in his flask, and a well-filled tobacco-pouch.

If, then, in summer the normal aspect, weather, and general surroundings of this Hebridean wilder ness are such as I have described them, conceive what they must be in the gloom and dreariness of winter. It was told me that not a few of the tenants of the solitary farmhouse by our camp had in past times either "gone off their heads," taken to whisky, or otherwise come to grief, presumably from the appalling loneliness of the place. But, however that may have been, I can vouch that the farm occupants of a year or two ago, brothers and Lowlanders, had so far manifested no signs of deterioration. They were shrewd, capable, thriving men, the owners of many sheep, and they showed the camped-out wayfarers in their neighbourhood no little civility.

Sorry indeed was I when the time came to bid farewell to the camp on the shore of the "Bay of Watching" (Camas Fhionnairidh), ard the last look had to be taken of the grand straight glen "nau Leac," issuing from the heart of Blaven, and so conspicuous in the landscape with its grey stones and silvery waterfalls. As for the rugged track which leads from Camasunary to Strathaird House along a bleak hillside, it will always be memorable to the writer by reason of the ladies he had to pilot

over it on a certain occasion in the dark of nightfall, over many rocky streams and devious places. So will the hospitable kindness they, wearied and soaking wet to the knees, met with at the shootingtenant's house; neither shall we forget the moonlight drive thence along the shadowy shores of Loch Slapin, with the mysterious dark profile of Blaven abreast of us,— a singularly perfect picture of a mountain-side. Nor must I omit to mention the hamlet of Torran, with its reminder of the discontented Skye crofters and their agitation, a great gaping hole in the middle of the road, which vexed the soul of my driver every time we drove by the spot,-the hole being left unmended because the crofters refused to pay the roadrate.

And so, back to Broadford and aboard the passing steamer, away round through Loch Alsh and down the Sound of Sleat with prow turned toward the Brighton of the West Highlands. Again a glimpse, though this time a far-distant one, of the massive "stern old Coolin " and

"His high and haggard head, That echoes but the tempest's moan, Or the deep thunder's rending groan." Yet a little while more, "And Coolin's crest has sunk behind, And Slapin's caverned shore." T. PILKINGTON WHITE.

WE remeniber reading many years ago, with infinite amusement, a clever pamphlet on the Art of Pedigree-making,' by the Scottish Lyon-King-of-Arms, the enthusiastic successor of Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount. He selected for scarification an unfortunate gentleman who, having paid the 'Heralds' Office for sundry extravagant flights of fancy, had foisted on popular credulity a tissue of myth and fable; and a terrible example he made of the offender. We all know how the sarcastic author of the 'Snob Papers' described the genealogy of Sir Alured de Mogyns, né Muggins, who traced his descent to the days of the Druids, and to the mighty Hogyn Mogyn of the hundred beeves. The art of pedigree - making will never fall altogether into disrepute, so long as self-made men, though they may have raised themselves from the democracy, and get their galleries of family portraits from the Wardour Street dealers, foolishly aspire to ancestral honours, though perhaps they are less foolish than they appear to be, and are rather content to sacrifice themselves nobly for the satisfaction of their children. The father of future generations is ridiculed, but people soon begin to believe what they read in 'Burke'; the son escapes with an occasional sneer from the wellinformed. and the great-grandson may be said to be absolutely safe, unless old absurdities should be raked up in the heat of an election. But though legions of impostors have managed to pass muster in

the great army of gentlemen of blood and lineage, nevertheless there is a general suspicion that many pedigrees are more or less questionable. There is an impression that the ancestry of men who have made their money in professions or trades and received the honour of "ancient but decayed families," should rauk for the nost part with the inyths of the middle ages. No doubt the suspicion is tolerably well founded, though it may do injustice to individuals. That is the inevitable penalty of the really illustrious obscure, who had been content to swagger on the strength of their birth, and have never had the capacity to do much credit to their country.

