Nothing of this description can be written of the history of Scottish institutions. They have, in large measure, disappeared, and it is not always easy to trace any influence in modern life which may fairly be attributed to the fact that they once existed. The constitutional history of Scotland is partially unrecorded and is, in any formal way, wholly unwritten. Of the constitution of the kingdom, as it was when the sixth James took his seat on the throne of Elizabeth, only one portion has survived to our own day. It is a large portion, for it comprises the legal and judicial system which furnishes so great a proof of the wisdom of our ancestors, and which still serves to differentiate a nationality that inventions and commerce have combined to destroy. All else has gone. There is still in Edinburgh "a ghost of speech" which reminds the curious that men once did more in the Scottish capital than merely administer the law; but the "Parliament House" is only a name--_vox et praeterea nihil_. The system of administration, the methods of finance, the royal prerogative, the Privy Council, the hereditary jurisdictions, have vanished. Local jealousies, clan and family hatreds, the hopes and fears of noble and burgess and peasant have ceased to find a place in the national records. The relations between Church and State, after undergoing numerous transformations, have been decided in accordance with the Revolution Settlement, and have once and again been modified under Queen Anne and under Queen Victoria. The General Assembly still meets, but it is not, and could not be, the General Assembly of John Knox or of Andrew Melville. The Royal Burghs maintain their wonted Conventions, but only to take counsel, and never to act. It is no longer possible to recognize the fabric of the constitution of the kingdom which King James left in 1603.