know how to restrain my pen from offering that tribute which is due from those who love and honour virtue and genius to those who possess them.

"O let your spirit still my bosom soothe, Inspire my dreams, and my wild wanderings guide!

Your voice each rugged path of life can smooth;

For well I know wherever you reside, There harmony, and peace, and innocence abide."

I must end, as I began, with an apology for troubling you with this long

letter. If you shall think it worth answering, my friend will be proud to benefit by your instructions; if not, I shall at least have made an effort to serve him extremely gratifying to myself, as it gives me the opportunity of expressing the high respect I feel for your character, and of thanking you for the gratification I have received from the repeated perusal of your charming productions.-Believe me to be, with most sincere respect and regard, Sir, your very obedt. servt., T. E.

SIR,

I am favoured with your letter, and without pretending to touch upon the complimentary part of it, I can only assure you that I am much flattered by your thinking it worth while to appeal to me on a point of national antiquities. I am very partial to Chevy Chase, although perhaps Otterbourne might have afforded a more varied subject for the pencil. But the imagination of the artist being once deeply impressed with a favourite idea, he will be certain to make more of it than of any other that can be suggested to him. In attempting to answer your queries, I hope you will allow for the difficulty in describing what can only be accurately expressed by drawing, &c. &c. I shall at least have one good thick cloak under which to shelter my ignorance. greatly doubt the propriety of mourning cloaks-but a group of friars might with great propriety be introduced, and their garb would have almost the same effect. I am not aware there was any difference between the defensive armour of the Scots and English, at least as worn by the knights and men-at-arms; yet it would seem that the English armour was more gorgeous and shewy: they had crests upon the helmet before they were used in Scotland; and at the battle of Pinkie, Patten expresses his surprise at the plainness of the Scottish nobility's armour. I conceive something like this may be gained by looking at Grose's ancient armour, and selecting the more elaborate forms for the

I

English-the plate-armour for example; while the Scots might be supposed to have longer retained the ring or mail-armour. There should not be a strict discrimination in this respect, but only the painter may have this circumstance in his recollection. There are at Newbattle two very old pictures on wood, said to be heroes of the Douglas family, and one of them averred to be the chief of Otterbourne. The dress is very singular-a sort of loose buff jerkin, with sleeves enveloping the whole person up to the throat, very curiously slashed and pinked, and covering apparently a coat of mail. The figure has his hand on his dagger, a black bonnet with a feather on his head, a very commanding cast of features, and a beard of great length. The pictures certainly are extremely ancient, and belong to the Douglas family.

Query 2. The knights and men-atarms on each side wore the sword and lance, but the English infantry were armed with bows-the Scots with long spears, mallets, and twohanded swords; battle-axes of various forms were in great use among the Scots. The English also retained the brown bill, so formidable at the battle of Hastings; a weapon very picturesque, because affording a great variety of forms, for which, as well as for the defensive armour worn by the infantry of the period, see Grose, and the prints to Johnes's Froissart.

Query 3. Those of the followers of Douglas that are knights and men-at-arms, may have their hel

met at the saddle-bow, or borne by their pages-in no case in their hands. The infantry may wear their steel-caps or morions; the target or buckler of the archers, when not in use, was slung at their back like those of the Highlanders in 1745. I am not aware there was any particular mode of carrying their arms at funerals, but they would naturally point them downwards with an air of depression.

Query 4. The plaid never was in use among the Borderers, i. e. the Highland or tartan plaid; but there was, and is still used, a plaid with a very small cheque of black and grey, which we call a maud, and which, I believe, was very ancient; it is the constant dress of a shepherd, worn over one shoulder, and then drawn round the person, leaving one arm free.

Query 5. In peace the nobility and gentry wore cloaks, or robes richly furred, over their close doublets. The inferior ranks seem to have worn the doublet only; look at Johnes's Froissart, which I think you may also consult for the fashion of Lady Percy's garments. Stoddart some years ago painted a picture of Chaucer's Pilgrims, which displayed much knowledge of costume.

Query 6. I am not aware there was any prevailing colour among the peasantry of each nation; the silvan green will of course predominate among Percy's bowmen.

Query 7. The bonnet, the shape of that of Henry VIII., (but of various colours,) was the universal covering in this age. The following points of costume occur to my recollection in a border ballad, (modern, but in which most particulars are taken from tradition.) Scott of Harden, an ancient marauding borderer, is described thus:

"His cloak was of the forest green,
Wi' buttons like the moon ;
His trews were of the gude buckskin,
Wi' a' the hair aboon."

The goat-skin or deer-skin pantaloons, with the hair outermost, would equip one wild figure well enough, who might be supposed a Border outlaw. You are quite right respecting the badges, but besides those of their masters, the soldiers usually wore St George's or St Andrew's

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CCIII.

The two angry chieftains, especially Forster, drawing himself up in his pride and scorn, would make a good group, backed by the Tynedale men, bending and drawing their bows; on the sides you might have a group busied on their game, whom the alarm had not yet reached; another half disturbed; another, where they were mounting their horses, and taking to their weapons, with the wild character peculiar to the country.

