Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/364

344 and yet different from ourselves. Here they are acting upon motives which we comprehend; there, though we try as we will, no feeling will answer in unison. The same actions which at one time are an evidence of inhumanity may arise in another out of mercy and benevolence. Laws which, in the simpler stages of society, are rational and useful, become mischievous when the problem which they were meant to solve has been complicated by new elements. And as the old man forgets his childhood—as the grown man and the youth rarely comprehend each other—as the Englishman and the Frenchman, with the same reasoning faculties, do not reason to the same conclusions—so is the past a perplexity to the present; it lies behind us as an enigma, easy only to the vain and unthinking, and only half solved after the most earnest efforts of intellectual sympathy, alike in those who read and those who write.

Such an effort of sympathy, the strongest which can be made, I have now to demand on behalf of Scotland, that marvellous country so fertile in genius and chivalry. so fertile in madness and crime, where the highest heroism coexisted with preternatural ferocity; yet where the vices were the vices of strength, and the one virtue of indomitable courage was found alike in saint and sinner. Often the course of this history will turn aside from the broad river of English life to where the torrents are leaping, passion-swollen, down from the northern hills. It will open out many a scene of crime and terror; and again, from time to time, it will lead us up into the keen air, where the pleasant mountain breezes