them, you recoil from this picture. But in what particular is it overdrawn? Are not these the inevitable consequences of the system you would pursue? Unless you imagine that, by some rule of Australian contrariety, there are countries in which every stimulant to vice will infallibly lead to a life of virtue, and climates in which the uncorrected human heart is not depraved.

All hope however, especially in youth, is not swept away so easily as your delusions. The experiment of removing juvenile vagabonds and delinquents to the colonies (but on a very different plan from that of transportation) has now been tried for a sufficient length of time, and on a sufficiently large scale, to encourage most justifiable expectations of permanent success. Hitherto indeed the exertions of the Society for the Refuge of the Destitute and of the Children's Friend Society have been limited by the resources of private charity: the risk and the difficulties were encountered by the zealous friends and founders of these institutions, amongst whom it would be unjust not to mention Mr. Crawford and Captain Brenton; their results are national benefits, which it becomes the nation to apply on a scale suited to the extent of the evil to be checked. The main features of the plan pursued by the Children's Friend Society, in the Asylums at Hackney Wick and at Chiswick, offer a considerable analogy to the plan upon which we would establish a general system of secondary punishments; though the penitentiary discipline for young offenders is naturally and necessarily less rigorous and less protracted than that which would be applied to more determined characters. Thirteen hundred and thirty children, taken from the purlieus of London and the gaols, have been received by the Society. They have there been subjected to a mild discipline (perhaps too mild,-though in this we differ from the amiable founders of the Asylum); they have received moral lessons and a certain share of instruction; they have been taught the happiness of constant industry, and practised in all the rural and domestic occupations; and they have thus been prepared for periodical emigration to various healthy colonies. The Victoria Asylum for girls at Chiswick is conducted on similar principles, though of course with certain modifications in the kind of education, and with some greater difficulties to en

counter than in that of the boys. Branch societies have been established at the Cape of Good Hope and in Canada, to receive them on their arrival, and to place them as apprentices and free labourers under respectable colonists. The demand for these juvenile emigrants considerably exceeds the supply; and those who have been sent out have succeeded so well that this demand has been continually increasing.

The sole argument against this charity is that it may offer a bounty to parental depravity and neglect: but parental depravity is wont to seek its profits in a far less justifiable manner. Children trained to criminal practices are a direct source of gain to their parents, who have taught and forced them to steal for that very purpose; and the main difficulty which the Children's Friend Society has to encounter arises from the culpable disinclination of bad parents to lose the infamous services of their children. The parental tie is too often, amongst such classes of the population, a detestable calculation of profit and loss, the profit being all on the side of the parent, and the loss on that of the child.

It was with cordial and unalloyed pleasure that we watched these reclaimed children at their healthful morning toil, when we were admitted to the privilege of visiting the grounds of Hackney Wick. Already the recollections of early want,—the stony bed, the uncertain meal, the baneful pleasures of guilt, and the rude company of noisome gaols,-seemed to have been obliterated from their minds. They shouldered with boyish. pride the mattock and spade, with which they were to go forth and conquer new tracts of the globe. Their imaginations were possessed with the one ennobling idea of future success in foreign countries: and when you have taught a human being to look forward with intelligent and virtuous confidence to a future, you have no more to dread from his past, he is already saved. These indeed are colonists which no settlement need dread or repel from its shores; and they who would otherwise grow up to be a curse to England, may powerfully contribute to found and extend future states not unworthy of her name.

We have dwelt at some length on this topic, because it is no longer doubtful that a penitentiary system will be adopted in this country for juvenile delinquents; although the recent reports of the inspectors of prisons show that the site

and the nature of that establishment are still undetermined. This is one step towards the diminution and final abolition of the transportation of convicts; and we trust that the time may arrive when Australia will be a nursing-mother, and a safe home, to the orphans and the reclaimed delinquents of our own country,-when England will have acknowledged the impolicy and the injustice of feeding with fresh supplies of corruption the great colonies of the eastern world.

ARTICLE V.

