Saxon and Norman colonization, from the east and south lands and Islands, as will be evident to those who of Scotland.* choose to consult Rymer's Fœdera Angliæ, the Rotuli Scotiæ, and Robertson's Index of Charters by the Kings of Scotland. From the latter work, and other authorities, it would be no difficult task to prove the complete as far as regards the holding of lands-prior to the reign of Robert III. The Lords of the Isles, it is well known, granted charters to their different relations and vassals, sometimes limited to heirs of a particular marriage— sometimes without limitation: at one time to be held of That the occupation of the Hebrides for centuries, by an enterprising and warlike race like the Norwegians, should have led to no mixture of blood between them and the aboriginal Celts, or whatever other people the Scandi-establishment of the feudal system in the Highlands— navian conquerors found in these islands, is a supposition not only too absurd to call for lengthened refutation, but, besides, directly contrary to known facts. The M'Leods have long boasted their Norwegian descent; and if the great Somerled was not himself sprung from the same race, as has been frequently asserted, he certainly mar-themselves—at another to be held of the crown. These ried a Scandinavian princess, (through whom, indeed, came his claim to the Isles ;) consequently his undoubted descendants, and they form the most numerous tribe the Highlands ever saw, are, to say the least, not unmixed Celts. The effects of the colonization from the south and east of Scotland, if less direct, must still have been sensibly felt; and, although without going so far as some who would not leave us one family of Celtic descent in the Highlands, we may safely affirm that the establishment of such families as the Comyns in early, and the Gordons and Menzieses (or Mannerses) in more recent times, must have been followed by a corresponding mixture between them and the Celtic race. The prevalence of the Gaelic language is no sound argument that a mixture has not taken place. It only goes to show that the mass of the lower classes continued to use their old language, in preference to that of foreign conquerors or settlers; and that the same thing happened in the Highlands of Scotland to the Norse and Saxon tongues, as in England to the language of the Norman conquerors, or in Ireland to that of the numerous and powerful descendants of such English settlers as established themselves by marriage or otherwise without the pale. But to what purpose do so many Scottish Highlanders assert, in the face of facts like these, the purity of their Celtic blood-and deny their descent from Scandinavian ancestors? Were these Scandinavians then so ignoble-so little distinguished—so inferior to the Celts-that to be descended from them is accounted dishonourable? On the contrary, it ought to be the proudest boast of every Highlander, that he belongs to a people who have on innumerable occasions vindicated their claim to a descent from the most enterprising and gallant race that the world has seen since the decline of the Roman empire-those heroes who, issuing from the coasts of Norway and the shores of the Baltic, established thrones for themselves in every corner of Europe! Nor is an Anglo-Saxon or AngloNorman ancestry less honourable or less distinguished. retainers generally got their charters confirmed by the crown; and on the forfeiture of the family of the Isles, such of them as did not previously hold of the crown, received, with few exceptions, after the annexation of the lordship, new charters from the king as Lord of the Isles. In every district of the Highlands and Isles, there were royal bailies and chamberlains for the collection of the king's rents, feu-duties, and feudal casualties; and the Highland chiefs were well acquainted with the value of certain documents called Gifts of Ward and Marriage— of Nonentries—and of Escheat; which they used in many cases for the purpose of extending their family influence. The great object of the chiefs was to have the superiority, or freeholding of all the lands occupied by their respective clans,—and thus to ensure the dependence upon them of the chieftains or elders of the tribes. The latter, on the other hand, were naturally desirous of becoming themselves freeholders, and domestic feuds were not unfrequently the consequence of their being successful. All these facts, which admit of easy proof, show that the feudal system was, not only in name, but in fact, introduced among the Highland tribes much earlier than is generally supposed. What then were the effects of this system upon the inhabitants? One great effect was, as we have already noticed-and as a very slight inspection of any of the controversial works published by Highland chiefs will show-that the chiefship gradually became, in almost every instance, a territorial honour. This at least appears to have been the general rule. There were, no doubt, frequent exceptions to this rule, arising from the Celtic manners of the mass of the people, which led them to prefer their ancient law of tanistry to the feudal law, and, upon important occasions, to indulge that preference by choosing their chief