``The Highlands,'' I suggested, ``should furnish
you with ample subjects of recollection. You have
witnessed the complete change of that primeval
country, and have seen a race not far removed from
the earliest period of society, melted down into
the great mass of civilisation; and that could not
happen without incidents striking in themselves,
and curious as chapters in the history of the human
race.''
``It is very true,'' said Mrs Baliol; ``one would
think it should have struck the observers greatly,
and yet it scarcely did so. For me, I was no Highlander
myself, and the Highland chiefs of old, of
whom I certainly knew several, had little in their
manners to distinguish them from the Lowland
gentry, when they mixed in society in Edinburgh,
and assumed the Lowland dress. Their peculiar
character was for the clansmen at home; and you
must not imagine that they swaggered about in
plaids and broadswords at the Cross, or came to the
Assembly-Rooms in bonnets and kilts.''
``I remember,'' said I, ``that Swift, in his Journal,
tells Stella he had dined in the house of a
Scots nobleman, with two Highland chiefs, whom
he had found as well-bred men as he had ever met
with.
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