Series 2 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society

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have already become an indispensable working tool to students
of Scottish local history and affairs. We have every reason to be
satisfied with the present position of the Society, and to be
hopeful as to its prospects.
The prosperity of such a society as ours must depend in the
first instance upon its officials, but every member can help, and I
would appeal to every member to do so. He can help in two
ways: first, by getting new members to join the Society, and
secondly, by keeping a look-out for documents suitable for publi¬
cation by us and reporting them to the Council. I would specially
suggest that small documents should be so reported. Documents
which are of great historical interest, and which at the same time
are large enough to fill a printed volume of 250 or 300 pages, are
rarely to be found, but there are plenty of small documents,
letters, private diaries, and the like, which are suitable for inclu¬
sion in one of our Miscellany volumes. I should like to see more
Miscellany volumes, and if we had abundance of material of this
kind it would be possible to compile such volumes relating to
special periods, or still better to special districts, say to the
Borders or the Lothians, which would give a local and personal
interest to each volume. The Council will cordially welcome
information as to such documents, as well as suggestions of any
kind bearing on the Society’s work.
In inviting new members to join us, we should remember that
a society like ours is not a mere printing club of dilettanti, or
dryasdust antiquaries, concerned with curiosities, old muster-rolls
and old account-books. It is a company of people brought to¬
gether by a common interest in the past of our country, and in
the great issues of history and of human destiny. Interest in the
history of Scotland was never greater and never more widely
spread than at this moment. During the war thousands of men from
the Overseas Dominions and from the United States have visited
Edinburgh. They have visited the Castle and Holyrood and the
Parliament House, the scenes of famous events in Scottish history.
They have gone home full of interest in that history; those of
Scottish descent have realised their ancestry as never before, and
they look to us to respond to that new interest.
The events of the last four years have cast a strange new light
on all our past. In the old comfortable Victorian days battle and
murder and sudden death seemed a long way off. Such things
furnished picturesque incident to the pages of Macaulay or of Hill