with rebellion in their hearts? Is not this the
right moment, when England is manifesting a desire to be more just, for
Ireland, deeply injured although she is, to accept the olive branch,
and call a truce?

{249}

A SHORT HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.

The northern extremity of the British Isles, bristling with mountains
and with its ragged coast-line deeply fringed by the sea, told in
advance the character of its people. Scotland is the child of the
mountains; and in spite of all that has been done to change their
native character, the word Caledonia still invokes the same
picturesque, liberty-loving race which in the first century, under the
name of Picts, defied Agricola and his Roman legions, and the wall they
had builded. If they have borrowed their name from Ireland, if they
have used the speech and consented to wear the political yoke of the
Anglo-Saxon, they have accepted these things only as convenient
garments for a proud Scottish nationality, which has defied all efforts
to change its essential character.

About four centuries after the Roman invasion, a colony of Scots
(Irish) migrated to {250} the opposite coast, under Fergus, and set up
their little kingdom in Argyleshire, taking with them, perhaps, the
sacred "Stone of Destiny" upon which a long line of Irish kings had
been crowned, and which tradition asserts was "Jacob's Pillow." The
Picts and the Irish Scots were both of the Celtic race, and if they
fought, it was as brothers do, ready in an instant to embrace and make
common cause, which they first did against the Romans. A common enemy
is the surest healer of domestic feuds, and there were many of these to
bring together the two Celtic branches dwelling on the same soil after
the fifth century. Then came the more peaceful fusion through a common
religious faith. St. Columba had been preceded by St. Nimian. But it
was the Irish saint from Donegal who did for the Picts what St. Patrick
had done for the Irish Scots. In the history of the Church there has
never been an awakening of purer spiritual ardor than that which
irradiated from Columba's monastery at Iona.

Why the Irish Scots, occupying only a small bit of territory, should
have fastened their name upon the land of their adoption {251} is not
known. Perhaps it was the magic of that Stone of Destiny! The Picts
had the political centre of their kingdom at Scone, on the river Tay.
It was in 844 that Kenneth M'Alpin made war upon the I