their miserable and filthy huts, their scanty and poor food, their tattered and insufficient clothes, their lean cattle and meagre crops, their country wet above and below, their apparent want of all amusements and of anything to lighten their cheerless condition, and the oppressive exactions of their chiefs, the Highlanders as a body certainly do not seem to have been an unhappy or discontented people, or to have had any feeling of the discomfort attending their lot.[51] There seems to have been little or no grumbling, and it is a most remarkable fact that suicide was and probably is all but unknown among the Highlanders. Your genuine Highlander was never what could strictly be called a merry man; he never had any of the effervescence of the French Celt, nor of the inimitable never failing light-hearted humour of his Irish brother; but, on the other hand, under the old system, at heart he showed little or no discontent, but on the contrary seems to have been possessed of a self-satisfied, contented cheerfulness, a quiet resignation to fate, and a belief in the power and goodness of his chief, together with an ignorance and contempt for all outside his own narrow sphere, that made him feel as happy and contented as the most comfortable peasant farmer in France. They only became discontented and sorely cut up when their chiefs,--it being no longer the interest of the latter to multiply and support their retainers,--began to look after their own interests solely, and show little or no consideration for those who regarded them with reverence alone, and who thought their chief as much bound to support and care for them and share his land and his bread with them, as a father is to maintain his children. After the heritable jurisdictions were abolished, of course everything was changed; but before that there is every reason to believe that the Highland tenants and cottars were as contented and happy, though by no means so well off, as the majority of those in the same condition throughout the United Kingdom. Indeed the evils which prevailed formerly in the Highlands, like all other evils, look far worse in prospect (in this case retrospect) than they do in reality. Misery in general is least perceived by those who are in its midst, and no doubt many poor and apparently miserable people wonder what charitable associations for their relief make so much fuss about, for they themselves see nothing to relieve. Not that this misery is any the less real and fruitful of evil consequences, and demanding relief; it is simply that those who are in the midst of it can’t, very naturally, see it in its true light. As to the Highlands, the tradition remained for a long time, and we believe does so still in many parts, that under the old regime, chiefs were always kind as fathers, and the people faithful and loving as children; the men were tall and brave, and the women fair and pure; the cattle were fat and plentiful, and the