from the nearest of kin to the feudal heir, when the latter happened not to be agreeable to the clan. Upon such occasions, illegitimacy was no bar to the object of their choice attaining the station of chief, as might be illustrated by numerous instances; but it should be noticed, that as most of the alleged cases of illegitimacy occur during the period immediately preceding the Reformation, they may have arisen from obstacles thrown in the way of marriage by the ecclesiastics, at a time when the abuses of the Church of Rome had reached their height, and may have been only considered disqualifications under the canon, not under the civil law. It would be somewhat difficult otherwise to account for some facts which appear in several Highland genealogies, unless we were to suppose We come now to consider the introduction of the feudal system into the Highlands, and its effects on the people. Several charters are extant, granted by King Alexander III., of lands in the Highlands; and in the reign of this prince, in 1263, mention is made by the Norwegian author of the account of Haco's expedition, of one of the great lords of the Hebrides holding lands both of Alexander and Haco, and offering to resign those he held of the latter, as he could not serve both kings, and had chosen to stand or fall with the Scottish monarch.-which is hardly admissible-that marriage was very This fact shows the establishment of the feudal system in the Hebrides. and adjacent Highlands even at that early period, and many more from the same, or equally good, authority might be adduced. In the public documents regarding the disputes between Baliol and Bruce -in those of the reign of Baliol-but more particularly in those of the reign of Bruce, we have ample proof of the prevalence of the feudal system in the High.. * Another cause of mixture may be here alluded to, one very familiar to the Irish antiquaries, and which must have affected the Dalriadic Scots before their settlement in Argyle; viz. that arising from the early colonization of Ireland by the Belge, or Firbolgs, as they are styled by the Irish annalists-a people whose remains are by many considered as proving them incontestably to have been a branch of the great Gothic or Teutonic race. lightly regarded among the Highlanders. Whatever the case may be in regard to illegitimacy, it is at least certain that, in feudal times, the best and only real title to the chiefship of a clan, was possession, in whatever way acquired, if recognised by the body of the clan. Thus, if the clan so pleased, an heiress might carry the honour to her husband's family, as in the case of the Clanchattan ; or several sons might be disinherited, and a distant relation called to the succession, as happened in the same tribe at a later period. Having come to this conclusion, we are naturally tempted to enquire what was so peculiarly Celtic in the Highland system of clanship? Certainly not the succes sion of the chiefs, for the principal rule, as we have seen, was derived from the feudal system. The truth is, clanship, in its modern acceptation, was nearly as prevalent in the Lowlands as in the Highlands. We frequently read in the acts of Parliament, of the Border clans, and, with the exception of the occasional appearance of the law of tanistry among the Highlanders, and of certain Celtic predilections, which led every man dwelling under a Highland chief to call himself by the surname of his landlord, thereby increasing the apparent numbers of the blood-relations of the chief, the Johnstones and Armstrongs seem to differ from the M'Donalds and M'Leans, chiefly in name, dress, and language. Deadly feuds were alike prevalent among them; and the slaughter of a chief, or even of a clansman, was equally considered as calling upon the whole clan for revenge.-It does not, indeed, appear, that the custom of keeping bards, or that of fosterage, ever prevailed in the Lowlands generally, in modern times. These were decidedly Celtic customs; but there can be no doubt that, like the taking of Calps, they prevailed in Galloway and Carrick,* (where Gaelic was spoken in the reign of Queen Mary,) to a comparatively recent period and we may therefore presume, that they obtained all over Scotland before the Anglo-Saxon colonization, and could only have become obsolete by degrees. It is a singular fact, and one well worthy of notice in considering the subject of clanship, that in most, if not all, of the Highland genealogies, the founder of the family —the individual from whom all the clan boast to be descended-flourished since the introduction of the feudal system, and, in many cases, centuries after that event. In these circumstances, the clans, thus gradually arising, could not fail to be affected by the feudal laws and customs; and it may thus be a question, whether clanship, as it existed in the Highlands in later times, and also in the Lowlands, as we have seen, was not as much a consequence of the feudal system as derived from Celtic customs. On the whole, it would appear that, from the mixture of races, and the introduction of the feudal system, the inhabitants of the Highlands, although speaking a Celtic dialect, have gradually departed more and more