Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

POLITENESS. 455
is frank and open, and as little submissive to neglect or
rudeness, as if he had been bred in the court of Spain.
It has also been remarked of the lower Highlanders, that
their eloquence is bold and free ; a feature which may
rank with this part of their character, and which has pro-
bably originated in the same causes. Such at least it
Mas ; for even this feature of their character is thought to
be expiring. The descriptions that have been given of
it, correspond so precisely to the similar accounts which
American travellers have given us of the oratory of the
Indians, that we might almost suppose the one had been
copied from the other. This ought to be the effect of
liberty ;
and, in a Highlander, it must have been the mark
and proof of it. Another remarkable illustration is found
in the Arabs. Their speech is concise, slow, and im-
pressive; and "it is from a feeling of his independence
and importance, that he is able to converse without awe
with his superiors, and to treat his equals without levity."
The remark is Gibbon's; and is not the less weighty
that he has derived it from the native writers on the man-
ners of this people.
To return to my own theory ; such, at least in a certain
degree, must have been the freedom and the politeness of
a Highlander in ancient times, when the tie between the
chief and his people was not that between a tyrant and
his slaves, but more in the nature of feudal connexion,
of a mutual bond of services rendered for protection
given ; and when that bond was still closer drawn by
the claims, however evanescent, which many individuals
had, and which more imagined they possessed, to a common
descent, to some connexion at least, however circuitous,
or dilute, with the blood of the Chief Sir J.Dalryraple,
however, has given us another theory; and whatever I
may think of it, I am bound in justice to give it a place,
though in opposition to my own. He considers it, like