Part 12

And then, constant in the furtherance of his purposes, Wilhelm deliberately invented Bismarck. He had steadfastly taken note of the man whom he chose to be his minister from the big Landwehr lieutenant's first commission to the Frankfort Diet in 1851; probably, indeed, earlier, when Bismarck was a rare but forcible speaker in Frederick Wilhelm's "quasi-Parliament." In Bismarck Wilhelm saw precisely the man he wanted--the complement of himself; arbitrary as he was, unscrupulous as he was, but bolder and at the same time more wise. Knowing where he himself was lacking, he recognised the man who, when he himself should have the impulse to balk and hesitate, was of that hardier nature--"grit" the Americans call it--to take him hard by the head and force him over the fence which all the while he had been longing to be on the other side of. To a monarch of this character Bismarck was simply the ideal guide and support--the man to urge him on when hesitating, to restrain him when over-ardent. Wilhelm had all along thoroughly realised that war with Austria was among the inevitables between him and the accomplishment of his aims, and had accepted it as such when it was yet afar off; but when confronted full with it his nerve failed him, and Bismarck--engaged among other things for just such an emergency--had to act as the spur to prick the side of his master's intent. The spur having done its work Wilhelm was himself again; he really enjoyed Königgrätz and would fain have dictated peace to Austria from the Hofburg of Vienna. In his zeal for promoting German unity at Prussia's bayonet point he lost his head a little, and on Bismarck devolved, in his own words, "the ungrateful duty of diluting the wine of victory with the water of moderation." One of the beads on the surface of the former fluid was certainly thus early the Imperial idea; but the time for its fulfilment Bismarck wisely judged not yet ripe. As it approached four years later, the diary of the Crown Prince depicts with unconscious humour the amusing progress of the "weakening" of Wilhelm's opposition to the Kaisership; it weakened in good time quite out of the sort of existence it had ever had, and Wilhelm was ready for the Kaisership before the Kaisership was ready for him.

Bismarck as Premier began as he meant to go on, with uncompromising masterfulness. The Chamber and the nation might probably have fallen in willingly with Wilhelm's scheme for the reorganisation and reinforcement of the army, had it been possible to divulge the intent in furtherance of which the increased armament was being created. But since neither monarch nor minister could even hint at the objects in view, the nation was set against that increased armament for which it could discern no apparent use. So the Chamber, session after session, went through the accustomed formula of rejecting the military reorganisation bill as well as the military expenditure estimates. "No surrender" was the steadfast motto of Bismarck and his royal master. The constitution, such as it was, in effect was suspended. The Upper House voted everything it was asked to vote; loans were duly effected, the revenues were collected and the military disbursements were made, right in the teeth of the popular will and the veto of the representatives of the nation. Bismarck became the best-hated man in Prussia. He was compared to Catiline and Strafford; he was threatened with impeachment; the House and the nation clamoured to the King for his dismissal and for the sovereign's return to the path of constitutional government.

But the long "conflict-time" was drawing near its close, and the triumph of the monarch and his minister over the constitution was approaching. The policy of doing political evil that national advantage might come was, for once at least, to stand vindicated. War with Austria as the outcome of Bismarck's astute if unscrupulous statecraft was imminent when the hostile parliament was dissolved; and a general election took place amidst the fervid outburst of enthusiasm which the earlier victories of the Prussian arms in the "Seven Weeks' War" stirred throughout the nation. The prospect of war had been unpopular in the extreme, but the tidings of the first success kindled the flame of patriotism. Bismarck lost for ever the title of the "best-hated man in Prussia" in the loud volume of the enthusiastic greetings of the populace, and on the day of Münchengrätz and Skalitz Prussia now rejoiced to put her stubborn neck under the great minister's foot.

The mingled truculence and tortuousness of the diplomacy by which Bismarck sapped up to the short but decisive war, the issue of which gave to Prussia the virtual headship of Germany and contributed so greatly toward the unification of the Fatherland, constitute a striking illustration of his methods in statecraft. He was fairly entitled to say, "Ego qui feci." He had achieved his aim in defiance of the nation. The Court threw its weight into the scale against the war; to the Crown Prince the strife with Austria was notoriously repugnant. The King himself, as the crisis approached, evinced marked hesitation. How triumphantly the event vindicated the policy of the great Premier, is a matter of history. He has frankly owned that if the decisive battle should have resulted in a Prussian defeat, he had resolved not to survive the shipwreck of his hopes and schemes. And there was a period in the course of the colossal struggle of Königgrätz, when to many men it seemed that the wielders of the needle-gun were having the worst of the battle. An awful hour for Bismarck, conscious of the load of responsibility which he carried. With great effort he could indeed maintain a calm visage, but his heart was beating and every pulse of him throbbing. In his torture of suspense he caught at straws. Moltke asked him for a cigar. As Bismarck handed him his cigar case he snatched a shred of comfort from the inference that if matters were very bad Moltke could hardly care to smoke. But Moltke was not only in a frame for tobacco but Bismarck watched with what deliberate coolness the great strategist inspected and smelt at cigar after cigar before making his final selection; and he dared to infer that the man who best understood the situation was in no perturbation as to the ultimate outcome. The opportune arrival of the Crown Prince's army on the Austrian right flank decided the business, and that arrival Bismarck was the first to discern. Lines were dimly visible on the hither slope of the Chlum heights; but they were pronounced to be ploughed ridges. Bismarck closed his field-glasses with a snap and exclaimed, "No, these are not plough furrows; the spaces are not equal; they are marching lines!" And he was right.

