Yet, let us not be afraid of being descended from the Maxwells, Johnstons, Jardines, Elliots, Armstrongs, Scotts, Kerrs, Buccleughs, Nevilles, or whom not or what not of these days, now so transfigured in romance. History and science both agree that if we go back far enough, no race was once lower than that to which each of us belongs, whether Celtic, Teutonic, Slavic, or Aryan of any sort. It was and is necessary, for poet, novelist, dramatist, and maker of moving-picture films, to show that these illustrious persons, who were villains in the eye of the law in one age and heroes of romance in another, should be like those in the condition that our Prescott the historian desired his heroes to be--under the ground at least two hundred years. By that time they are cooled off and their passions reduced to the ordinary temperature of graveyard dust. Their faults have been left in the haze of oblivion, while their merits take on a glamour that comes only from the past. In the “distance that robes the mountain in its azure hue” both persons and events can be transfigured in poem, song, and story. Think of the last of the desert chivalries and enthusiasms--our cowboys--a century or two hence! Behold how, even in the Hub of the Universe, the street rioters active in the Boston “Massacre” have their artistic monument! What is a crime in one generation becomes something to be gloried in, when success is won! With the multitude, the end ever justifies the means. The accepted history of almost all wars is that written by the victors. The beaten foe is always in the wrong. “Whatever is, is right.” All, save the few starry spirits of mankind, say this. Sir Walter evidently appreciated these phenomena. Knowing human nature well, he did not hesitate to be frank about his own forebears. He made of the old scenes of slaughter a new enchanted land, into which one can now travel unarmed and without guards. As Roderick Dhu justified to Fitz James the profession of cattle-lifting, which he, like his ancestors, followed, so Lockhart tells that when the last bullock, which Auld Watts had provided from the English pastures, was consumed, Mary Scott, the flower of Yarrow, placed on her table a dish containing a pair of clean spurs. This was a hint to the company that they must bestir themselves for their next dinner. In those days when the rule was to “love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy” (is it yet repealed?) cattle-stealing was a virtuous occupation just as war is, and will be, unless the United States of the World _is_ formed. [Illustration: ABBOTSFORD]