The only gathering of the clans we have nowadays are the gatherings in the halls of our big cities, where a thousand or two of people bearing a common name meet under the presidency of the next-of-kin of the chief of olden times, and drink, not mountain dew, but tea, and have Highland or Jacobite songs sung to them by people whose profession is singing, and applaud dancers and pipers who dance and pipe because it pays them to do so. This is very far removed from the time when the _Piob Mohr_ was in the zenith of its power, though when one gets enthused with the atmosphere of such a meeting, and forgets the slushy streets outside, and the telegraph and the railway, and other nineteenth century things that have made the Highlands impossible, the song of the hundred pipers is quite sufficient to make the blood course quicker, and to translate one for a moment to other scenes and other times. But it is only for a moment. The prosaic present comes back with a reality that will not be denied, and one remembers with a sigh that the song is but a sentiment, and that never more will the gathering cries of the clans re-echo through the glens, the fiery cross pass from hand to hand, or the peal of the pibroch ring from clachan to clachan in a wild cry to arms. As an inspiration to the clansmen the bagpipe is no more, but it remains an integral part of Scottish life and character. It is one of the peculiarities of the instrument that it adapts itself to circumstances. When that phase of life in which it was born and brought up, as it were, passed away, it quietly but firmly declined to be moved into the background. There is something of the stubbornness of the old reivers about it, and just as the Highlander in his times of greatest adversity stuck to his pipes, so the pipes seem determined to stick to the Highlanders in spite of the tendencies of latter-day civilisation. The love of the Highlander for his pipes is too deep-rooted to vanish simply because circumstances change. When Rob Roy lay a-dying, and when an old enemy came to see him, he had himself decked out in his plaid and claymore, and when the interview was over, “Now,” said he, “let the piper play _Cha til ma tulidh_,” and he died before the dirge was finished. That spirit has lived through the many changes that have taken place since Rob Roy’s day, and it lives in a modified form now. Nothing will make a Scottish audience, especially a Scottish audience far from home, cheer as the pipes will, and no sound is so welcome at an open-air gathering, or to the wandered Scotchman, as the wild notes of the national instrument. In the preface to one collection of Highland music we are told of a well-known Edinburgh man, discreetly referred to as “W— — B——, Esq.,” who was at the time the most exquisite violinist in Scotland. Even at the venerable age of eighty-three, whenever he heard the sound of the pipes he hastened to the place, and after giving the