from the pure Celtic model, and consequently cannot be looked upon in the same light as the Irish tribes, among many of whom the law of tanistry, gavelkind, and other Celtic customs-untouched by the feudal system-prevailed to a comparatively recent period. SHAKSPEARE'S BIRTHDAY. For a month proverbially consecrated to folly, April has been strangely fertile in great men. They grow in clusters like nuts. Thus, the 22d is the birthday of Henry Fielding, the 23d, of Shakspeare, and the 24th, of Oliver Cromwell. What an association! The Hogarth of authors beside him who combined the varied excellencies of all his tribe; and both beside him who wrote his stern thoughts with sword-blows. Shakspeare is the greatest riddle that the world has known. People think they know the author of the plays that bear his name, because a name, and nothing more, is attached to them; and they thought that they did not know the author of the Waverley Novels, because Sir Walter Scott would not confess to them-it is strange to what a degree we are the slaves of words. What have we of Shakspeare but the name, and two or three anecdotes, the one half of which gives us no idea of the man, and the other is of doubtful authority. Shakspeare's plays are the voice of nature, that every one feels—and so Complaints were made to Parliament, in the year 1489, by the lieges dwelling in Galloway and Carrick, against certain gentlemen, "Heddis of Kyn," for taking of "Cawpis ;" and measures were taken to put a stop to this exaction. The Calp was an acknowledgment of chiefship, and equivalent to the Heriot. It continued to be raised by many of the Highland chiefs in the beginning of the last century; and there are instances of it in Wales to this day. little does any thing we know of himself chain us down to an individual author, that we feel, in reading them, they may be viewed as spontaneous growths, as well as the merest "primrose by the river's brim." There is something mythological and pleasing in the thought; and the identity of the dramas with nature harmonizes with it. In other plays, however natural and skilful the plot, however true the passion, there is something in their cut-and-dry arrangement, and in the vague universality of their imagery, that reminds us their home and dwelling-place is in the pasteboard and canvass world of the stage. But Shakspeare's plays, although firmly knit and framed, containing nothing that does not tend to the denouement, seem to the unobservant eye to ramble on in an easy gossiping way to the close; and they are redolent of meadows and woods. They ought to be performed as Milton's Comus was, on the greensward, before some tangled grove. The reality of their poetry is so strong, that the make-shifts of the stage show poorly off beside it. The question has been started, whether Shakspeare was conscious of his own powers. A certain knot of critics will have it, that he was something like his own Touchstone, that he could not “be 'ware of his wit till he broke his shins over it," and that this accident never befel him. They argue, that he was well on in the years of manhood before he betook him to the rhyming trade; that he threw out his good things as want forced him; that he was a jolly fellow and fond of company; that he retired, long before he could be called an old man, to his native place, abandoning literary labour, and leaving his works to take care of themselves. All this is very ingeniously notedbut let us hear Shakspeare himself. He was not insensible to the arrogance with which persons engaged in the active business of life were apt to look down upon those whose business it was to mimic their strut and pretensions. It appears from his hundred and eleventh sonnet, that he felt deeply the unjust contempt with which actors were regarded in his time. "O for my sake, do thou with fortune chide, But he seems also to have felt that his jovial and mercurial disposition exposed him to the censure of the sourer sort nearly as much as his profession. Witness the fullowing sonnet: ""Tis better to be vile, than vile esteem'd, I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel; All men are bad, and in their badness reign." One so sensitive to public opinion was not likely to come so frequently before its tribunal in the character of a dramatic author, without seeking to scan his own merits. No one who reads Shakspeare will accuse him of want of variety; but we find uniformly that those least apt to repeat themselves, are also the least easily satisfied with their own efforts. In one of his sonnets. we find him taxing himself with monotony of style and thought, and seeking to obviate the objection by what has rather the air of a forced conceit : "Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So is my love still telling what is told.” But the most desponding appreciation of his own poetry to which we find him giving vent, is in his thirtysecond sonnet. "If thou survive my well-contented day, O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought! But since he died, and poets better prove, SIR HENRY JARDINE in the Chair. Present, The Hon. Lord Meadowbank; Drs Carson, Alison, Borthwick, Keith, Huie; Messrs J. T. GibsonCraig, Sivright, W. Allan, Maidment, Laing, Stevenson, Macdonald; Rev. Mr Chapman, and many others. SEVERAL donations having been announced by the curator, the secretary read some extracts from a letter addressed to him by Lieut.