Eighteen days after the victory of Königgrätz the Prussian hosts were in line on the historic Marchfeld whence the spires of Vienna could be dimly seen through the heat-haze. The soldiers were eager for the storm of the famous lines of Florisdorf and King Wilhelm was keen to enter the Austrian capital. But now the practical wisdom of Bismarck stepped in and his arguments for moderation prevailed. The peace which ended the Seven Weeks' War revolutionised the face of Germany. Austria accepted her utter exile from Germany, recognised the dissolution of the old Bund, and consented to non-participation in the new North German Confederation of which Prussia was to have the unquestioned military and diplomatic leadership. Prussia annexed Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Nassau, Sleswig and Holstein, Frankfort-on-Main, and portions of Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria. Her territorial acquisitions amounted to over 6500 square miles with a population exceeding 4,000,000, and the states with which she had been in conflict paid as war indemnity sums reaching nearly to £10,000,000 sterling. In a material sense, it had not been a bad seven weeks for Prussia; in a sense other than material, she had profited incalculably more. She was now, in fact as in name, one of the "Great Powers" of Europe. The nation realised at length what manner of man this Bismarck was and what it owed to him. When the inner history of the period comes to be written, it will be recognised that at no time of his extraordinary career did Bismarck prove himself a greater statesman than during the five days of armistice in July 1866, when he fought his diplomatic Königgrätz in the Castle of Nikolsburg and assuaged the wounds of the Austrian defeat by terms the moderation of which went far to obliterate the memory of the rancour of the recent strife.

He had been wily enough to secure by vague non-committal half-promises the neutrality of France during the weeks while Prussia was crushing the armed strength of Austria in Bohemia. But the issue of Königgrätz startled Napoleon and set France in ferment. Bismarck dared to refuse point-blank the demand which the French Emperor made for the fortress of Mayence, made though that demand was under threat of war. The Prussian commanders would have liked nothing better than a war with France, and Roon indeed had warned for mobilisation 350,000 soldiers to swell the ranks of the forces already in the field; but Bismarck was wise and could wait. He allowed Napoleon to exercise some influence in the negotiations in the character of a mediator; and to French intervention was owing the stipulation that the South German States should be at liberty to form themselves into a South German Confederation of which Napoleon hoped to be the patron. But Bismarck was a better diplomatist than Napoleon. While he formed and knit together the North German Confederation in which Prussia was dominant, he quietly negotiated an alliance offensive and defensive with each of the Southern States separately. No Southern bund was ever formed, and when the Franco-German War broke out in 1870 Napoleon saw the shipwreck of his abortive devices in the spectacle of the troops of Bavaria and Würtemberg marching on the Rhine in line with the battalions of Prussia.

The unity of Germany was not yet; that consummation and the Kaisership--the two greatest triumphs of Bismarck's life--required another and a greater war to bring about their accomplishment. During the interval between 1866 and 1870, while the armed strength of Northern Germany was being quietly but sedulously perfected, Bismarck with dexterous caution was smoothing the rough path toward the ultimate unification. He would not have his hand forced by the enthusiasts for "the consummation of the national destiny." "No horseman can afford to be always at a gallop" was the figure with which he met the clamourers of the Customs Parliament. He invoked the terms of the treaty of Prague against the spokesmen of the Pan-German party inveighing vehemently against the policy of delay. He was staunch in his conviction that the South for its own safety's sake would come into the union the moment that the North should engage in war. He was a few weeks out in his reckoning; the Southern States waited until Sedan had been fought, when the prospect of the spoils of victory was assured; and this measured delay on their part was the best justification of Bismarck's sagacious deliberateness. The negotiations were tedious, but at length, on the evening of 23rd November 1870 the Convention with Bavaria was signed, and the unity of Germany was an accomplished fact. Busch vividly depicts the great moment:--

The Chief came in from the salon, and sat down at the table. "Now," he exclaimed excitedly, "the Bavarian business is settled and everything is signed. We have got our German Unity and our German Emperor." There was silence for a moment. "Bring a bottle of champagne," said the Chief to a servant, "it is a great occasion." After musing a little, he remarked, "The Convention has its defects, but it is all the stronger on account of them. I count it the most important thing that we have accomplished during recent years."

