the kindred ranks like a long line of kings. The good discipline as well as the prowess of Highland soldiers was remarkable in early days, men of the same name and birthplace keeping up each other’s _esprit de corps_, and no praise or punishment being more effectual than the thought of what might be posted as to a man’s conduct on the door of his parish church. The raising of Highland regiments, indeed, was sometimes carried on after the methods of the press-gang, or by landlords putting pressure on tenants who might be fathers of stout sons. There is a story of half-a-dozen brawny Celts tied neck and heels in a cart as recruits for the Laird of Macnab’s “Volunteers”; and clansmen have been hunted down in the mountains when they refused to follow the modern fiery cross. There [Illustration: A WOODED GORGE, KILLIN, PERTHSHIRE] would be many a tragic tale of desertion like that of the “Highland Widow,” especially when English martinets added pipe-clay to Highland accoutrements. But active lads were seldom backward to follow chief or laird leading them to war; then Bring a Scotsman frae his hill, Clap in his cheek a Highland gill, Say, “Such is royal George’s will, And there’s the foe!” He has nae thought but how to kill Twa at a blow. As in the instance of the Cameronians, all Scottish regiments do not wear the kilt; and of those who do, but few men are to this manner born in our generation. Alphonse Daudet puts his little hero “Jack” into a kilt under the title of _costume anglaise_, which is no more absurd than the way in which English writers speak of this as the “Scottish dress.” There are even Highland Celts whose ancestors never wore it; and in its palmy days the kilt was the “servile dress” of clansmen, whose chiefs as a rule went in trews. Now it is affected rather by the upper class; and the soldiers who swagger so jauntily in tartans are more like to have grown up in corduroy breeks. But for this fact, I should have laid down, as warning to strangers, that the “garb of Old Gaul” cannot be donned to advantage without youthful familiarity. The wearing of such a costume, indeed, needs some practice. A Highland battalion of trews stationed at Southsea became adopted into a kilted regiment some twenty years ago, when a corporal and file of men were detached from the latter as instructors for the neophytes how to carry their new honours unblushingly, so as forthwith to be christened the “South Sea Islanders” by an _h_-less populace. The London Scottish Volunteers should wear the kilt by right of having Highland blood or Highland property; and it is enviously whispered that their qualification in most cases may be the possession of a tartan paper-knife.