-General Ainslie, F.S. A., Scot. from Paris, mentioning that several of the corresponding members of the Society had received gold medals, and other prizes, from the Institute of France, for essays on subjects of antiquarian research. A communication from the Rev. W. J. D. Waddilove, of Bracon-Grange, was read, which contained some remarks suggested by the perusal of Dr Hibbert's Essay on the Lawtings of Orkney and Shetland, printed in the Society's Transactions, vol. iii. To this succeeded some notices from the Public Records regarding James Monteith, the manufacturer of the brass gun, dated Edinburgh, 1642, which was taken at the last siege of Bhurtpore, and now lies in the Society's Museum-communicated by Mr Macdonald. The Secretary next drew the attention of the meeting to an address read before the Royal Irish Academy, hy John D'Alton, Esq. of Dublin, On the Necessity of publishing the Ancient Annals, &c. of Ireland," and stated that Mr D'Alton was anxious to have the opinions of all those who take an interest in the history of Ireland, on the best mode of carrying this desirable object into effect. The same gentleman then read his remarks on the clanship of the Highlands. Our readers will find this able and important paper in the department of to-day's Journal entitled Miscellaneous Literature. The regular business being concluded, Lord Meadowbank recounted to the meeting the circumstances connected with a late discovery in Fair Isle, Shetland, of a number of Anglo-Saxon coins, found almost under the same circumstances as the pose of 'Baby Yellowley," mentioned in the Pirate, (vol. iii. p. 54,) and near the spot assigned in the novel for that lady's babitation. As this treasure was discovered considerably beneath the present surface of the ground, and as no Shetland annals give any account of its being deposited, the coincidence certainly implicates Sir Walter in a connexion with uncannie means of receiving information. It is well for him that witchcraft is no longer penal. There was a thoughtful expression in Lord Meadowbank's eye while telling his story, which seemed expressive of a regret that the circumstances could not now be expiscated in a court of justice. EDINBURGH DRAMA. We know not what we can well say of Young in addition to our previous criticisms, except that his last appearance was his best. "Nought on the stage so much became him as the leaving of it." We speak both of his powerful performance in Hamlet, and of his manly and sensible leave-taking speech. In lieu of all remark, therefore, we this week present our readers with a fly-leaf, containing three heads of Young-in Hamlet, Brutus, and Macbeth -drawn by a young artist of some promise, and lithographed by our own Forrester-the unequalled in this department of art. We offer this trifle as a pledge of our desire to exert ourselves to the utmost, and as a respectful tribute to an amiable man, and an accomplished actor. SPRING-LADIES' DRESSES-"CAULLER OYSTERS" enough to make him proud of the relationship, alternately -BATHING. IN youth we love the darksome lawn, Brush'd by the owlet's wing; Then, twilight is preferr'd to dawn, Sad fancies do we then affect, In luxury of disrespect, To our own prodigal excess Of too familiar happiness. But something whispers to my heart, Whose home is in the breast! A claim to her disparagement! While blossoms and the budding spray Still as we nearer draw to life's dark goal, Be hopeful spring the favourite of the soul! There is profound knowledge of human nature in these beautiful lines. In youth we rather attribute our own feelings to external nature, than receive impressions from it. There is a fulness in all our sensations and feelings, the overflow of which constitutes our sufficient happiness. This we see strongly exemplified in children -the boy makes a gallant steed of papa's staff, the girl, already foreboding her true sphere, lavishes a mother's care and tenderness upon a boot-jack-they constitute to themselves that happiness for which, in after life, they must be beholden to others. The same thing holds in youth. It is not the green wood, or the dreamy stream, that pleases the stripling between boy and man-he haunts the one or the other because there he can indulge in the reverie of passion most secure from interruption. But if youth be incapable of justly appreciating the comparative merits of different seasons and objects, because it is too apt to see a beauty reflected from the glowing tints of its own happiness in every thing; advanced age is an equally fallible judge, for a very different reason. As the shrivelled frame and decreasing vital heat render it pleasant to bask in some sunny nook, so does the drying up of natural affection force man to have recourse to extra excitement. The ready kindness does not gush forth spontaneously as in younger days-it needs to be conjured up by some fair child, reminding the old man of what he once was, perhaps recalling the halfextinguished remembrance of his first love, beautiful teasing