justice over fact. It was no ordinary vindication of the freedom of the rational will to follow its transcendental law. Nor is it easy to overestimate the value of one single life like More's. Duty, self-devotion, sacrifice, the things written upon every page of it,-what is the explanation of them? They are inexplicable apart from the supersensuous, the ideal, the divine and eternal. The great heroes of conscience of all heroes the greatest-are indeed, in Cicero's words, lumina quædam probitatis et veritatis': the light of the world,' as a greater than Cicero has said, putting visibly before the multitude excellences which else had 'Seemed like a dream of the heart, Seemed but a cry of desire.' These are they who are ordained, in God's providence, to be the salt of the earth; to continue, in their turn, the succession of His witnesses, though death sweep away each successive generation of them to their rest and their reward. These communicate their light to a number of lesser luminaries, by whom, in its turn, it is distributed through the world. . . . And thus, the self-same fire, once kindled on Moriah, though seeming at intervals to fail, has at length reached us in safety, and will in like manner, as we trust, be carried forward, even to the end.' * * J. H. Newman's Oxford University Sermons,' pp. 95-7. ART. ART. III.—1. The Earldom of Mar in Sunshine and Shade during 500 Years. By the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres. Edinburgh, 1882. 2. Spalding Club Publications. 1840-1870. Edinburgh and Aberdeen, 3. New Spalding Club Publications. Aberdeen, 1887-1894. 4. Aberdeen: its Traditions and History. By William Robbie. Aberdeen, 1893. 5. The New Book of Bon-Accord. By William Cadenhead. Aberdeen, 1879. 6. A Description of the Chanonry, Cathedral, and King's College of Old Aberdeen. By William Orem. Aberdeen, 1791. HE north-eastern district of Scotland has a distinctive Tcharacter and colouring of its own, due to natural features, to climate, to the special development of local history in the past, and to the bent and genius of its inhabitants. Its boundaries are clearly marked out by ocean, mountain range, and river; and while it comprises every variety of scenery, and a civic and intellectual centre second to none in its blending of ancient tradition with industrial activity, the whole region retains a complexion of its own which distinguishes it alike from the rest of the eastern lowlands and from the territories that adjoin it on the north and west. 'From the North Water to Spey' was in old days a section of the Scottish realm that for many purposes stood by itself. To the traveller the change is more marked as he passes from the greyer colouring of Banffshire into the rich fields of the 'Laigh o' Moray,' than it is when he crosses the North Esk. Still Kincardineshire, even in the Howe o' the Mearns,' is not the same as Forfarshire, and its northern parishes and fisher-towns' are ejusdem generis with those of Buchan, Boyne, and Enzie. Within this wide region there is a central portion, the limits of which are marked off in the same manner by rivercourses, which combines most of the natural features that give variety to its scenery, and contains nearly all the great centres of civil power and social activity recorded in history as guiding its development. This is the territory forming the ancient Mormaership and later Earldom of Mar, embracing the districts between the Don and the Dee, and extending from the inmost recesses and loftiest heights of the Highland hills where these take their rise, to the point where there nestles between their lower reaches and behind the sandhills that stay the breakers of the German Ocean the twin city of New and Old Aberdeen. No region in broad Scotland yields more of interest to the explorer alike of its scenery and its history. The site in Roman times of the Caledonian Devana, the seat in later years of the regal or quasi-regal power that was swayed from the ancient castle of Braemar and the lordly towers of Kildrummy, and presenting to the view, at the only place where it touches the sea, the roofs and spires of the busy streets and the venerable crown and old grey towers of a secluded but scholarly community, whose combination long ago won for Aberdeen the designations alike of the London of the North' and the Oxford of Scotland'; containing in its bounds the battle-fields of Culbleen, Corrichie, and Craibstane, of Alford, Bridge of Dee, and oft-stricken Aberdeen; furnishing many a weird tradition of feudal hate and clan strife, and yet blending with these the burgher records of the good town of Bon-Accord'; exhibiting every variety of prospect, both forest and field,' from the bare summits and precipice-overhung lochlets of Lochnagar and the Cairngorms to the rich fields that border the lower course of Don, and the little fisher-village still to be traced amid the streets at the mouth of the Dee; unpolluted by the smoke always associated with subterranean industry, and enjoying climate unequalled within the British seas for the clearness of the atmosphere and the bracing quality of the air,―ancient Mar not only offers a pleasant land to live in, but affords the student of the past a rich and picturesque field. a Mar is, roughly speaking, the district lying between the rivers Don and Dee; but on their upper courses includes the land on both banks of these rivers, watered by them and their tributaries. It consists of three portions: Midmar, the easterly low-country district, lying between the lower reaches of Dee and Don; Cromar (or the heart of Mar), being the central part of the province, and consisting mainly of the four parishes lying in a central hollow of their own, almost midway between the two great rivers; and Braemar, or the Braes of Mar, being the mountainous and purely Highland portion to Each of these districts has its own character and charm, and the same is true of the two rivers. According to an old rhyme, the west. The river Dee for fish and tree, The river Don for horn and corn'; and the same truth has been otherwise expressed, 'Ae mile of Don's worth twa o' Dee, a comparative estimate, which must have been formed in days before before the dark saying of the Cailleach-Breathrach-the Thunderbolt Carline, or famed witch of Glengairn-was fulfilled : If the children of the Gael but knew the value Of the crop of the heath or of the egg of the fowl, And the glen would be dearer than the strath.' The colouring of Donside wants the rich hues of purple heather, the dark shades of the pine-woods, the blending of birch and oak and bracken, the bold outlines, the precipitous heights, the swift clear current over the stony bed that distinguish Dee above all other Scottish streams; yet pleasant are the haughs through which classic Don flows from Inverurie to the shade of St. Machar's cathedral towers, fair is the vale of Alford, and strong is the secluded charm of the winding strath, at each bend of which a tributary stream offers itself as the lineal representative of the river's course to the ascending traveller. From where it turns aside on emerging from the glen into the strath, after its southward course down the slopes of the Cairngorms, Dee runs a marvellously straight, uniform, and rapid course to the German Sea; but the features of the sister river are well illustrated in the saying, used of a deceitful man, 'He has as many crooks as Don.' The main tributaries of Dee join in a slanting direction; those of Don as often strike its course at right angles, and appear to guide it into their own channel. While the streams that swell the Dee often flow from a mountain loch, not a single tarn supplies those that join the Don. But both rivers are alike in this. Both reach the ocean, laden with memories of ancient towers and castles and picturesque mansions which crown their banks, rich in recollections of Roman camp and prehistoric monument, and crimson with bloody traditions of feudal hate, highland raids, and strife of clans. The district of Mar and its inhabitants were famous of old, for an old Latin line runs • Marria sic Musis amata,' and an ancient rhyme tells of 'The brave bowmen of Mar.' 'It is reckoned the chief district in Aberdeenshire,' wrote old Sir Samuel Forbes, and the people in it the most ingenious, excelling both in arts and arms.' The Duca di Marra' appears in the verse of Ariosto, along with the Conte di Boccania1 and a 'Forbesse'; and Donald, son of Eimin, son of Cainnech, Mormaer Mormaer of Mar, is chronicled in ancient Irish annals as falling at the head of the Scottish auxiliaries at the great battle of Clontarf in 1014. Of the race of Ivar is he, and he is of the Clan Leod of Ara.' Mar and Buchan were each great mormaerships prior to the coming of Columba, and the lords of both ranked among the seven Earls of Scotland. Ruadri, or Rotheri, appears as Earl of Mar in the charters of Alexander I. and David I., and was followed by Morgund, who for a time was superseded by Gilchrist, till in 1171 the rights of Morgund were again recognized. Apparently a controversy as to his legitimacy ended in a compromise and a partition of the territory which separated the Lowland from the Highland portions, and assigned the former to the family of Durward, while the Highland districts of Strathdee, Braemar, and Strathdon constituted the comitatus or demesne of the Celtic Earls, and preserved their Gaelic population.' The line of the Celtic earls continued till the reign of Robert II., when for a time this ancient northern earldom became by marriage an appanage of the head of the House of Douglas, the invasion signalized by the fight of Otterburn being planned at far-away Aberdeen. Once more a strange marriage transferred it to the Stewarts in the person of the victor of Harlaw, and ultimately, in Queen Mary's time, the undoubted right by descent of the Erskines to its honours and lands, which for more than a hundred years had been disregarded by the Jameses in the settled policy of depressing the greater nobility, was recognized. The charter described the earldom as containing 'Strathdon, Braemar, Cromar, and Strathdee'; and the subsidiary litigation of a lifetime also recovered the principal messuage of Kildrummy, then in the hands of the Elphinstones, and asserted the rights of property and superiority rightly vested in the lineal representatives of the old Celtic earls. The restored dignity and lands were held by the Erskines until the forfeiture that followed the first Jacobite rising._The rights of superiority were subsequently transferred by the Erskines to the Duffs, and the remaining lands sold to Farquharson of Invercauld, Gordon of Wardhouse, and others. Into the famous controversy between the two Earls of Mar, the heir-general and the heir-male, which has followed the separation of the title from the region, it is unnecessary to enter. Yet may we re-echo Lord Crawford's words as to the earldom: It is the only survivor of the ancient-I may say, pre-historic―mormaerships of Scotland; its extinction would be tantamount to the loss of one of the brightest jewels which adorn the British crown.' The |