Though the Scottish renascence of learning was not so noticeable as in some other countries, yet Scotland, like the Netherlands, had its Erasmus. George Buchanan, educated in Paris, was the tutor in Greek and Latin to Mary Queen of Scots, and her son James. Yet, though learned, Buchanan sympathized with the people. In his famous book, “De Jure Regni apud Scotas,” he did but preach in advance the principles of the American Declaration of Independence, that “governments exist for the sake of the governed.” The paper on which this truth was printed was burned in Oxford during the Restoration period under Charles II, together with those works of John Milton on “Government” which fed the faith of our fathers in the right of the people to govern themselves. Yet no fire has ever yet been kindled which can destroy the truth on which the Constitution of the United States rests. For the intellectual bases of their freedom, Americans owe a debt to Scotland quite as great as to Holland or England. CHAPTER XXIV INVERGOWRIE: IN SCOTTISH HOMES We have many times and in many countries proved the measure of truth that is contained in the quatrain which William Shenstone wrote upon the window of a hostel:-- “Whoe’er has travell’d life’s dull round, Where’er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn.” The American traveller can also agree in part with Dr. Johnson that “there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn,” yet who, except Leighton, that sunny soul, the principal of Edinburgh University,--who was “not militant enough to please his fierce co-presbyters,”--could say “that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an inn”? Our experiences of Scottish hotels, “temperance,” “hydro,” ordinary, fashionable, rural, rustic, and what not, were almost invariably pleasant, and our hosts were honest in their dealings; yet in the many British homes in which we were guests the welcome was so warm and the care taken of us so thorough, thoughtful, and minute, that Shenstone’s verse seems to have in it more verbal music than experimental reality. Leighton’s wish seems strange, indeed, especially in the light of memory, when sickness, apparently nigh unto the bourne of life, proved the depth of Scottish hospitality and friendship.