turns more on the facts of the case-that is, on the extent of homage rendered. The authorities are all English; some of them not beyond the suspicion 'of having been garbled so as to bring out with additional force what we may, without a great lack of charity, suppose to have been the natural leaning of the writers. Yet even with such materials no clear case can be made out for England. case can be quoted in which the kings of Scotland did homage expressly for the whole kingdom of Scotland. Accordingly Scotch historians have contended that in the early instances, of which the statement is generally vague, the homage

VOL. CXXVI. NO. CCLVII.

R

No

was rendered only for the lands held south of the border-a limitation which in the later instances was carefully expressed. Mr. Burton doubts this, not believing that the grades and ' ceremonies of homage were then (1073) so far advanced as to admit of one of these complicated transactions.' We hardly think Mr. Burton's doubt justified by his reason. Malcolm Canmore may have been little skilled in the subtleties of feudal law. If so, then he was ignorant of what he was doing, and the rendering of homage on his part is thus deprived of any higher authority than the vague submissions' of the AngloSaxon times. But the Normans were quite familiar with such 'complicated transactions.' The feudal system was then in its zenith; the relations of the kings of England to the French Crown with respect to the lands they held in France exemplified the very grades and ceremonies to which Mr. Burton alludes. On their side, at least, there could have been no difficulty in appreciating such a limitation as that for which Scotch writers contend. At all events, whatever may have been the precise nature of the homage rendered by Malcolm, it is certain that the raids into England never ceased-showing plainly that, instead of a vassal, William had an independent and turbulent neighbour on his northern frontier. Mr. Burton compares the early relations between the Scotch and the Normans to the relations between the Franks and the later Empire, between the Norsemen and the Count of Paris. The wild marauders are ready enough to do homage for estates and honours given and received as bribes; but no homage would bind them to peace, the forays were renewed as soon as ended.

'The whole story has a significant resemblance to the attempts of the King of France to buy off and soothe the Norsemen, whose chief professed all due homage in proper form, yet, according to a common legend, took a sly opportunity, in his awkwardness in court fashions, to trip up the paramount monarch in the course of the ceremony.' (Vol. ii. p. 79.)

Perhaps the Treaty of Falaise (1174) first gave the Scottish kings a clear idea of what the English feudalists were driving at. By the terms of that treaty Henry enacted from his captive William the Lion an obligation for absolute homage for the whole kingdom of Scotland. But it may be plausibly urged that the excessive pains then taken to declare the infeudation of Scotland, go far to show that the matter was by no means clear. The terms of the treaty indicate a victory gained, not an existing right declared. The anxiety shown to wrest it from the helplessness of a captive proves the value attached to the point it conceded. And in 1189, Richard, for