Need it be matter for wonder if under these various restraining influences the gaiety which the Highlander doubtless shared originally with his brother in Ireland, has been in large measure replaced by a serious sedateness, passing even into depression. When he chooses to solace himself with music, its sad cadences seem to re-echo the monotonous melancholy of the winds that sough past his roughly-built cot, or howl down his glens and across his wastes of barren moorland. But while the lighter side of his nature has thus suffered, his higher qualities have probably been only further fostered and developed. His struggle with climate and soil has strengthened in him a spirit of stubborn endurance and self-reliance, which his moral training has directed towards praiseworthy ends. This spirit finds its freest scope in the life of a soldier. In that career, also, the instincts and traditions of his race meet with their fullest realisation. And thus it has come that for more than a century and a half the British Army has had no braver or more loyal body of men than those of the Highland regiments. On many a hard-fought field, in all parts of the world, wherever deeds of heroism had to be done, the pibroch has thrilled and the tartan has waved in the front. FOOTNOTES [1] In 1773, when Mrs. Grant of Laggan, as a girl, had to make the journey from Inveraray to Oban there was ‘no road but the path of cattle,’ ‘an endless moor, without any road, except a small footpath, through which our guide conducted the horses with difficulty.’--_Letters from the Mountains_, 5th edit., vol. i., p. 4. Half a century later the conditions do not seem to have altered much in that region, as shown in Dr. Norman Macleod’s _Reminiscences of a Highland Parish_. [2] _Lives of the Lord Chancellors_, vol. vi., p. 50. This was written in the early years of railway enterprise. The journey is now performed every day in seven hours and three quarters, and the time will probably be further shortened in the not distant future. [3] Chambers’ _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, vols. ii. and iii. [4] _Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland_ [Captain Burt], 5th edit., vol. i., p. 203, footnote by Editor R. Jamieson. [5] Dr. Norman Macleod, writing in 1867, stated that since the beginning of the last wars of the French Revolution the island of Skye alone had sent forth 21 lieutenant-generals and major-generals; 48 lieutenant-colonels; 600 commissioned officers; 10,000 soldiers; 4 governors of colonies; 1 governor-general; 1 adjutant-general; 1 chief baron of England; and 1 judge of the Supreme Court of Scotland. The martial tide is now but feeble, though some additions could still be made to the list. [6] It will be remembered what a high opinion Johnson formed of the learning and breeding of the West Highland clergy. There is no reason to think they have deteriorated since his time, though possibly their learning would not now be singled out for special eulogium.