Hereward, The Last of the English | Page 2

for the same reasons, have been generally the first to deteriorate,

though not on account of the vices of civilization. The vices of
incivilization are far worse, and far more destructive of human life; and
it is just because they are so, that rude tribes deteriorate physically less
than polished nations. In the savage struggle for life, none but the
strongest, healthiest, cunningest, have a chance of living, prospering,
and propagating their race. In the civilized state, on the contrary, the
weakliest and the silliest, protected by law, religion, and humanity,
have chance likewise, and transmit to their offspring their own
weakliness or silliness. In these islands, for instance, at the time of the
Norman Conquest, the average of man was doubtless superior, both in
body and mind, to the average of man now, simply because the
weaklings could not have lived at all; and the rich and delicate beauty,
in which the women of the Eastern Counties still surpass all other races
in these isles, was doubtless far more common in proportion to the
numbers of the population.
Another reason--and one which every Scot will understand--why
lowland heroes "carent vate sacro," is that the lowlands and those who
live in them are wanting in the poetic and romantic elements. There is
in the lowland none of that background of the unknown, fantastic,
magical, terrible, perpetually feeding curiosity and wonder, which still
remains in the Scottish highlands; which, when it disappears from
thence, will remain embalmed forever in the pages of Walter Scott.
Against that half-magical background his heroes stand out in vivid
relief; and justly so. It was not put there by him for stage purposes; it
was there as a fact; and the men of whom he wrote were conscious of it,
were moulded by it, were not ashamed of its influence. Nature among
the mountains is too fierce, too strong, for man. He cannot conquer her,
and she awes him. He cannot dig down the cliffs, or chain the
storm-blasts; and his fear of them takes bodily shape: he begins to
people the weird places of the earth with weird beings, and sees nixes
in the dark linns as he fishes by night, dwarfs in the caves where he
digs, half-trembling, morsels of copper and iron for his weapons,
witches and demons on the snow-blast which overwhelms his herd and
his hut, and in the dark clouds which brood on the untrodden
mountain-peak. He lives in fear: and yet, if he be a valiant-hearted man,
his fears do him little harm. They may break out, at times, in

witch-manias, with all their horrible suspicions, and thus breed cruelty,
which is the child of fear; but on the whole they rather produce in man
thoughtfulness, reverence, a sense, confused yet precious, of the
boundless importance of the unseen world. His superstitions develop
his imagination; the moving accidents of a wild life call out in him
sympathy and pathos; and the mountaineer becomes instinctively a
poet.
The lowlander, on the other hand, has his own strength, his own
"virtues," or manfulnesses, in the good old sense of the word: but they
are not for the most part picturesque or even poetical.
He finds out, soon enough for his weal and his bane, that he is stronger
than Nature; and right tyrannously and irreverently he lords it over her,
clearing, delving, diking, building, without fear or shame. He knows of
no natural force greater than himself, save an occasional thunder-storm;
and against that, as he grows more cunning, he insures his crops. Why
should he reverence Nature? Let him use her, and eat. One cannot
blame him. Man was sent into the world (so says the Scripture) to fill
and subdue the earth. But he was sent into the world for other purposes,
which the lowlander is but too apt to forget. With the awe of Nature,
the awe of the unseen dies out in him. Meeting with no visible superior,
he is apt to become not merely unpoetical and irreverent, but somewhat
of a sensualist and an atheist. The sense of the beautiful dies out in him
more and more. He has little or nothing around him to refine or lift up
his soul, and unless he meet with a religion and with a civilization
which can deliver him, he may sink into that dull brutality which is too
common among the lowest classes of the English lowlands, and remain
for generations gifted with the strength and industry of the ox, and with
the courage of the lion, and, alas! with the intellect of the former, and
the self-restraint of the latter.
But there may be a period in the history of a lowland race when they,
too, become historic for a while. There was such a period for the men