Moreover, there have been not a few men, and notably Scotsmen, who have been content to keep pedigrees, and even ancestral titles, in abeyance, till they could reconcile prudence with family pride, in the enjoyment of an adequate income. Scott, speaking through the mouth of King James I. of England, made a sensible remark on the subject in the

Fortunes of Nigel.' Talking of a Scot emerging from a prolonged eclipse," Out he pulls his pedigree," said the King, on he buckles his sword, gives his beaver a brush, and cocks it in the face of all creation." That by the way; but when we rise above the longneglected middle ranks, we pass from the licence of popular romance into an atmosphere of relative certainties. For good or evil the great families of England have written their names indelibly on the pages of history. Many of

the famous historic races were extinguished long ago. Disraeli said in Coningsby' that after the wars of the Roses a Norman baron was as rare as a wolf. But many survive in collateral branches, and not a few, notwithstanding Disraeli's sweeping dictum, are represented at this day by direct descendants. Many of them have left a memory behind, not merely in the records of their deeds of arms by the chroniclers, but in the castles or manors to which they gave a name or from which they borrowed one.

The biographical roll of those notable historical characters can hardly fail to be exciting reading. Though falsehoods and exaggerations must necessarily have crept in, on the whole it is founded on truth and facts. It describes in detail the growth of the kingdom, which, having lost by the fortune of war its vast Continental possessions, has developed into the British empire with colonies in every clime. It paints to the life, although episodically and incidentally, the gradual emerging of a much-enduring society from the domination of the men of blood and iron. As for these men, their checkered careers were as full of sensation as their characters were strangely yet naturally inconsistent. From the highest to the lowest they made arms their trade; ambition and martial glory were the breath of their nostrils. Yet the chivalrous knights who came over with the Conqueror. the nobles who fought at Neville's Cross and Crecy and Agincourt, were, for the most part, the merciless tyrants of their serfs and dependants. Sordid rapacity kept pace with reckless profusion; and in the arbitrary exercise of their feudal rights they shrank from no form of oppressive cruelty. Their brutalities would have disgraced a

Jonathan Wild, and their crimes would seem scandalous in the Newgate Calendar. To do then 'justice, they were as hard on their equals as on their inferiors, though fronı a point of perhaps egotistical punctilio they spared their equals the dishonour of actual torture. The captive had neither comfort nor mercy to expect till he paid his ransoin or was rescued by his friends. What stories of slow misery in the very shadow of death might be told by the dungeons that may still be seen beneath the foundations of such castles as Warkworth or Kenilworth! There the wellnurtured knight, like Damian de Lacy in 'The Betrothed,' shackled and ironed, although there was no possibility of escape, was doomed to solitary seclusion on the coarsest and scantiest food. Fettered in the damp and the darkness among loathsome creeping things, he drew breath with difficulty in the foulest air; and it was fortunate for him that, like the cold-blooded toads which were his fellow-prisoners, undeveloped sensibilities saved him from insanity. The only access to those loathsome oubliettes was, as at Warkworth, through the trapdoor opening in the roof. What must have been the tone of mind of the chivalrous lord of the castle, who could feast and carouse in the banqueting-hall above-stairs with such horrors and such suffering beneath his feet! But what between hard fighting, free feasting, and deep drinking, the nobles of the middle ages seem to have kept conscience at arm's-length, as they had become absolutely indifferent to the sufferings of their fellow-creatures. There were rare exceptions to prove the rule. Some princes and wealthy nobles were piously inclined and munificent. They gave liberally in their lifetimes, and made magnificent ecclesiastical foundations. But generally the

clergy, when they dared to preach, addressed themselves to deaf ears; and the more earnest and fervent mendicant friars were as men crying in the wilderness. The monks of the neighbouring convent could afford to bide their time, for barring the probability of death in battle, they were very sure their time would come. When a Front de Boeuf lay dying on a bed of down, he was crushed under the accumulated weight of his crimes. The King of Terrors was never more terrible than when he came to the pillow of an impenitent sinner in all the horrors of unfamiliar remorse. Then the mocker and the blasphemer would become the submissive suitor of the Church for the remission and absolution that were worth buying upon any terms. Then the shaven delegate of the Pope and St Peter would make his conditions for the Masses which might save a miserable soul. A bad look-out at best for the newborn Christian to be purified indefinitely in penal fires, and he knew medieval humanity far too well to trust anything to the piety of his heirs.

It was in that mood that men were persuaded to make great grants of their ill-gotten gear to the Church, and so they bequeathed the consequences of their crimes to their offspring, who were embarrassed and impoverished by those deathbed dispositions.

