between hills rising almost as bare and straight as walls on either side. In the Highlands even in the present day there are no towns of any importance, for the difficulty of access by land and the dangers of the coast have made commerce well-nigh impossible. The Highlanders, who were discouraged by the barrenness of their native mountains, where even untiring industry could only secure a bare maintenance, and tempted by the sight of prosperity so near them, found it a lighter task to lift the crops and cattle of their neighbour than to rear their own, and have at all times been much given to pillaging the more fortunate Lowlanders, of whom they were the justly dreaded scourge.

2. The People.—As the country is thus naturally divided into two parts distinctly opposite in character, so the people are made up of two distinct branches of the great Aryan family, the Celtic and the Teutonic. The Celts were the first comers, and were in possession when the country became historically known; that is, at the first invasion of the Romans. In later times we find three Celtic peoples in North Britain; to wit, the Picts, the Scots, and the Welsh. The Picts were those Celts who dwelt north of the Firths in Alba or Alban, as the earliest traditions call it; and if we judge from the names of places and contemporary accounts and notices, there is every reason to believe that they were more akin to the Gaelic than to the British branch of the Celtic race. The Scots, the other Gaelic people, were, when we first hear of them, settled in Ireland, from whence at different times bands of them came over to the western coast of Britain. They were friends and allies of the Picts, and are early mentioned as fighting on their side against the Romans. After a time, when many more Scots had settled in Alba, their name became common to all the Celts north of the Firths, and from them the whole country was called Scotland. The Celts south of the Firths were partly Christianized and civilized by the Romans, and thus became very different from the rest. They got their name of Welsh from the Teutonic tribes who came from the land between the Elbe and the Eyder, and, settling along the eastern coast, finally took possession of a great tract of country, and called the Celts whom they displaced Welshmen or foreigners. The Celts called all these new comers Saxons, though this was really only the name of one of the first tribes that came over; and as they gradually spread over the Lowlands, the word Saxon came to mean simply Lowlander. In course of time the original proportions of these two races have been nearly reversed, so that the modern Scottish nation, though it keeps its Celtic name, instead of being made up of three Celts to one Saxon, is much more nearly three Saxons to one Celt.

3. Roman Occupation.—The Romans, who had already made themselves masters of South Britain, were led into the northern part of the island by Julius Agricola, a.d. 80. But the Celts whom they found there, and whom they called Caledonians, were so well able to defend themselves among their mountains that the Romans, though they defeated them in a great battle on the Highland border, gave up the idea of conquering the country, and retreated again south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde. Across the isthmus between the two, which is about thirty miles wide, they built a line of forts, joined by a rampart of earth. This rampart was intended to serve as a defence to their colonists, and as a boundary to mark the limit of their empire; though, as many Roman remains have been found north of the isthmus, they must have had settlements without as well as within the fortifications. But the Caledonians, who were too high-spirited to look on quietly and see their country thus taken possession of, harassed the colonists by getting over the wall and seizing or destroying everything they could lay their hands on. At length (a.d. 120) the Roman Emperor Hadrian built a second rampart across the lower isthmus, between the rivers Tyne and Solway, leaving the district between the two pretty much at the mercy of the fierce Picts, as the Romans now began to call the Caledonians. Twenty years later, in the reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, one of his generals, Lollius Urbicus, again drove them back beyond the first wall, and repaired and strengthened the defences of Agricola. But, before half a century had passed, the Picts again burst the barrier, and killed the Roman commander. In 208 the Emperor Severus cut his way through Caledonia with a large army. He reached the northern coast, but had no chance of fighting a battle, and lost many of his men. He repaired and strengthened the rampart of Hadrian. In time the Picts got over the second rampart too, and came south as far as Kent, where, in the latter part of the fourth century, Theodosius the Roman general, father of the famous Emperor of the same name, had to fight his way to London through their plundering hordes. Theodosius drove them back with great vigour, restored the Empire to its former boundary, and made the district between the walls into a Roman province, which he called Valentia, in honour of Valentinian, who was then Emperor. It was probably about this time that the great stone wall was built across the lower isthmus. The dangers which threatened the capital of the Empire in the beginning of the next century forced the Romans to forsake this as well as all their other provinces in Britain, and the withdrawal of their troops left the Romanized Britons of Valentia a helpless prey to their merciless enemies the Picts. At the end of the three centuries of Roman occupation, the Britons south of the Firths had so little in common with the wild Picts, who in Alba and in Galloway still maintained their independence, that they were like people of a different race. The one sect, though still savage and heathen, were as brave and fierce as ever; the other, though Christianized and civilized, were so degenerated from the vigour of the original stock that they were powerless to resist their more warlike kinsmen.

4. English Invasion.—In the sixth century the Angles came in great force and settled on the eastern coast of Valentia, and drove the Britons, or as they called them Welshmen, back to the Westland Hills. This district then between the Roman walls was thus divided between two kingdoms. The English kingdom of Northumberland, founded by Ida in 547, took in all the eastern part of the country south of the Forth; while the Welsh kingdom, called Strathclyde from the river that watered it, stretched from the Firth of Clyde southwards towards the Dee.

5. The Scots.—About the same time that the English were pouring in on the east, the Scots were settling all along the western coast. As the strait which separates Britain from Ireland is only twelve miles broad, the Scots could easily come over from Scotia, as Ireland was formerly called, to seek their fortune in the larger island. It is impossible to fix the date of their first coming, but it was not till the beginning of the sixth century that there came over a swarm numerous and united enough to found a separate state. This is one of the few Celtic migrations on record from west to east, and forms an exception to the general