d's government of Ireland proved a failure.
If she did not make the Irish savage she did her best to keep them so,
and then punished them for it. By exploiting Erin's resources she
impoverished herself. By trying to impose Protestantism she made
Ireland the very stronghold of papacy. By striving to destroy the
septs she created the nation.

{350}

CHAPTER VII

SCOTLAND

One of the most important effects of modern means of easy communication
between all parts of the world has been to obliterate or minimize
distinctions in national character and in degrees of civilization. The
manner of life of England and Australia differ less now than the manner
of life of England and Scotland differed in the sixteenth century. The
great stream of culture then flowed much more strongly in the central
than in the outlying parts of Western Europe. The Latin nations, Italy
and France, lay nearest the heart of civilization. But slightly less
advanced in culture and in the amenities of life, and superior in some
respects, were the Netherlands, Switzerland, England and the southern
and central parts of Germany. In partial shadow round about lay a belt
of lands: Spain, Portugal, Northern Germany, Prussia, Poland, Hungary,
Scandinavia, Scotland, and Ireland.

[Sidenote: Scotland]

Scotland, indeed, had her own universities, but her best scholars were
often found at Paris, or in German or Italian academies. Scotch
humanists on the continent, the Scotch guard of the French king, and
Scotch monasteries, such as those at Erfurt and Wuerzburg, raised the
reputation of the country abroad rather than advanced its native
culture. Printing was not introduced until 1507. Brantome in the
sixteenth century, like Aeneas Silvius in the fifteenth, remarked the
uncouthness of the northern kingdom.

Most backward of all was Scotland's political development. No king
arose strong enough to be at once {351} the tyrant and the saviour of
his country; under the weak rule of a series of minors, regents and
wanton women a feudal baronage with a lush growth of intestine war and
crime, flourished mightily to curse the poor people. When Sir David
Lyndsay asked, [Sidenote: 1528] Why are the Scots so poor? he gave the
correct answer:

Wanting of justice, policy and peace,
Are cause of their unhappiness, alas!

Something may also be attributed to the poverty of the soil and the
lack of important commerce or industries.

[Sidenote: Relat