There, too, hath been the birth-place and the abiding shrine of freedom—the bulwark and the bastion of patriotism and loyalty. Ascending higher, these—the peoples of the rejected and despised places of the earth—have ofttimes begotten and been honoured to wear the crowning attribute of piety. Turning to the history of Scotland or of Switzerland, for illustration, and taking merely a military retrospect, there it will be found. All centuries, all ages, all circumstances, are witness to the bravery and the fidelity of their mountain-soldiers. Scotland, the unendowed by Nature, has been thus largely blessed by Nature’s God, in yielding a long line of valiant and illustrious men. Perhaps no nation engrosses so large and prominent a place in the temple of military fame—none can boast so bright a page in the history of the brave. Her stern and rugged mountains, like a vast citadel, where scarce a foeman ever dared to penetrate, have been defended through centuries of war against the advancing and all but overwhelming tide of aggression; besieged, too, by the countless hosts of Tyranny, they have still remained impregnable. Her wild and desolate glens, like great arteries down which hath flowed the life-blood of the nation, in the living stream—the native and resistless valour of her clans. Her bleak and dreary heaths have written on them one dark history of blood—“the martyred children of the Covenant.” Faithful unto death; “of whom the world was not worthy.” Her crown oft crushed beneath a tyrant’s heel—her freedom trampled on—her people betrayed—all lost but honour. Unscathed, unsullied, she has triumphed, and still lives to write upon her banner, the mighty, envied, and thrice-glorious word, “Unconquered.”