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xlii refinement, and engineering works of such magnitude, as they are discovered, are beginning, therefore, to show that the Caledonia of early times was by no means the savagedom it became fashionable for courtly Roman writers like Tacitus to make it out. It would not have suited the purpose of Agricola's son-in-law to write that the general was unable to subdue the Caledonians. Both safer and pleasanter it was to give out that on account of their barbarity these hill tribes were "excluded from the Roman empire." It does not follow that the description was true. In these early times the vulgar, indeed, may have lived rude lives, as the vulgar do at the present day. But the Bards were next to the Chiefs in rank, and Ossian was son of the king.

The generosity displayed towards their foes by Fingal and the other Ossianic heroes has more than once been pointed out as an anachronism. But critics who make this objection forget many well-known traits of Highland character which have descended from the remotest antiquity. As a specimen of these it is enough to mention that sacred regard for the obligations of hospitality everywhere observed in the Highlands, of which Sir Walter Scott has given an accurate portrait in the chivalry of Roderick Dhu.

The poetic beauty, also, of the names used by Ossian has been made subject of exception by