This is, Sir, all, and I think more than you bargained for. I would strongly recommend to your friend, should he wish to continue such subjects, to visit the armouries in the Tower of London, where there are various ancient, picturesque, and curious weapons, and to fill his sketch-book with them for future use. I shall be happy to hear that these hints have been of the least service to him, or to explain myself where I may have been obscure. And I am, Sir, your very humble servant,

WALTER SCOTT. Edin. 8th Dec. 1811.

If Douglas's face is shewn, the artist should not forget the leading features of his family, which were an open high forehead, a long face, with a very dark complexion.

E

THE situation of Ireland has long demanded the anxious consideration of every well-wisher to his country. If we have not lately adverted to it, it is not because its convulsions and its sufferings have failed to excite our warmest sympathy, and the heroism of a large portion of its inhabitants our highest admiration; not because we are not fully alive to the imminent hazard to which it is exposed, and the indissoluble bond which has united its fortunes to that of this country; but because the pressure of danger and of overwhelming interests at home, has been such

as to absorb our exclusive attention. With the dagger at our own throats, we had no leisure to attend, and no space to devote, to any thing but our own misfortunes; not even to the concerns of the sister island, bound to us by every tie of kindred interest, and national sympathy.

The crisis of the moment, however, calls for instant attention; and the short intermission which it has afforded in the work of destruction, has given us some breathing time, of which we gladly avail ourselves to turn our eyes to the condition of this unhappy country, so richly gifted by nature, so fully fill ed with inhabitants, so deplorably pregnant with misery. The survey, while it is melancholy, is yet instructive; it points with unerring hand to the evils of popular insubor dination, and affords an example of the effects of democratic misrule, so awful, so glaring, that if the people of this country are not as blind and perverted as their flatterers tell them they are enlightened, they must perceive the fatal gulf, to the brink of which they are so madly hastening. The consideration of Irish history, and of the present condition of that island, is better calculated than any other topic to illustrate the principles for which we have so long and so strenuously contended; to point out the admirable effects of real free. dom, as contradistinguished from popular licentiousness and democratic tyranny; and to demonstrate the enormous evils arising not merely to

the higher but the lower orders, from those principles of anarchy and insubordination, which our rulers have spread with so unsparing and reckless a hand, for the last two years, through this once united and prosperous land.

That Ireland, though blessed with a rich soil and a temperate climate, though abounding in men, and overflowing with agricultural riches, is a distracted and unhappy country, is universally known. That it is overwhelmed with a beggarly and redundant population; that its millions are starving in the midst of plenty, and seem to live only to bring into the world millions as miserable and distracted as themselves, is matter of common observation, not only to all who have visited the country itself, but to all who have compared it with other states, even in the lowest stage of civilisation, and under circumstances generally supposed the most adverse to human improvement. That its population is redundant, as well as miserable to the very greatest degree, is demonstrated, not merely by the immense tide of emigration which annually flows over the Atlantic, but the enormous multitudes who are daily transported across the channel to overwhelm the already overpeopled shores of Britain. From Mr Cleland's admirable statistical work on Glasgow, it appears that there are no less than 35,000 Irish in that city, almost all in the very lowest rank, and humblest employments of life; and the proportion in the other great cities of the empire, Manchester, Bristol, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Edinburgh, is probably at least as great. Humboldt was the first who took notice of the extraordinary, and, but for his accuracy, almost incredible fact, that between the years 1801 and 1821, there was a difference of a million of souls between the increase of the population of Great Britain, as demonstrated by a comparison of the births and the deaths, and the actual increase of its inhabitants; a difference which he justly considers as chiefly owing to the immense influx of Irish

during that period. There is no instance on record of so great an inundation of inhabitants breaking into any country, barbarous or civilized, not even when the Goths and Vandals overwhelmed the Roman Empire.

It is in vain, therefore, to attempt to shake ourselves loose of Ireland, or consider its misery as a foreign and extraneous consideration with which the people of this country have little concern. The starvation and anarchy of that kingdom is a leprosy, which will soon spread over the whole empire. The redundance of our own population, the misery of our own poor, the weight of our own poor-rates, are all chiefly owing to the multitudes who are perpetually pressing upon them from the Irish shores. During the periods of the greatest depression of industry in this country since the peace, if the Irish labourers could have been removed, the native poor would have found ample employment; and more than one committee of the House of Commons have reported, after the most patient investigation and minute examination of evidence from all parts of the country, that there is no tendency to undue increase among the people of Great Britain, and that the whole existing distress was owing to the immigration from the sister kingdom.

