wars that arose after the union of the crowns in 1603. At Killiecrankie-almost exactly two hundred years ago-an army, composed chiefly of Highlanders, but commanded by Dundee, was victorious over the Whig army, led by an able officer and thorough Highlander, General Mackay. When Prince Charles Edward made his brilliant but unhappy fiasco in 1745-6, the number of clansmen that sympathised with the cause of King George was probably not much less than the number of those who rose for the Chevalier. And all this was on account of the feeling that no one chief should be allowed to bear the sway over all. It may be supposed that this says very little for the capacity of the Celtic races to take a share in ruling the world. We shall see in a little how this overgrowth of an independent spirit has been tempered into manageable proportions.

With the Teutons, as we have seen, the love of freedom has been no less strong than with the Celts, but it has been accompanied by an equally strong desire for order and settled government. We are accustomed to regard the Germans as a thoughtful, cautious race, whose delight is in philosophy, music, and, generally speaking, all that pertains to civilisation. And upon the whole the estimate is correct. The natural disposition of the people is towards the arts of peace. To Germany we are indebted for leading the van in nearly all the great movements of thought that have taken possession of the minds of men. And, in order to avoid any allusion that may suggest controversy, it may be enough to say that Germany has for many centuries been the chief civiliser of the world. Let it not be supposed that this throws any discredit on our own country, for everybody knows that the English are really a people of Teutonic descent, and that by their union with Scotland they have secured for our nation the two chief elements of national greatness.

But it is remarkable that the relations subsisting between the two principal branches of the Japhetic race have, for the most part, been of a hostile nature. Indeed, it has only been in modern times, and in peculiar circumstances, that any kind of union between them has taken place. That union has been chiefly confined to English-speaking nations, and, even within these limits, Ireland forms a partial exception. The Irish difficulty, though closely connected with the subject of the present enquiry, must be left out of account, as it is a political problem that causes an unpleasant difference of opinion. We need not, however, hesitate to remark that the troubles of Ireland have arisen almost wholly from the ancient, and not yet quite extinct, feud between Celt and

Teuton. This feud appears in history as early as the fourth cen tury A.D., when the Franks, a German tribe, began to threaten the decaying power of Rome in Gaul. These Franks, with the firmness and energy of their race, made themselves masters of the land, to which they gave the mediæval name of France, which it is likely to bear during the rest of its history. France did not lose her identity as a nation when thus overrun. On the contrary, this was the turning point at which her career began as one of the great Powers of the world. From the fifth century to the close of the eighteenth the French monarchs held the reins, many of them with great ability and distinguished success, raising their country step by step, till France, under Louis XIV., was perhaps the most powerful nation in Europe. The age of splendour was followed by the disastrous war of the Spanish succession; and the misrule of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. brought the kingdom of Clovis to an end.

Not to digress any further, it is interesting to notice the results of the Frankish invasion. As the Norman conquerors of England combined with the Saxons whom they found there, so the Franks, on assuming the sovereignty of France, became part of the people over whom they ruled. Hence the greatness to which the country attained. The two essentials were introduced. Freedom and order were established, and the heavy yoke of Rome was thrown off for ever. But France was, and still is, Celtic to the core. Consequently she has never been able to keep up a good understanding with Germany. As the Normanised England became the inveterate foe of France, so the German power, once set up in France, became more Celtic than the Celts themselves in hating the country beyond the Rhine. It is not difficult to see circumstances that tended to strengthen this mutual distrust. There was, for one thing, the rivalry that was natural, and almost inevitable, between the two leading nations of the continent. Further, in process of time a sort of alliance sprang up between England and Germany, which was equally natural between two countries who had a common ancestry, whose languages were closely connected, and who latterly were drawn together by the Reformation in the sixteenth century. It was not possible that the friend of England could at any time be the friend of France. With all these considerations, it is not strange that the French and Germans should for so long a time have lived in a state of chronic warfare. The fire has not yet burnt out. The stirring scenes of Metz and Sedau were the consequences of the strife that led to the battle of Jena, and the fall of the Prussian capital before

Napoleon Bonaparte. And when the Prussian king was crowned as Emperor, in the palace of Versailles, a new score was begun, which France is only too eager to wipe out again.

Union between the two races has often been tried on the continent of Europe, but never with decided success. The attempt has generally been like trying to unite fire and water. Charlemagne, King of the Franks, was also Emperor of Germany from the year 800 till his death in 814. But the wide dominion which yielded to his valour and genius, was again divided almost as soon as his master hand was taken away. Anyone who has read "Morley's Dutch Republic," knows what was the result of the endeavours made by Philip the Second of Spain to hold the Teutons of Holland in the same leash with the Belgian Celts. That was a most striking instance of failure, for it was one in which the outside pressure was so tremendous that, if it had been possible to weld the two into one, the thing would have been done. The whole power of Spain was brought down upon William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and his faithful Hollanders-and Spain was a much greater Power in those days than she has ever been since then. Indeed, it may be said that the desperate effort that she made at that time to hold the Dutch in bondage was too much for her, and that she has not yet recovered from the effects of the struggle. During the present century again, the experiment has been tried. of making a kindgom. of the Netherlands out of Holland and Belgium. The union lasted for about half a generation, and then the two ill-assorted partners separated, not to be united again, in our time at least. And the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 became the occasion of separating another connection of a somewhat similar kind. Alsace, a German province, with strictly German inhabitants, became a part of France in the time of Louis XIV., about two centuries earlier. France's difficulty became Germany's opportunity, and the Alsatians once more entered into the community of the German States, that were joined into a mighty empire under the veteran Kaiser William, the fame of whose army made all the world to ring.