Notwithstanding that there was still before Bismarck a period of twenty years of virtual omnipotence, it was in the memorable years of 1870 and 1871 that the apostle of blood and iron attained the zenith of his extraordinary career. Germany was his wash-pot; over France had he cast his shoe. The years of Sturm und Drang were behind him, during which he had wrought out the military supremacy of Prussia in spite of herself; and in 1870 he had no misgivings as to the ultimate result. So confident indeed was he that before he crossed the French frontier on the second day after the twin victories of Wörth and Spicheren, he had already resolved on annexing to the Fatherland the old German province of Alsace which had been part of France for a couple of centuries. Bismarck was at his best in 1870 in certain attributes; in others he was at his worst, and a bitter bad worst that worst was. He was at his best in clear swift insight, in firm masterful grasp of every phase of every situation, in an instinctive prescience of events, in lucid dominance over German and European policy. If patriotism consists in earnest efforts to advantage and aggrandise one's native land per fas aut nefas, than Bismarck during the Franco-German War there never was a grander patriot. His hands were clean, he wanted nothing for himself except, curiously enough, the only thing that his old master was strong enough to deny him, the rank of Field Marshal when that military distinction was conferred on Moltke. He was at his worst in many respects. He had, or affected, a truculence which was simply brutal, its savagery intensified rather than mitigated by a bluff, boisterous bonhomie. Jules Favre complained to him that the German cannon in front of Paris fired upon the sick and blind in the Blind Institute, Bismarck in those days of swaggering prosperity had a fine turn of badinage. "I don't know what you find so hard in that," he retorted, "you do far worse; you shoot at our soldiers who are hale and useful fighting men." It is to be hoped that Favre had a sense of humour; he needed it all to relish the grim pleasantry.

I do not suppose, if he had had a free hand, that Bismarck would have exhibited the courage of his opinions; but if his sentiments as expressed count for anything he would fain have seen the methods of warfare in the Dark Ages reverted to. "Prisoners! more prisoners!" he once exclaimed at Versailles, after one of Prince Frederick Charles's victories in the Loire country--"What the devil do we want with prisoners? Why don't they make a battue of them?" His motto, especially as regarded Francs-tireurs, was "No quarter," forgetful of the swarms of free companions and volunteer bands whose gallant services in Prussia's War of Liberation are commemorated to this day in song and story. It was told him that among the French prisoners taken at Le Bourget were a number of Francs-tireurs--by the way, they were the volunteers de la Presse and wore a uniform. "That they should ever take Francs-tireurs prisoners!" roared Bismarck in disgust. "They ought to have shot them down by files!" Again, when it was reported that Garibaldi with his 13,000 "free companions" had been taken prisoners, the Chancellor exclaimed, "Thirteen thousand Francs-tireurs, who are not even Frenchmen, made prisoners! Why on earth were they not shot?" And when he heard that Voights Rhetz having experienced some resistance from the inhabitants of the open town of Tours, had shelled it into submission, Bismarck waxed wrath because the General had ceased firing when the white flag went up. "I would have gone on," said he, "throwing shells into the town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts for his ferocious bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent undignified attitude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered situation. It must be said of him, however, that he was a man of cool and undaunted courage. I have seen him perfectly impassive under heavy fire. In Bar-le-Duc, in Rheims, and over and over again in Versailles, I have met him walking alone and unarmed through streets thronged with French people who recognised him by the pictures of him, and who glared and spat and hissed in a cowed, furtive, malign fashion that was ugly to see.

