red huts upon the Castle
Hill had grown into a metropolis. They were a pious and in many respects
an enlightened race, and they came to great honour and renown on both
sides of the house. Maud, Margaret's daughter, became Queen of England,
and her grand-daughter Empress, while Scotland developed and flourished
in the hands of the saintly Queen's sons and their descendants. There
are unfortunate individuals in the most prosperous races, and Scotland
never sustained greater humiliation than in her attempts to rescue
William called the Lion, a sorry lion for his kingdom, when he allowed
himself to be caught in a trap and made the prisoner of the English
king. But the children of Malcolm and Margaret retained their character
through many generations, and were a Godfearing house, full of faith and
devotion, careful of their people's interests, and dear to their hearts.
They prospered as the virtuous and excellent so often do even in this
world, and covered Scotland with endowments--endowments which indeed
proved a snare to the church on after occasions, but which at that
period were probably the best means in which money could be invested for
the benefit of the people, since alms and succour and help and teaching
in every way came from the monks in the primitive circumstances of all
nations. They were not only the guardians of learning; they were
examples in husbandry, in building, in every necessary craft; nursing
the sick, receiving the stranger, and, as the very title-deed of their
existence, feeding the poor. In those uncomplicated times there was no
such fear of pauperising the natives of the soil as holds our hands now,
and everything had to be taught to the primitive labourer, who might
have to leave the plough in the middle of the furrow and be off and away
on his lord's commands at any moment, leaving his wife and children to
struggle on with the help of the good fathers who taught the boys, or
the gentle sisters who trained the girls to more delicate work, feeding
the widow and her brood. David and his brothers, and the devout kings
who immediately followed, probably did what was best for their agitated
kingdom in establishing so many centres of assured and quiet living,
succour and peace, even if what was salvation for their age became the
danger of another time. Those foundations continued through the whole of
the period during which the lineal descendants of Margaret held the
throne. Her lineage, it is true, has n