The History of Scotland.-By PATRICK FRASER TYTLER, Esq. Edinburgh, Vol. I. 1828,—Vol. VI. 1837; 8vo. THE early history of Scotland presents a variety of features which broadly and strongly distinguish it from the history of England. In the latter, even during its most unsettled periods, we trace the existence of an acknowledged law of succession, government and responsibility upon the part of the sovereign, modified by the capacity of the individual by whom for the time the sceptre was wielded,—of resistance on the part of the nobles, alternating between the abridgement of the royal prerogative on the one hand, and the suppression of the growing influence of their vassals upon the other,of a strenuous and systematic resolve upon the part of the community to assert their own independence, and, while yielding due respect to the guiding body, to establish the principle that all government, as it emanates from, must ultimately centre in, the people. Hence, in the revolutions to which England was subjected, either from abroad or from within, in the most rapid changes in its constitution, in its most brilliant successes or its most gloomy adversities, there almost always existed a predisposing cause so clearly manifested that the events to which it led seemed inevitable; and the mind, following the succession of cause and effect, is prepared for the result long before that result is announced. But it is not so with the history of Scotland. However distinguished by kingly attri

butes its sovereigns may be, however chivalrous its barons, however free and patriotic the body of its inhabitants, the annals of that nation are marked with events which set philosophy as well as probability at defiance, and reflect alternately the highest credit or the deepest disgrace upon its kings, its lords and its commons. With a comparatively undefined principle of government, with fewer authentic historians to record its events, and nearly deprived of the important light which is supplied by records and state papers, the history of Scotland presents a less instructive field than is afforded by the history of England. But while less instructive it is not less interesting; the very circumstances which tend to lessen its importance in the estimation of the philosopher, recommend it to the special attention of the lover of romance.

The 66

perfervidum ingenium Scottorum," manifested in every question affecting the honour of that people, is as discernible in its authors as its warriors. The fables which disfigure the pages of every writer, from Fordun to Buchanan, are to be attributed to a mistaken desire to magnify the antiquity and importance of the nation; and although this spirit may probably have originated in the desire to establish the independent succession of a remoter dynasty than was referred to by our Edward the First when he laid claim to the throne of Scotland, its influence has been felt long after its origin was forgotten. Sensitive to a fault in the discussion of every question affecting the antiquity or the honour of Caledonia,—for here the terms are to be regarded as synonymous,—the earlier Scottish historians gloried in shrouding their annals in a mist of fables, and conceived that they were discharging the duty of good and loyal subjects when they recorded the actions of Achaius or enumerated the writings of Veremundus. Be that as it may, the history of Scotland is in general obscure, and there are periods which, from a combination of causes, seem involved in inexplicable darkness. To rescue it from this situation and to place it upon a more secure basis is a task which, if satisfactorily performed, is sufficient to exercise to the uttermost the zeal and the judgement of a mind of no ordinary character.

Amongst the writers who have previously engaged in this field of research, Sir David Dalrymple, better known as Lord Hailes, stands eminently distinguished. His "Annals of Scot

"land from the accession of Malcolm Canmore to the acces"sion of the House of Stuart" bear marks of a powerful mind, keen, acute, discerning, capable of discovering the springs of actions by their effects, deducing important inferences from apparently insignificant premises. The historical literature of Scotland was at a low ebb when Lord Hailes produced his Annals. Writers such as Duff, Maitland and Guthrie were read, quoted and considered satisfactory. The legends of Boethius and Buchanan passed unquestioned, the authority of Blind Harry was decisive; and from the Tweed to John o' Groat's house there were few who ventured to doubt that Fergus the First ascended the throne three hundred and eighteen years before Christ, or that Iona became the refuge for classical learning after Rome was plundered by Attila. But a great and a happy revolution was produced by the publication of the Annals of Scotland; authentic historians and state papers were consulted, evidence was examined before it was admitted, conflicting testimony was weighed, and the truth, long hidden, was brought to light. But amidst much to praise there are imperfections to censure. The Annals are rendered uninviting by the terse, abrupt and disconnected form in which they are written; they are, in fact, rather materials for history than history itself. In style his Lordship labours after singularity more than elegance; there are too frequent attempts to say something smart or epigrammatic; and the pettishness with which he sometimes scolds rather than reasons, the zeal and pertinacity with which he attempts to defend dubious characters and measures, and his ungenerous endeavours to underrate not only the successes but the motives of his countrymen, show that his powers of reflection, however strong, were upon some occasions weaker than his caprice or his prejudice.

Pinkerton's reputation as an historian rests, as he himself admits, upon his "History of Scotland from the accession of "the House of Stuart to that of Mary." In research he was equal, perhaps superior, to Hailes, but in penetration and judgement he was infinitely inferior; hence his facts and references are more valuable than his reflections and deductions. Notwithstanding the defects of style under which this work labours, from an attempt upon the part of its author to in