The progress made in the Lowland districts of Scotland since the same period has been no less remarkable. If the state of the country, as we have above described it from authentic documents, be compared with what it is now, it will be found that there are few countries which have accomplished so much within so short a period. It is usual to cite the United States as furnishing the most extraordinary instance of social progress in modem times. But America has had the advantage of importing its civilization for the most part ready made, whereas that of Scotland has been entirely her own creation. By nature America is rich, and of boundless extent; whereas Scotland is by nature poor, the greater part of her limited area consisting of sterile heath and mountain. Little more than a century ago Scotland was considerably in the rear of Ireland. It was a country almost without agriculture, without mines, without fisheries, without shipping, without money, without roads. The people were ill-fed, half barbarous, and habitually indolent. The colliers and salters were veritable slaves, and were subject to be sold together with the estates to which they belonged. What do we find now? Praedial slavery completely abolished; heritable jurisdictions at an end; the face of the country entirely changed; its agriculture acknowledged to be the first in the world; its mines and fisheries productive in the highest degree; its banking a model of efficiency and public usefulness; its roads equal to the best roads in England or in Europe. The people are active and energetic, alike in education, in trade, in manufactures, in construction, in invention. Watt's invention of the steam engine, and Symington's invention of the steam-boat, proved a source of wealth and power, not only to their own country, but to the world at large; while Telford, by his roads, bound England and Scotland, before separated, firmly into one, and rendered the union a source of wealth and strength to both. At the same time, active and powerful minds were occupied in extending the domain of knowledge,--Adam Smith in Political Economy, Reid and Dugald Stewart in Moral Philosophy, and Black and Robison in Physical Science. And thus Scotland, instead of being one of the idlest and most backward countries in Europe, has, within the compass of little more than a lifetime, issued in one of the most active, contented, and prosperous,--exercising an amount of influence upon the literature, science, political economy, and industry of modern times, out of all proportion to the natural resources of its soil or the amount of its population.