long stood out like commercial garrisons in a disaffected, and not unfrequently a hostile, country. Not the least amongst the many changes introduced by the burgher class beyond the Forth was the diffusion of the language hitherto only spoken to the southward of that river, a Teutonic dialect spreading over the country, as in Ireland, with the gradual preponderance of the intramural population, a similar result being traceable in France, though under exactly opposite circumstances; for the language spoken in towns, where men congregate together in large numbers, will always prevail over the dialects of a rural and scattered population. It would be difficult to overestimate the utility of the burgher class to the Scotland of that period, or its influence in promoting the amelioration and prosperity of the country. The increase it brought to the revenue, though perhaps one of its greatest advantages in the opinion of the age, was comparatively of secondary importance. The invariable tendency of such a class has always been to favour peace, order, and civilization, as long as it has occupied its natural position; for it is only when a burgherhood has become over-powerful that it has afforded as frequent examples as a nobility, or an _autocracy_, of the inability of human nature in any condition to withstand the evil influences of unlimited power. Such was not the case in Britain, where the burgherhood has never occupied the same position as the great communities of Flanders, of Germany, or of Northern Italy. It would be of little use to speculate upon what might have happened had England remained under the rule of a feeble, or an “unkindly” king--of Edgar Atheling or Harold--with her great provincial _Jarls_, like the Dukes of Franee, distracting the country with their contentions for power. Great burgher communities might have arisen, especially in the Danelage, where the Socmen, representatives of the _Land-agende_ men, or Odal-Bonders, of an earlier period, were exactly the class to form a martial burgherhood; but such a future was not to be. In neither England nor Scotland has the civic class ever been the sole depositary of the ancient northern principles of self-government, as on the Continent; where the _Echevin_, the representative of the ancient _Scepenbar_ Freeholder, who could alone pass judgment upon his equal, has for centuries been confined to the towns. It may be read in the Capitularies of the Carlovingian era, how it was offered to the ancestry of the French nobility to declare the law they would live by, and their choice was destined to be unfortunate; for wherever the hand of Imperial Rome is traceable, it has sown the seeds of future despotism. In every part of Britain, however, there was but one law for Baron and for Burgher, framed upon the principles of the free north; and much as we may be indebted to the civic portion of our “Third Estate,” the institutions of which