e Black Watch,
after years of foreign service, returned to Scotland, veterans leaped
out and kissed the earth at Portpatrick. They had been in Ireland,
stationed among men of their own race and language, where they were well
liked and treated with affection; but it was the soil of Galloway that
they kissed, at the extreme end of the hostile lowlands, among a people
who did not understand their speech, and who had hated, harried, and
hanged them since the dawn of history. Last, and perhaps most curious,
the sons of chieftains were often educated on the continent of Europe.
They went abroad speaking Gaelic; they returned speaking, not English,
but the broad dialect of Scotland. Now, what idea had they in their
minds when they thus, in thought, identified themselves with their
ancestral enemies? What was the sense in which they were Scottish and
not English, or Scottish and not Irish? Can a bare name be thus
influential on the minds and affections of men, and a political
aggregation blind them to the nature of facts? The story of the Austrian
Empire would seem to answer No; the far more galling business of Ireland
clinches the negative from nearer home. Is it common education, common
morals, a common language, or a common faith, that join men into
nations? There were practically none of these in the case we are
considering.

The fact remains: in spite of the difference of blood and language, the
Lowlander feels himself the sentimental countryman of the Highlander.
When they meet abroad, they fall upon each other's necks in spirit; even
at home there is a kind of clannish intimacy in their talk. But from his
compatriot in the South the Lowlander stands consciously apart. He has
had a different training; he obeys different laws; he makes his will in
other terms, is otherwise divorced and married; his eyes are not at home
in an English landscape or with English houses; his ear continues to
remark the English speech; and even though his tongue acquire the
Southern knack, he will still have a strong Scots accent of the mind.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] 1881.

[2] The previous pages, from the opening of this essay down to
"provocations," are reprinted from the original edition of 1881; in
the reprints of which they still stand. In the Edinburgh Edition
they were omitted, and the essay began with "A Scotsman."--ED.

II

SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES

I am asked to write something (it is not specifically stated