poetry have indicated many curious points of internal evidence which certainly seem to indicate the influence of a sojourn among the Hebrides, upon the people by whom the Eddas in their present form have been handed down to us.1 So far as regards geological structure and scenery, the western fringe of Norway and the Hebridean region of Scotland are singularly alike. Hence much of the local colouring of native poetry would be the same in either case. But in Norway, the background of snow-clad, forest-covered mountains makes a fundamental difference in the scenery of the two regions. And I think we can trace the influence of this difference so certainly in the Eddaic poems as to warrant the conviction that originally these compositions had their birth in the Scandinavian north, but could not have arisen in Scotland; and that any traces of Hebridean influence must be due to the effects of a prolonged sojourn in the north-west Highlands upon a people who brought their ballads and songs with them from the north. I cannot believe that the mythology of Odin and Thor, of the Frost Giants, the Mud Giants, the Rock Giants, the Wind Giants, of Nifelheim and Muspelheim, the regions of torrid heat and of snow and ice, could ever have been conceived among the Western Islands of Scotland. Neither the scenery nor the climate would suggest them there. But, on the other hand, they are just the conceptions that might be inspired by the rugged mountains, the snow-fields, and glaciers, the brief hot summers, and the long, dark chilly, winters, the storms, avalanches, landslips, and waterfalls of the Sogne and the Hardanger, and the earthquakes, volcanoes, and geysirs of Iceland.

Again, the well-known contrast in style and treatment

1 Corpus Poeticum Boreale, the Poetry of the old Northern Tongue, by Gudbrand Vigfusson and F. York Powell. 2 vols. Oxford, 1883.

between the northern and southern ballads in our national poetry, seems to me to lead us back to the fundamental distinctions between the physical features of the Border country and those of more southern and civilised parts of England. The northern ballad glows with poetic fire, whether the subject be border raid, or deed of chivalry, or tale of tragic love, or weird enchantment of fairy or warlock. We feel the keen northern air breathing through every line. The varied scenery of that wild Border land forms the background of the scenery in the poems, and according to their theme, we find ourselves among rough moss-hags or in fertile dale, on bare moorland or sheltered cleugh, by forest-side or river-ford, amid the tender green of birken shaws or the sad russet of dowie dens. The touches are lightly given, but they constitute one of the great charms of the poems. In the southern ballad, on the other hand, the local colouring is absent, or at least is so feeble that it could not have had the dominant influence which it exercised upon the imagination of the northern minstrels. The versification falls into what Hallam has justly called 'a creeping style which has exposed the common ballad to contempt.' To my mind, this tame featureless character is suggestive of the sluggish streams, and pleasing but unimpressive landscapes, amid which the southern minstrels sang.

In fine, if we attempt to analyse the impression which the scenery of a long-inhabited region now makes upon our minds, we can trace the working of more complex influences than might at first appear. The public taste has at length been educated to appreciate the variety of nature. Mountains are no longer described with horror, but are sought with even more determination than they were formerly avoided. In looking at Scottish landscapes, however, it is not merely the external forms that fill the eye. There is

almost always some human element in them that blends with the natural features, sometimes so subdued as to be hardly appreciable, but at other times glowing with such vividness as even to rival in power of fascination some of the more impressive aspects of nature, or to add fresh tenderness and grace to what nature has herself made supremely tender and graceful. Who, for example, does not recognise amid the wilds of Glencoe, that there hangs over that dark defile a deeper gloom than was ever woven out of the grey mists of heaven and the sombre shadows of the mountains? Or who that knows the history and traditions of Yarrow, can wander along that valley without feeling that the green hillsides and plaintive stream are. bright, not merely with sunshine, but with the halo of bygone human love and sorrow, and re-echo, above the sounds of to-day, the songs of generations long since at rest?

At no time in our history as a nation has the scenery of the land we live in been so intelligently appreciated as it is to-day. Never were its varying aspects so familiar to so large a part of the community, which can now travel with ease into the remotest nooks and corners of the country. We have only to walk through a modern picture-gallery, or to read a recent volume of poetry, or to take up the last novel, to perceive how deeply the influence of landscape has affected the imagination of our time. And yet, on the other hand, never did so large a proportion of the population live and die pent up within narrow gloomy streets, whence all that is seen of outer nature is the

sky overhead, to whom a sweep of green valley and breezy upland, or a range of crag and mountain, is so unknown that its existence can hardly be realised. A large and rapidly increasing section of the people is thus removed from contact with landscape, and from all the pleasurable

and healthful influences which that contact affords. We may not be able to forecast the future; but we should at least recognise that, in the past, it is the influence of external nature which has, in no small measure, helped to mould our national character. The physical features of the country, the soil, the mineral products underneath, have all directly or indirectly told upon our temperament and progress. The love of country, therefore, should not be with us a mere sentimental feeling, but a genuine enthusiasm springing from a conviction that for much that is worthiest in us as a people, we are indebted to those rolling lowlands and rugged hills which, from generation to generation, have caught for us the light and the gloom of heaven

CHAPTER XX

RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION

A BRIEF summary of the principal conclusions to which an examination of the superficial features of Scotland leads may fitly conclude this volume. In any investigation of this kind, there are always two lines of research which must be kept quite distinct-the history of the rocks and that of the configuration which they present at the surface. Each hill and valley, each mountain and glen, has thus a twofold story. There is first the record of the formation of its component rocks, whether these have been laid down layer after layer as sand, gravel, or mud upon the bottom of a former sea, or piled up as shingle along an ancient beach, or drifted as ooze over the bed of a lake; whether formed of the decay of extinct forests, or from the gathered fragments of corals and shells; whether rolled along in the form of liquid lava, or thrown up in showers of volcanic dust and ashes. After we have tried to trace out the succession of events imperfectly chronicled in the rocks, there remains the story of those after changes, whereby the various accumulations that had been piled over each other, and had sunk down for thousands of feet, were fractured, folded, and once more upheaved above the level of the sea into the aboriginal