Excerpt from The History of Rob Roy<br><br>Nor need we wonder that this was so, when we remember the diversity of the two races which long ruled in Scotland. The Lowlanders, though derived from the Celtic tribes which inhabited the north of Ireland (the original Scotia), had, in the course of time, been rescued from their early barbarism by encountering the streams of civilisation which flowed into the country from England and from Germany and the humanising influence of agriculture, to which the fertility of the land allured them, soon eradicated the wandering instincts which they might have inherited. But those warlike races who had fled to the north, resisting every approach of civilisation, long retained the nomadic habits of their remote ancestors, and scorned the plough whilst they could live by the sword. The climatic influence of the wild and inarable wastes which formed their dwelling-places could exercise little power to win them to industry and forethought, and they thus retained that faith in the weapons of war and in personal prowess which the gradual development of Civil Law most surely destroys.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.