Having myself lived under feudal institutions, and seen the daily workings of a society, graded from lowest to highest, although with many variations, and fixed in customs which seemed to me to be tedious, absurd, and ridiculous, as well as interesting and fascinating, and living meanwhile under the shadow of castle walls and towers, crossing daily the drawbridge and often visiting the towers of the citadel, I could understand the mediæval processes of thought, so long surviving in western Scotland. I was able to appreciate also these Scottish castles, whether still maintained as of old, intact and modernized, or in ruins, and easily re-create in imagination the mental atmosphere and customs of the old feudal days, when swords were an article of daily dress and frequent use, and the steel blade the chief bond and instrument of social order. The border ruffianism of “bleeding Kansas” in the West and much of the old social situation down South, in cotton land,--the pride and contempt on the one side and the hatred, with occasional cattle-lifting propensities, on the other, especially in the Southern Highlands,--of which in my boyhood I heard so much, helped me to enjoy not only Scottish history, but Sir Walter Scott’s inimitable word pictures in prose and verse. One can describe most of the spectacular phenomena of Japanese as well as Scottish feudalism in Scott’s verse and prose. His writings make illuminating commentary. It was hard for the Lowlanders, after their discipline under the feudal system had passed with the institution, to understand or get along peaceably with the Highlanders, who hated industrialism, shop-keeping, and money-making. Highland poverty and rawness are in the main the immediate inheritances, even as the old semi-civilized life was the direct result, of feudalism. The reason why the dwellings of the plain people in the rocky regions were, even in our day, so wretchedly poor and bare, is revealed in the book of Mair, entitled “De Gestis,” published in Latin in 1518, concerning land tenure. He says: “In Scotland the houses of the peasants are mere small thatched huts, and the cause is, that they do not hold their land in perpetuity, but only rent on a lease of four or five years at the will of the lord; therefore, though there are plenty of stones, they will not build neat houses, nor will they plant trees, or hedges to the woods, nor will they enrich the soil; and this is to the no small loss and disgrace of the whole realm. If the lords would give them their land in perpetuity, they would get double or triple the money they now have, because the peasants would cultivate the land incomparably better.”