Nature has forbidden us to sever the connexion which subsists between the two countries. We must swim or sink together. It is utterly impossible to effect that disjunction of British from Irish interests, for which the demagogues of that country so strenuously contend, and which many persons in this island, from the well founded jealousy of Catholic ascendency in the House of Commons, and the apparent hopelessness of all attempts to improve its condition, are gradually becoming inclined to support. The legislature may be separated by act of Parliament; the government may be severed by Catholic revolts; but Ireland will not the less hang like a dead weight round the neck of England; its starving multitudes will not the less overwhelm our labourers; its pas

sions and its jealousies will not the less paralyse the exertions of our government. Let a Catholic Repubfic be established in Ireland; let O'Connell be its President; let the English landholders be rooted out, and Ireland, with its priests and its poverty, be left to shift for itself; and the weight, the insupportable weight of its misery will be more severely felt in this country than ever. Deprived of the wealth and the capital of the English landholders, or of the proprietors of English descent; a prey to its own furious and ungovernable passions; ruled by an ignorant and ambitious priesthood; seduced by frantic and unprincipled demagogues, it would speedily fall into an abyss of misery far greater than that which already overwhelms it. For every thousand of the Irish poor who now approach the shores of Britain, ten thousand would then arrive, from the experienced impossibility of finding subsistence at home; universal distress would produce such anarchy as would necessarily lead the better classes to throw themselves into the arms of any government who would interfere for their protection. France would find the golden opportunity, so long wished for, at length arrived, of striking at the power of England through the neighbouring island; the tri-color flag would speedily wave from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear; and even if England submitted to the usurpation, and relinquished its rebellious subjects to the great parent democracy, the cost of men and ships required to guard the western shore of Britain, and avert the pestilence from our own homes, would be greater than are now employed in maintaining a precarious and doubtful authority in that distracted island.

Whence is all this misery and these furious passions, in a country so richly endowed by nature, and subjected to a government whose sway has, in other states, established so large a portion of general felicity? The Irish democrats answer, that it is the oppression of the English government which has done all these things; the editors of the Whig journals and reviews repeat the same

68 Ireland. cry; and every Whig, following, on this as on every other subject, their leaders, like a flock of sheep, re-echo the same sentiment, until it has obtained general belief, even among those whose education and good sense might have led them to see through the fallacy. Yet, in truth, there is no opinion more erroneous; and there is none the dissemination of which has done so much to perpetuate the very evils which are the subject of such general and well founded lamentation. Ireland, in reality, is not miserable because she has, but because she has not, been conquered; she is suffering under a redundant population, not because the tyranny of England, but the tyranny of her own demagogues, prevents their getting bread; and she is torn with discordant passions, not because British oppression has called them into existence, but because Irish licentiousness has kept them alive for centuries after, under a more rigorous government, they would have been buried for ever.

It is the more extraordinary that the popular party in both islands should so heedlessly and blindly have adopted this doctrine, when it is so directly contrary to what they at the same time maintain in regard to the causes of the simultaneous rise and prosperity of Scotland. That poor and barren land, they see, has made unexampled strides in wealth and greatness during the last eighty years; its income during that period has been quadrupled, its numbers nearly doubled, its prosperity augmented tenfold; they behold its cities crowded with palaces, its fields smiling with plenty, its mountains covered with herds, its harbours crowded with masts, the Atlantic studded with its sails; and yet all this has grown up under an aristocratic rule, and with a representative system from which the lower classes were in a great measure excluded. In despair at beholding a nation whose condition was so utterly at variance with all their dogmas of the necessity of democratic representation to temper the frame of government, they have recourse to the salutary influence of English ascendency, and ascribe all this improvement to the beneficial influence of English freedom. Scotland, they tell us, has

No. I.

[Jan prospered, not because she has, but because she has not, been governed by her own institutions; and she is now rich and opulent, because the narrow and jealous spirit of her own government has been tempered by the beneficial influence of English freedom. Whether this is really the case, we shall examine in a succeeding Number; and many curious and unknown facts as to the native institutions of Scotland, we promise to unfold; but, in the meantime, let it be conceded that this observation is well founded, and that all the prosperity of Scotland has been owing to English influence. How has it happened that the same influence at the same time has been the cause of all the misery of Ireland? The common answer that Scotland was always an independent country, and that Ireland was won and ruled by the sword, is utterly unsatisfactory, and betrays an inattention to the most notorious historical facts. For how has it happened that Ireland was conquered with so much facility, while Scotland so long and strenuously resisted the spoiler? How did it happen that Henry II., with eleven hundred men, achieved with ease the conquest of the one country, while Edward II., at the head of 80,000 men, was unable to effect the subjugation of the other? How was it that Scotland, not once, but twenty times, expelled vast English armies from her territory, while Ireland has never thrown them off since the Norman standard first approached her shores? And without going back to remote periods, how has it happened that the same influence of English legislation, which, according to them, has been utterly ruinous to Ireland, has been the sole cause of the unexampled prosperity of Scotland? that the same gale which has been the zephyr of spring to the one state, has been the blast of desolation to the other? It is evident that there is a fundamental difference between the two states; and that if we would discover the cause of the different modes in which the same legislation of the dominant state has operated in the two countries, we must look to the different condition of the people to whom it was applied.

One fact is very remarkable, and throws a great light on this difficult