Many a great family was brought to difficulties and driven in desperation into treasons by the ransoms that had been exacted for the souls of their "forebears." The frequent rebellions were seldom successful, for obvious reasons. was the sagacious policy of the Norman kings to distribute the gifts of land with which they rewarded good service through counties lying widely apart, so that few of the great English foudatories had the power of th

greater Scottish chieftains, who often set the king successfully at defiance. In the event of defeat they could not withdraw into wildernesses made practically impregnable by lakes and hills. The isolated and artificially fortified strongholds of the English barons could be carried by storm or reduced by siege. Powerful so long as they had the prestige of power, they exercised no patriarchal authority. Great nobles like the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset, as Lord Lytton remarks in the 'Last of the Barons,' had often hungered for the beggar's crust, while awaiting the next turn of Fortune's wheel. Even an un

popular king, unless the forces combined against him were overwhelming, could always find friends who were zealous in the expectation of favours to come. For failure was inevitably followed by forfeiture; there were lands and castles to be given away; the titles and blood of the traitors were attainted, and their families, who were cold-shouldered by the timeserving, sank into obscurity. Of course the whirligig of time would sometimes bring revenge and compensation. When the representatives of rival families alternately filled the throne, as in the wars of the Roses, titles were revived and domains were restored to their respective partisans. That helped to make confusion worse founded, and those eras of swift and sudden changes had begun immediately on the death of the Conqueror. His succession was fiercely contested by his sons; and the hot-headed Robert of Normandy and the sullen Red King were equally ruthless. As almost all the Conqueror's companions held lands both in Normandy and England, they were sadly perplexed as to the choice of sides. They were suro to have bitter

con

reason to repent their mistake if they fell into the hands of the enemy. Perpetual captivity was the best they might expect; and Rufus in particular had an unpleasant fancy for condemning his prisoners to the loss of eyesight. Death by the axe would have been far more merciful, but speedy execution was generally denied them.

The romance of those stirring and troublous centuries has been brought home to us in the writings of chroniclers and historians from the contemporaries of the Conqueror down to Froissart and the comparatively modern Holinshed. But he chroniclers deal with special periods, and, with the exception of Froissart, their writing, as a rule, is baldly matter-of-fact, though often impressively realistic. The chronicles are dry reading at the best, and in these days of busy bookmaking few dream of disturbing their accumulated dust. Consequently, from the literary and popular point of view, we are the more grateful to her Grace of Cleveland for the comprehensive biographical and historical contents of the three handsome volumes she has published under the title of 'The Battle Abbey Roll.' Had she taken experienced literary advice, we suspect she might have spared herself much unnecessary labour; and her book would have gained by suppressions and omissions. But with the Roll of Battle for her theme, she has been indefatigable in investigating collateral authorities of all kinds; and in bringing together and arranging the fruits of her labours, she has spared even earnest students an infinity of trouble. Neither the Duchess nor her readers are supposed to assume the veracity of all she records. It is to be taken for granted that, in a work founded largely on traditions or on chron

icles flowing from tainted sources or compiled from rumour and imperfect information, a vast amount of fiction must have been interpolated. We have been interested in the book, inasmuch as it reproduces not only lively but lifelike pictures of England in the middle ages, as illustrated in the rise and vicissitudes of families. But what pleases us most is its suggestiveness. It throws the charm of historical and romantic association over places well known or obscure in all the counties of England. It revives our recollections of memorable battles, and reminds us of the successive lords of the famous castles which were the artificial bulwarks of the level midlands, or which rolled back the periodical tides of invasion from the Scotch borders and the marches of mountainous Wales. It records incidentally the growth of our constitution and our liberties, whether we are indebted for them to outbreaks of the sturdy democracy, or to clerical and knightly champions of the privileged orders extorting invaluable charters from reluctant kings, by threats of excommunication or at the sword's-point; or to barons banded in open rebellion; or indirectly to the outlaws gathered together in the greenwood, setting at defiance the sanguinary forest laws and all forms of feudal and ecclesiastical tyranny. But these miscellaneous biographical records are far from being merely medieval and martial. A few of the oldest families still exist; and many more, whose names and memories may have wellnigh disappeared from the districts they once governed as petty princes, are still represented by descendants through the female line. The Duchess shortens or lengthens her biographies somewhat capriciously, and some of them are brougàt