and caressing him. For one in this last stage of life, Spring hath a beauty not its own. It is the season of hope. In the prime of life alone is man capable of duly appreciating beauty. The first impetuous thrill of passion is over, and he can look calmly upon external objects. But in the fulness of his strength he rests upon himself for happiness he feels no dependence upon foreign aid. Neither attributing to external sources the bliss of his own passionate imagination, nor needing to prop up his imbecility upon the bending and broken reeds of a perishable world, he is more likely to estimate every, thing at its true rate. He sees nature neither in the indistinct haze of dawn nor twilight, but in the broad light of noon. Viewed thus, independently of fanciful and arbitrary associations, spring, though differing in character from autumn, has charms noways inferior. There can be no more beautiful object in nature than a wood presents at this moment of our writing. The leaves are sufficiently disclosed to form, when viewed at a distance, broad continuous masses of the most delicate green; and these appear set in circlets of rich brown, formed by the stems and yet unclothed branches of the trees. The grass is of the most vivid emerald. The fallow fields of a rich brown, glossy where the share has lately passed. The crows are hovering on the branches, lightly, restlessly, with their incessant and not unmusical note; or they are hopping behind the ploughman, their glossy plumage glancing in the sun. "The voice of the birds is heard in the land." The murmuring of waters is pleasant to the ear, as their rippled surface, glancing back the sunbeams, is a music to the eye. In the genial feeling of unwonted warmth, we can almost fancy ourselves growing with the trees, and expanding with the flowers. But the "signs of the times" are not confined to the country,-they have penetrated even into the stony heart of the town. In these balmy days, the whole of our fair population are, like so many butterflies, out and upon the wing. Amidst occasional sober-coloured cloth-pelisses, and remnants of fur, the light and variegated muslins of spring are beginning to show themselves. It is a season of transition; and, as in the woods, so in the city, some of our ornaments are later of donning their summer attire than others. How delightful it is to change, with the season, from one species of beauty to another! It were no easy matter to determine which is more fascinating;-a fair face sparkling out from the snug enclosure of its owner's somewhat cumbrous winter habiliments, or the sylph-like grace of a figure draped in robes pure and light as the wearer's heart. We wonder what is to be the fashion of bonnets this summer, for much depends upon a tasteful selection of that important article of dress. Rose-coloured bonnets are good, they reflect a richer tint upon the young cheek. Nor are those straw fabrics, framed like lattice-work with vacant interstices, to be despised. They diffuse "shadows and sunny glimmerings" over the speaking features, as the spray of the hawthorn does over the singing bird, quivering to its own ecstatic melody. Feathers, which add grace and dignity to a winter costume, ought now to be laid aside as too cumbrous for summer. Artificial flowers, most grateful in winter, are as inappropriate at this season, as rouge on the cheeks of sixteen. There is another sign of approaching summer weather, which strikes the ruder and more robust portion of the community-the men-monsters, we mean. But before we name it, we must beseech our fair readers to give this part of our story a fair hearing before they call us vulgar. Its commencement is, we acknowledge, rather startling, but we are not altogether without hopes of reconciling them to it by the time we have finished. One feels at this season a sort of lingering reluctance to shut one's self up in the theatre, however decided a haunter of that place of amusement during the winter months. The skies are so bright, the air so pleasant, that it seems madness to imprison one's self beside the red and bloated light of the gas lamps in an unnaturally close and over-heated atmosphere. And now for the plunge into the bathos as we walk loiteringly along Prince's Street, approaching Shakspeare Square with an uncertain, hesitating gait, the cries of the oyster-women fall less frequent and full upon the ear. The cry of these Naiads forms by no means one of the least marked distinctive features of the two seasons which immediately succeed the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Towards the close of September, as one walks homewards in the evening beneath the murky sky, the streets in a blaze with the united brilliancy of the lamps and the shopwindows, and thronged with passengers, this cry swells upon the ear full-toned and liquid. Musical in itself, it speaks to us of frequent merry meetings during the long nights of winter, in those taverns specially devoted to this dainty-those sole remaining specimens of the genuine old Edinburgh tavern-the only link that now binds us to the festivities of Pleydell, or even the more modern and less apocryphal revels of Sydney Smith. But in spring it rises feebly above