If we may judge from his regard to the sanctity of an oath, his ideas of morality appear to have been much at variance with the corrupt practice of the age. Uncontaminated by the pernicious example of the great men of the country, he rather chose to bear hunger and every other privation the unsheltered outlaw might be exposed to, than purchase the advantage so much prized by others, at the expense of taking an oath he had no intention of holding sacred:--still, this inflexible rectitude of soul could not shame the aristocracy from their convenient perjuries; for the bands by which he strove to unite them together, became like ropes of sand in the hour of trial. Notwithstanding, however, all the difficulties that were thrown in his way, the vigour of his own character, and the wisdom of his measures, enabled him to achieve the deliverance of his native land. To the charges of ambition and usurpation that were brought against him, he gave the noblest refutation, by resigning the bauble of power into the hands of those little spirits, who would otherwise have betrayed the cause of national independence, or involved their country in all the horrors of civil war. Thus, his virtuous self-denial preserved the people whom his valour had set free. In the biographical notices that have been submitted, the reader will perceive the formidable array of talent and power with which Wallace had to contend. To an aristocracy, at that time perhaps unrivalled in Europe, and headed by a monarch as distinguished for ambition, sternness of purpose, and warlike propensities, as he was notorious for the absence of those virtues which constitute the redeeming traits in the character of a soldier--the magnanimous patriot had at first little to oppose, save the innate energies of his own invincible heart, and the resources of a genius which Heaven seems peculiarly to have fitted for the task. That Scotland, distracted by faction, and deprived of all foreign aid, should, under the guidance of one who ranked among the humblest of her nobles, have again advanced herself to the dignity of an independent state, in defiance of the power of England, backed by the resources of Ireland and Wales, was considered by her adversaries as too humiliating to their national character to admit of their relinquishing the contest.[78] The renewal of every invasion was, however, met by an increasing stubbornness of opposition; and the chivalrous conqueror in Palestine, the “high-souled” Plantagenet, at last condescended to _steal_ away the enemy he could neither bribe nor subdue, and thus purchase the brief and delusive semblance of a victory, at the price of everlasting dishonour.