THE DOMESTIC ANNALS OF SCOTLAND FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE REVOLUTION
having experienced a favourable reception from the public, I have been
induced to add a volume containing similar details with regard to the
ensuing half-century. This is in many respects an interesting period
of the history of Scotland. It is essentially a time of
transition—transition from harsh and despotic to constitutional
government; from religious intolerance and severity of manners to
milder views and the love of elegance and amusement; from pride,
idleness, and poverty, to industrious courses and the development of
the natural resources of the country. At the same time, the tendency
to the wreaking out of the wilder passions of the individual is found
gradually giving place to respect for law. We see, as it were, the
dawn of our present social state, streaked with the lingering romance
of earlier ages. On these considerations, I am hopeful that the
present volume will be pronounced in no respect a falling off in
contrast with the former two.
It will be found that the plan and manner of treatment pursued in the
two earlier volumes are followed here. My object has still been to trace
the moral and economic progress of Scotland through the medium of
domestic incidents—whatever of the national life is overlooked in
ordinary history; allowing the tale in every case to be told as much as
possible in contemporary language. It is a plan necessarily
subordinating the author to his subject, almost to the extent of
neutralising all opinion and sentiment on his part; yet, feeling the
value of the self-painting words of these dead and gone generations—so
quaint, so unstudied, so true—so corrective in their genuineness of the
glozing idolatries which are apt to arise among descendants and party
representatives—I become easily reconciled to the restricted character
of the task. If the present and future generations shall be in any
measure enabled by these volumes to draw from the errors and
misjudgments of the past a lesson as to what is really honourable and
profitable for a people, the _tenuis labor_ will not have been undergone
in vain.
EDINBURGH, _January 1861_.