Ossian Collection > Romance of the Highlands

2 THE ROMANCE OF THE HIGHLANDS.
Montgomery strikes a high note in his poetry when
he says —
"There is a land of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside
O thou shalt find howe'er thy footsteps roam
That land thy country and that spot thy home."
Probably a good deal of our patriotism is due to the
significance of that word "home." It is one of those
pleasant words that, strangely enough, have no real
equivalent in any other language.
If there are unpatriotic people in Britain (and it is
not to be supposed that in the large population we have
in this country there are not all sorts to be found) they
are to be looked for in the heart of our large industrial
centres. Too often bred as well as reared amid
surroundings that are degrading, and living in squalid
streets and closes, they have never felt — in the davs when
their feelings were most susceptible to higher influences —
the spirit of true freedom. Even this cause is not in
itself sufficient to create a traitorous soul of infidelity to
the land of one's birth. It requires, in addition, a want
of education, and to be fed on the hectic talk of heretical
doctrinaires.
The charge of the want of patriotism in this respect
is by no means frequent, and it can hardly be levelled
against uncontaminated Scotsmen. They have been
nurtured in a land of romance. Their history is full of
wonderful deeds of valour displayed on bloody fields of
war. So strange are these stories at times that they
almost outshine those of fiction itself. Scotland's
struggle to regain the freedom she lost through the
Treaty of Falaise in 1174, when William the Lion
surrendered her liberties to the yoke of England, is
unequalled in the annals of any other country.