Page:Gallant exploits of Lord Dundee.pdf/3

Rh For, what we call theft and rapine, they termed right and justice. But, from the practice of these reprisals, they acquired the habits of being enterprising, artful, and bold.

An injury done to one of a clan, was held to be an injury done to all, on account of the common relation of blood. Hence the highlanders were in the habitual practice of war: and hence their attachment to their chieftain, and to each other, was founded upon the two most active principles of human nature, love of their friends, and resentment against their enemies.

But the frequency of war tempered its ferocity. They bound up the wounds of their prisoners, while they neglected their own; and in the person of an enemy, respected and pitied the stranger.

They went always completely armed: A fashion, which by accustoming them to the instruments of death, removed the fear of death itself; and which, from the danger of provocation, made the common people as polite, and as guarded in their behaviour, as the gentry of other countries.

From these combined circumstances, the higher ranks and the lower ranks of the highlanders alike, joined that refinement of sentiment, which, in all other nations, is peculiar to the former, to that strength and hardiness of body, which, in other countries, is possessed only by the latter.

To be modest as well as brave; to be contented with the few things which nature requires; to act and to suffer without complaining; to be as much ashamed of doing any thing insolent or injurious to others, as of bearing it when done to themselves; and to die with pleasure, to revenge affronts offered to