“Then wild and high the Cameron’s gathering rose, The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn’s hills Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes. How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers With the fierce daring which instils The stirring memory of a thousand years; And Evan’s, Donald’s fame rings in each clansman’s ears.” The influence of music depends very much upon association. The _Marseillaise_, for example, is to most men simply a warlike air, inferior to many others with which they have been familiar from infancy, while to the Frenchman it is the sacred chant of liberty, presaging the downfall of tyrants, and the destruction of all that stand in the way of human progress; the _Ranz des Vaches_ awakens no unusual emotion in the breast of him who hears it for the first time, while to the Swiss, wandering in foreign lands, it brings back the snow-capped mountains, the wooden chalets, the tinkling of the cow-bells in the deep valleys, and all the other reminiscences of his native land. The sound of the bagpipe may be to the Saxon the least or the most disagreeable of all sounds; it revives no past associations; it awakens no patriotic feeling; it rather repels by its harsh and discordant strains. Nor is this effect confined to any one race or class; it extends to all who have not been accustomed to the war-pipe from infancy. If you ask an Englishman, “Do you like the bagpipes?” he answers with a significant smile, “Yes; but I like them best at a distance.” Habit, however, is all-powerful in modifying this feeling of dislike; we have known English officers and soldiers serving in Highland regiments who came to prefer the pibroch to every other kind of music, and became, in this respect, more Scottish than the Scotch themselves. But we question whether a Frenchman, with all his acknowledged politeness, was ever betrayed into any expression bordering on admiration of Highland music. We have a lively remembrance of the expressive shrug which a Frenchman gave, when we asked him how he liked the bagpipes, and of the comical way in which he stopped his ears, as if still haunted with the horrible sound. A genuine Celt would attribute such symptoms of aversion to prejudice, affectation, or even to some worse motive; you could never convince him that the shrill notes of his favourite war-pipe could cause an unpleasant sensation on your tympanum.