Page:Female Portrait Gallery.pdf/47

Rh individuals and national specimens. Day by day the strong ties of feudal bondage are loosening before the high-pressure of steam-engines, the progress of wealth, and the scattering of power; soon there will be little remaining but what is preserved in these graphic pages. The advantages of general independence are too obvious for dispute; but it may be regretted that the rich and poor now-a-days live so far apart: they have no amusements in common, and it is the cheerful hours of life past together that most knit the social ties. The hunt in his forest, and the Christmas by his hearth, drew the baron and his people together, each in their most lightsome mood—the gain was mutual. There is a beautiful, though more modern touch of this in the "Antiquary," when Monkbarns carries the head of the young fisherman to the grave; it was the acknowledgment of human nature's equality in the hour of suffering—it was the practical admission that

Partly from being a more scattered population, which leads to self-dependence—partly to their religious struggles having given an historical character to their ordinary remembrances, nourished by that family pride which loves to look back—there is more individuality among the Scotch than