Sir Walter Scott writes:--“In too many instances the Highlands have
been drained, not of their superfluity of population, but of the whole
mass of the inhabitants, dispossessed by an unrelenting avarice, which
will be one day found to have been as shortsighted as it is unjust
and selfish. Meantime, the Highlands may become the fairy ground for
romance and poetry, or the subject of experiment for the professors of
speculation, political and economical. But if the hour of need should
come--and it may not, perhaps, be far distant--the pibroch may sound
through the deserted region, but the summons will remain unanswered.”