to that æra, but had taken a firm hold of the nation; thus affording a proof of its antiquity, stronger than any produced by the researches of our antiquaries.

The impression which the Scottish music has made on the people, is deepened by its union with the national songs, of which various collections of unequal merit are before the public. These songs, like those of other nations, are many of them humorous; but they chiefly treat of love, war, and drinking. Love is the subject of the greater proportion. Without displaying the higher powers of the imagination, they, exhibit a perfect knowledge of the human heart, and breathe a spirit of affection, and sometimes of delicate and romantic tenderness, not to be surpassed in modern poetry, and which the more polished strains of antiquity have seldom possessed.

The origin of this amatory character in the rustic muse of Scotland, or of the greater number of these love-songs themselves, it would be difficult to trace ; they have accumulated in the silent lapse of time, and it is now perhaps impossible to give an arrangement of them in the order of their date, valuable as such a record of taste and manners would be. Their present influence on the character of the nation is, however, great and striking. To them we must attribute, in a great measure, the romantic passion which so often characterizes the attachments of the humblest of the people of Scotland, to a degree, that if we mistake rot, is seldom found in the same rank of society in other countries. The pictures of love and happiness exhibited in their rural songs,

are early impressed on the mind of the peasant, and are rendered more attractive from the music with which they are united. They associate themselves with his own youthful emotions; they elevate the object as well as the nature of his attachment; and give to the impressions of sense the beautiful colours of imagination. Hence in the course of his passion, a Scottish peasant often exerts a spirit of adventure, of which a Spanish cavalier need not be ashamed. After the labours of the day are over, he sets out for the habitation of his mistress, perhaps at many miles distance, regardless of the length or the dreariness of the way. He approaches her in secresy, under the disguise of night. A signal at the door or window, perhaps agreed on, and understood. by none but her, gives information of his arrival; and sometines it is repeated again and again, before the capricious fair one will obey the summons. But if she favours his addresses, she escapes unobserved, and receives the vows of her lover under the gloom of twilight, or the deeper shade of night. Interviews of this kind are the subjects of many of the Scottish songs, some of the most beautiful of which Burns has imitated or improved. In the art which they celebrate he was perfectly skilled; he knew and had practised all its mysteries. Intercourse of this sort is indeed universal even in the humblest condition of man in every region of the earth. But it is not unnatural to suppose that it may exist in a greater degree, and in a more romantic form, among the peasantry of a country who are supposed to be more than commonly instructed; who find in the

Fural songs expressions for their youthful emotions; and in whom the embers of passion are continually fanned by the breathings of a music full of tenderness and sensibility. The direct influence of physical causes on the attachment between the sexes is comparatively small, but it is modified by moral causes beyond any other affection of the mind. Of these, music and poetry are the chief. Among the snows of Lapland, and under the burning sun of Angola, the savage is seen hastening to his mistress, and every where he beguiles the weariness of his journey with poetry and song *.

In appreciating the happiness and virtue of a community, there is perhaps no single criterion on which so much dependence may be placed, as the state of the intercourse between the sexes. Where this displays ardour of attachment, accompanied by purity of conduct, the character and the influence of women rise in society, our imperfect nature mounts in the scale of moral excellence; and, from the source of this single affection, a stream of felicity descends, which branches into a thousand rivulets that enrich and adorn the field of life. Where the attachment between the sexes sinks into an appetite, the heritage of our species is comparatively poor, and man approaches the condition of the brutes that perish. "If we could with safety in

*The North American Indians, among whom the attachment between the sexes is said to be weak, and love, in the purer sense of the word, unknown, seem nearly unacquainted with the charms of poetry and music, See Weld's Tour.

dulge the pleasing supposition that Fingal lived and that Ossian sung*," Scotland, judging from this criterion, might be considered as ranking high in happiness and virtue in very remote ages. To appreci ate her situation by the same criterion in our own times, would be a delicate and a difficult undertaking. After considering the probable influence of her popular songs and her national music, and examining how far the effects to be expected from these are supported by facts, the inquirer would also have to examine the influence of other causes, and particularly of her civil and ecclesiastical institutions, by which the character, and even the manners of a people, though silently and slowly, are often powerfully controlled. In the point of view in which we are considering the subject, the ecclesiastical establishments of Scotland may be supposed peculiarly favourable to purity of conduct. The dissoluteness of manners among the catholic clergy, which preceded, and in some measure produced the Reformation, led to an extraordinary strictness on the part of the reformers, and especially in that particu. lar in which the licentiousness of the clergy had been carried to its greatest height-the intercourse between the sexes. On this point, as on all others. connected with austerity of manners, the disciples of Calvin assumed a greater severity than those of the Protestant episcopal church. The punishment of illicit connexion between the sexes was, throughout all Europe, a province which the clergy assumed

* Gibbon.

to themselves; and the church of Scotland, which at the Reformation renounced so many powers and privileges, at that period took this crime under her more especial jurisdiction *. Where pregnancy takes place without marriage, the condition of the female causes the discovery, and it is on her, therefore, in the first instance, that the clergy and elders of the church exercise their zeal. After examination before the kirk-session, touching the circumstances of her guilt, she must endure a public penance, and sustain a public rebuke from the pulpit, for three Sabbaths successively, in the face of the congrega-. tion to which she belongs, and thus have her weakness exposed, and her shame blazoned. The sentence is the same with respect to the male; but how much lighter the punishment! It is well known that this dreadful law, worthy of the iron minds of Calvin and of Knox, has often led to consequences, at the very mention of which human nature recoils.

While the punishment of incontinence prescribed by the institutions of Scotland is severe, the culprits have an obvious method of avoiding it, afforded them, by the law respecting marriage, the validity of which requires neither the ceremonies of the church, nor any other ceremonies, but simply the deliberate acknowledgment of each other as husband and wife, made by the parties before witnesses, or in any other way that gives legal evidence of such an acknowledgment having taken place. And as the parties. themselves fix the date of their marriage, an oppor

*See Appendix, No. I. Note C.