Holyroodhouse along her rib of hill, where more history
had been made than in any place of like size save Athens,
Rome and Jerusalem--which, according to the weather
and the observer's standpoint, looked like a flag flung
against the sky or a ship riding by the shore--was
enlarging her bounds and entering upon a new career.

Another sight of some significance was to be had in
the same year at the same season. From every corner
of the north droves of black cattle were converging on
Falkirk moor for the great autumn Tryst. It was the
clearing-house of the Highlands, as Stagshawbank on
the Tyne was the clearing-house of Scotland. The drover
from Glen Affric, herding his kyloes among the autumn
bracken, could see from his bivouac a cloud of dark
smoke on the banks of the Carron river, and hear by day
and night the clang of hammers. This was the Carron
Ironworks, now eleven years old, and a canal was being
made from Grangemouth-on-Forth to carry their pro-
ducts to the world. There, within sight of the Highland
Line, a quarter of a century after a Jacobite army had
campaigned on that very ground, the coal and iron of
the Scottish midlands were being used in a promising
industry. Cannon were being made for many nations,
and the Carron pipes and sugar-boilers and fire-grates
were soon to be famous throughout the land. The
Highland drover, already perplexed by the intrusion of
Lowland sheep on his hills and the cutting of his native
woods by English companies, saw in the flame and
smoke of the ironworks a final proof that his ancient
world was crumbling.

There was a third portent, the most pregnant of all,
which our returned exile, if he were a man of some
education, had a chance of noting. He had heard with
pleasure during his absence a rumour of good literature
coming from the north. The London critics had spoken
well of Mr David Hume's works in history and philosophy,
of Mr Robertson's excursions in the former domain, of
Mr Ferguson's treatise on civil society, and of the poetry
of Mr Beattie of Aberdeen, while visitors had reported
the surpassing eloquence of Mr Hugh Blair of the High

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