bits of an aristocracy, so
there was no other part of the island where such men had in such a
degree the better qualities of an aristocracy, grace and dignity of
manner, self-respect, and that noble sensibility which makes
dishonor more terrible than death. A gentleman of Skye or Lochaber,
whose clothes were begrimed with the accumulated filth of years,
and whose hovel smelt worse than an English hogstye, would often do
the honors of that hovel with a lofty courtesy worthy of the
splendid circle of Versailles. Though he had as little
book-learning as the most stupid ploughboys of England, it would
have been a great error to put him in the same intellectual rank
with such ploughboys. It is indeed only by reading that men can
become profoundly acquainted with any science. But the arts of
poetry and rhetoric may be carried near to absolute perfection, and
may exercise a mighty influence on the public mind, in an age in
which books are wholly or almost wholly unknown."

So, too, in the rudest communities of Appalachia, among the most
trifling and unmoral natives of this region, among the illiterate and
hide-bound, there still is much to excite admiration and good hope. I
have not shrunk from telling the truth about these people, even when it
was far from pleasant; but I would have preserved strict silence had I
not seen in the most backward of them certain sterling qualities of
manliness that our nation can ill afford to waste. It is a truth as old
as the human race that savageries may co-exist with admirable qualities
of head and heart. The only people who can consistently despair of the
future for even the lowest of our mountaineers are those who deny
evolution and who believe, with Archbishop Usher, that man was created
_perfect_ at 9 A. M. on the 21st of October, in the year B. C. 4004.

Let us remember, Sir and Madam, that we ourselves are descended from
white barbarians. From William the Conqueror, you? Very well; how many
other ancestors of yours were walking about England and elsewhere at the
time of William? Untold thousands of them were just such people as you
can find to-day brawling in some mountain still-house (unless there has
been a deal of incest somewhere along your line), and you have
infinitely more of their blood in your veins than you have of the
Conqueror's--who, by the way, could he be re-incarnated, would not be
tolerated i