Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/365

Rh are blowing, and the blue sky is smiling cheerily. But turn where it may in the story of Scotland, weakness is nowhere; power, energy, and will are everywhere. Sterile as the landscape where it will first unfold itself, we shall watch the current winding its way with expanding force and features of enlarging magnificence, till at length the rocks and rapids will have passed—the stream will have glided down into the plain to the meeting of the waters, from which, as from a new fountain, the united fortunes of Great Britain flow on to their unknown destiny.

Experience sufficiently stern had convinced the English Government that their northern neighbours would never stoop to the supremacy which they had inflicted upon Wales. The Welsh were Celts, a failing and inferior race. The lowland Scots were Teutons, like the Saxons; and a people who showed resolutely that they would die to the last man before they would acquiesce in servitude; that they might be exterminated, but could not be subdued. After the battle of Bannockburn the impossible task had been tacitly relinquished, and the separate existence of Scotland as an independent kingdom was no longer threatened. The effects of the attempts of the Edwards, nevertheless, survived their failure. The suspicions remained, though the causes had ceased; and though of the same race with the English, speaking the same language, and living for the most part under the same institutions, the Scots, as a security for their freedom, contracted a permanent alliance with 'the antient enemies' of their rivals across