Oor ain folk times

EVICTIONS 17
farm-labourers ; but as a rule the people were essentially
resident peasantry, each cultivating his own little hold-
ing, training his family — and they were generally large
families — in habits of thrift, industry, self-denial, self-
respect, earnest piety, sturdy independence, and living
patriotism, with a genuine contempt for everything
artificial, unreal, and meanly conventional. In count-
less glens, such as these, the hardy, frugal, industrious
peasantry of Scotland were reared — the race which was
the crowning glory of their poor but beautiful country ;
and no words of mine can adequately express the dis-
gust I feel, when I think of the greed and ruthless cold-
blooded cruelty, which depopulated so many of these
beautiful glens ; turning busy haunts of rural industry
into sheep walks and deer forests ; banishing thousands
of God-fearing, noble-hearted patriots, for ever from the
land they loved so well ; and scattering the ashes on
many a hearth, around whose genial fire so many fine
traditions had clustered, and so many of the noblest attri-
butes of the genuine, kindly, old Scottish character been
manifested.
To the thoughtful traveller, even now, it is a sad,
sad sight to come across the evidences of former habita-
tion. In many of the lonely glens, where now no peat-
reek curls peacefully into the clear blue sky, a few
blackened hearthstones and rotting door-posts, mourn-
fully protruding themselves from the rank wilderness
of nettles and docks, are the last sad remains of what
was once a bright and happy home, giving shelter to a
hardy, industrious, patriotic people, whose descendants,
scattered far and wide, still look back with a loving,
lingering fondness towards the bonnie heather hills,
C