The decided¹ though cruel measures which followed the defeat of Culloden, whilst they were sufficient to extinguish the hopes of the Highlanders who had so enthusiastically espoused⁵ the cause of Charles, were ill calculated to subdue⁶ their warlike spirits. They were driven, it is true, to seek shelter in those rocky and inaccessible⁷ fastnesses which their highest glens afforded them; but there, amidst the wildest and most solitary⁹ scenes of nature, they permitted their minds to brood in bitter reflection over all their wrongs—over all those tragedies which history itself has blushed to record—their wives and children massacred amidst the midnight conflagration¹⁰ of their humble¹¹ dwellings¹², or perishing in their flight through the snows of winter. But heroism¹³ such as theirs was not to be crushed even by such calamities¹⁴ as these,—calamities which were calculated to have bowed down less lofty and indomitable spirits to the very dust. With them the effect was like that which would result from some puerile¹⁵ attempt to curb¹⁶ and arrest the mountain cataract¹⁷. They were divided, as its stream might be, into smaller and less important bodies, and their power was no longer so forcible as when they were united together in one stream, but each individual portion seemed to gain a particular character and consequence of its own by its separation from the main body, where it had hitherto flowed undistinguished and unobserved.

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