Enough has been said on this point. We have spoken of the relations of the two races in foreign lands. It remains to be seen, and will perhaps be more interesting to know, how they have fared in our own country. Here we find that the course of events has been different, and that the difference has been for the most part to our advantage. Owing to our insular position, a coalition of Celts and Teutons in Great Britain was possible, and in process of time became an accomplished fact. Yet even here the rivalry

was difficult to kill, and it retained its vitality for many ages, to the great loss of both races. We have a deeply rooted habit of thinking of our own nation as the greatest in the world. This is certainly pardonable, as we have good grounds for our belief. But we are apt also to think that this pre-eminence has been ours for an indefinite period, extending to remote antiquity, which is an error as ridiculous as it is gigantic. If we look back for three hundred years we find that England and Scotland were two separate nations that had, from the dawn of their history, been almost constantly at war with each other. Divided as they were,

it was not possible for either of them to exercise much influence in the councils of Europe. Scotland had a kind of alliance with France for many years, partly, no doubt, owing to the Celtic element in the two nations, but chiefly due to the fact that England was the common enemy of both. This alliance may have been very profitable to France, but was not at all beneficial to the smaller country. It could never make up for the want of power that was caused by the constant jealousy and enmity that our ancestors cherished against their neighbours on the south of the Tweed.

In the year 1603 the two crowns were united, and James VI. became the sole monarch of Great Britain. But for the next hundred years things were worse than before. The union of the crowns did not bring with it a union of the people. Disunion bore its natural fruit, and England became a smaller power than she had ever been since the Norman conquest. It is only when we read history with attention that we see how low our standing as a nation was during the reigns of the Stuart dynasty. Spain, and France, and Holland, by turns swayed the destinies of the world, while we were exercised with contests between Cavaliers and Roundheads, or between Resolutioners and Protesters. Even at this distance of time it is with a sense of humiliation that we remember how the Dutch sent their fleet into the Thames, and threatened the liberty of the Metropolis, while Charles the Second was trifling his life away in the palace. We may be glad that the follies of those days gave place to something like earnestness of purpose in a succeeding age.

The fusion of races was a work of time, and till it was carried out there was little but violence and disorder to be recorded in our annals. It is interesting to notice how the two contending races at last came to be made one, and what happy results followed from the change. With the union of the crowns came a sense of power in the minds of the people. It is not to be supposed that

A

the union alone brought this about, for there were other causes at work. During the second half of the sixteenth century an enormous advance had been made in learning and civilisation. The art of printing had made knowledge more easy of attainment than it had ever been before. And it is hardly necessary to do more than mention that the literature of the Elizabethan age will be famous so long as the English language is remembered. All this, of course, opened the eyes of the people to see their own power, to the existence of which they had in the past been strangely blinded. The Stuarts-most unwisely for themselvestried to stem the current of public feeling. The result was civil war, followed by a series of revolutions. A king was beheaded, and it seemed as if the monarchy was overthrown for ever. short term of republicanism was followed by the restoration of the royal house to power, a restoration which only paved the way for the great revolution of 1688. The throes and convulsions through which the nation passed while these events were taking place, had one good effect which compensates for all the evil which they did. The troubles of the seventeenth century made it impossible for Celts and Teutons to remain separate any longer. It was evident that national ruin was at the door unless national union were resorted to. That union came about in 1707, when the two Parliaments were made one, and the Scottish legislature in Edinburgh ceased to exist. The change was, to use words that have become famous, "the end of an auld sang."

But it was a great deal more than that, for it was the birth of a new nation, the greatest that the world has ever seen. To unite the Celts with the Teutons was a work that had often been tried in vain. The attempt failed on the Continent because on the Continent there was always plenty of elbow room. When one race was worsted by the other the vanquished people could simply move a little further away. There was plenty of natural boundaries of mountain ranges and mighty rivers that helped to keep up the separation. To this day, then, we see the French and Germans continuing, not at all to the credit either of their heads or their hearts, the feud of their ancestors of a thousand years ago. In our island circumstances were different. Here the bounds were narrow, and encircled by the adamantine wall of the ocean. Fusion was inevitable in "this precious stone set in the silver It was only a question of time, and that time came in the days of Queen Anne, when Britain first became the ruling power of the world. The splendid series of victories achieved by Marlborough, the first really great triumphs of our arms since

sea."