with the reflection that they had, at all events, an opportunity of experiencing a phase of life which their parents had endeavoured theoretically to impress upon them, in precepts to be thankful to the Deity for the good things which they enjoyed, but which might not always be theirs in a transitory world. They had been warned by the first little band of adventurers that Scotland was not rich; yet the intense poverty of the country whence so many daring adventurers had gone over to ruffle it with the flower of European chivalry, astonished and appalled them. Of the extreme and special nature of the poverty of Scotland, the great war against the English invaders was the cause. It has been estimated, indeed, by those devoted to such questions, that Scotland did not recover fully from the ruin caused by that conflict until the Union made her secure against her ambitious neighbour. It was the crisis referred to in that pathetic ditty, the earliest specimen of our lyrical poetry, when “Away was sonse of ale and bread, Of wine and wax, of gaming and glee; Our gold was changed into lead; Cryst borne into virginity. Succour poor Scotland and remede, That stad is in perplexity.” It is not sufficiently known how much wealth and prosperity existed in Scotland before King Edward trod its soil. Berwick, the chief commercial port, had commerce with half the world, and bade fair to rival Ghent, Rotterdam, and the other great mercantile cities of the Low Country. Antiquarians have lately pointed to a sad and significant testimony to the change of times. Of the ecclesiastical remains of Scotland, the finest are either in the Norman, or the early English which preceded the Edwards. These are the buildings of a noted and munificent people; they rival the corresponding establishments in England, and are in the same style as the work of nations having common interests and sympathies—indeed the same architects seem to have worked in both countries. At the time when the Gothic architecture of England merged into the type called the Second Pointed, there ceased to be corresponding specimens in Scotland. A long period, indeed, elapses which has handed down to us no vestiges of church architecture in Scotland, or only a few too trifling to possess any distinctive character. When works of Gothic art begin again to arise with the reviving wealth of the people, they are no longer of the English type, but follow that flamboyant style which had been adopted by the ecclesiastical builders of the country with which Scotland had most concern—her steady patron and protector, France.[7]