Page:Gallant exploits of Lord Dundee.pdf/9

Rh knew that the love of music both heightened the courage are softened the tempers of their people. Their vocal music was plaintive even to the depth of melancholy; their instrumental either lively for brisk dances, or martial for the battle. Some of their tunes even contained the great but natural idea of a history described in music: The joys of a marriage; the noise of a quarrel; the sounding to arms the rage of a battle; the broken disorder of a flight; the whole concluding with the solemn dirge, and lamentation for the slain. By the loudness and artificial dissonance of their war instrument the bag pipe, which played continually in time of action, their spirits were exalted to a phrenzy of courage in battle.

They joined the pleasures of history and poetry to those of music, and the love of classical learning to both. For, in order to cherish high sentiment in the minds of all, every considerable family had a historian who recounted, and a bard who sang, the deeds of the clan, and of its chieftain: And all, even the lowest in station, were sent to school in their youth; partly because they had nothing else to do at that age; and partly because literature was thought the distinction, not the want of it the mark, of good birth.

The severity of their climate, the height of their mountains, the distance of their villages from each other, their love of the chase and of war, with their desire to visit and he visited, forced them to great bodily exertions. The vastness of the objects which, surrounded them; lakes, mountains, rocks cataracts, extended and elevated their minds: For they were not in the state of men who only know the way from one market-town to another. Their rant of regular occupation led them, like the ancient Spartans, to contemplation, and the powers of conversation: powers which