the din of the streets. The months are nearly expired which have in their names the mystic R. The time of oysters is fleeting away; and their shrill heralds breathe the name in a tremulous whisper, like faithful servants fearful of disturbing by obstreperous clamour the deathbed of a beloved master, or like ministering spirits of the element, about to resolve themselves into the air of which they are a part. From oysters to the sea is a natural transition, and leads us to one of those pleasures which now beckon us to haste into summer. We entertain rather a contemptuous feeling towards that sort of pseudo-bathing, which consists of wading into the water till it rises breast high, then giving three breathless dips of the head beneath it, and rushing eagerly back to the shore. This is the species delighted in by fat elderly gentlemen, cockneys, and the tribe of shopkeepers and annuitants in small towns, who annually hire a cart or coach, (as their fashion may demand,) which they freight with all kinds of lumber, and drive to some straggling village by the sea-side, where, stowed, man, wife, and six children, in a confined room, with a clay floor, set round with beds, and serving the purposes of kitchen, parlour, and sleeping apartment of the whole family, they spend the dog-days for the benefit of their health. They may be rendered more wholesome by the dipping operation we have attempted to describe, but they have no more idea of bathing, than the poor consumptive wretch, who for the first time in his life has a few drops of generous wine administered to him as a cordial, has of the genial delight of quaffing nectarean bumpers amid a circle of merry friends. The true enjoyment of bathing is only felt when above the deep caves of ocean we are making our 66 easy winding path," or tumbling about in fantastic gambols, "like leviathans afloat on the brine." The variety of which this amusement is susceptible is incalculable. From the face of the perpendicular rock we throw our selves headlong; away we go downwards, downwards long fathoms, till we reach the sandy plain, and see by the dull green light, alternate brightness and shadow flickering on it as the tiny ripples at the surface rise and subside. Remaining here till our lungs are strained with inaction, we give ourselves way, and up we shoot like an arrow to the surface, and emerge again to the view of the spectators, dashing back the dripping hair from our forehead, rubbing our eyes, and inhaling long draughts of the fresh breeze. Or we allow ourselves to be swayed hither and thither by the huge undulations of the waves when the breeze blows strong from the seaward. Or we endeavour to breast the force of the mountain torrent, now borne along with its whirling waters, now stemming them for a while, and forcing a slanting path to the opposite brink. There is a sensation of pride and power in riding buoyantly upon the broad back of this huge monster, which howls and creeps incessantly around the firm land, and struggling with him in his fiercest moods, which the tame spirits who have never essayed to swim cannot even dream of. We have heard of teachers of swimming-nay, we have witnessed their operations. But a more ridiculous assumption we cannot conceive. Teach a man to swim! teach him to walk, breathe, or exercise any other natural and inevitable function. Man is a swimming animal as much as a duck or a Newfoundland dog. Toss him into the water, he floats naturally, and needs only a little recollection and self-possession to enable him to progress. We learn to swim insensibly by emulating our companions a little older than ourselves, as we learn every thing which is of use to us in life, except Latin, Mathematics, and a few other scraps and fag-ends of knowledge. Who ever heard of a teacher of the art of shooting grouse and partridges? We have seen some of these swimming schools in our day, as we remarked above, and precious exhibitions they are. A grown gentleman comes to a platform beside a muddy pool, and announces himself as a student. As soon as he is prepared for immersion, a broad belt is fastened round his waist, to which is attached a strong cord tied to a stout pole. The pupil is next directed to crawl down a flight of steps, and commit himself to the stagnant and fetid water. The "mighty master" takes his stand on the aforesaid platform, holding out his pole with the unhappy pupil dangling at the end of the cord attached to it—no unapt representation of a giant sitting on a rock, bobbing for whale. The scholar is now told to extend himself along the surface of the water, and strike with his legs and arms like a frog. He obeys, and in an instant his head is under the water. The pole has been placed meanwhile upon a rest, so that it may act as a lever, and no sooner is the accident noted, than with a jerk of the master's wrist his disciple is sprawling in the air, displaying his ungainly length in strange writhings and contortions. This interchange is repeated, till, between the alternate operations of drowning and strangulation, the patient is black in the face. He is then dismissed, with the assurance that, after he has received a few additional lessons, he will make an excellent swim |