I vividly remember the first occasion on which I saw Bismarck. It was on the little tree-shaded Place of St. Johann, the suburb of Saarbrücken, in the early evening of the 8th August, the next day but one after the battle of the Spicheren. Saarbrücken was full to the door-sills with the wounded of the battle and stretcher-parties were continually tramping to the "warriors' trench" in the cemetery, carrying to their graves soldiers who had died of their wounds. The Royal Headquarters had arrived a couple of hours earlier, and I was staring with all my eyes at a fresh-faced, white-haired old gentleman who was sitting in one of the windows of Guepratt's Hotel and whom I knew from the pictures to be King Wilhelm. Two officers in general's undress uniform were walking up and down under the pollarded lime-trees, talking as they walked. Presently from out a house opposite the hotel there emerged a very tall burly man of singularly upright carriage and with a certain air of swashbucklerism in his gait. A long cavalry sabre trailed and clanked on the rough pavement as he advanced to join the two sauntering officers under the trees. He wore the long blue double-breasted frockcoat with yellow cuffs and facings and white cap which I knew to be the undress uniform of the Bismarck Cuirassiers, but he was only partially in undress since the long cuirassier thigh-boots in which he strode were conventionally full uniform. The wearer of this costume was Bismarck; nor did I ever see him otherwise attired except on four occasions--at the Château Bellevue on the morning after Sedan, in the Galerie des Glaces in the Château of Versailles on 18th January, in the Place de la Concorde of capitulated Paris, and in the triumphal entry into Berlin; when he appeared in full uniform. Saluting His Majesty and then the two officers whom I recognised as Moltke and Roon, he joined the pedestrian couple, taking post between them and joining in their promenade and conversation. We heard his voice and laugh above the rumble of the waggon wheels on the causeway; the other two spoke little--Moltke, as he moved with bent head and hands clasped behind his back, scarcely anything.

One would have imagined that those three men, the chief makers of that empire which was soon to come to the grand but not brilliant old gentleman in the window-seat, were on the most intimate and cordial terms. In reality they were jealous of each other with an inconceivable intensity. Bismarck had umbrage with Moltke because the great strategist withheld from the great statesman the military information which the latter held he ought to share. Moltke has roundly disclosed in his posthumous book his conviction that Roon's place as Minister of War was at home in Germany, not on campaign, embarrassing the former's functions. Roon envied Moltke because of the latter's more elevated military position, and disliked Bismarck because that outspoken man made light of Roon's capacity. I have known the headquarter staff of a British army whose members were on bad terms one with the other, and the result, to put it mildly, was unsatisfactory. But those three high functionaries, each with bitterness in his heart against his fellows, nevertheless co-operated earnestly and loyally in the service of their sovereign and for the advantage of their country. Their common patriotism had the mastery in them of their mutual hatred and jealousy. Ardt's line: "Sein Vaterland muss grösser sein!" was the watchword and inspiration of all three, and dominated their discordancies.

On the 17th August, the day of comparative quietude intervening between the day of Mars-la-Tour and the day of Gravelotte I was wandering about among the hamlets and farmsteads to the southward of Mars-la-Tour, waiting the arrival in their appointed bivouacs about Puxieux of my early friends of the Saxon Army Corps. Since in the battle of the previous day some 32,000 men had fallen killed or wounded within a comparatively small area, it may be imagined--or rather, without having seen the horror of carnage it cannot be imagined--how shambles-like was the aspect of this Aceldama. Scrambling up through the Bois la Dame with intent to obtain a wider view from the plateau above it, I found in a farmyard in the hamlet of Mariaville a number of wounded men under the care of a single and rather helpless surgeon. The water supply was very short and I volunteered to carry some bucketsful from the stream below. The surgeon told me that among his patients was Count Herbert Bismarck, the Chancellor's eldest son, who--as was also his younger brother Count "Bill"--was a volunteer private in the 2nd Guard Dragoons, and who had been shot in the thigh in the desperate charge made by that fine regiment to extricate from annihilation the Westphalian regiments which had suffered so severely near Bruville. A little later I saw Bismarck who had left the King on the Flavigny height, and who was riding about, as I assumed, in quest of his wounded son's whereabouts. I ventured to inform him on this point and he thanked me with some emotion. He was greatly moved at the meeting with his son but their interview was short; then he addressed himself to reproving the surgeon for not having had the Mariaville poultry killed for the use of the wounded, and presently rode away to order up a supply of water in barrels. I remember thinking him an exceedingly practical man.

The English Warwick was styled the "King-maker"; but it was for the Prussian Bismarck to be Emperor-breaker and Emperor-maker within the same six months. The most wretched morning of Napoleon's life was that following the fatal day of Sedan, spent in and before the weaver's cottage on the Donchery road with Bismarck by his side, telling him in stern if courteous terms that as a prisoner of war his power to exercise the Imperial functions had fallen from him. It has been said that "the egg from which was hatched the German Empire was laid on the battlefield of Sedan." But, not to speak of the offer of the Imperial Crown to King Frederick Wilhelm by the Frankfort Parliament in 1848, Bismarck more than a year before the Austro-Prussian war had spoken to Lord Augustus Loftus, then British Ambassador to Prussia, of his ultimate intention that the King of Prussia should become the Emperor of an united Germany. The Kaiserthum permeated the air of Northern Germany throughout the years from 1866 to 1870. But Bismarck had the true statesman's sense of the proper sequence of things. He would move no step toward the Kaisership until German unity was in near and clear sight. Then, and not till then, in spite of the Crown Prince's ardour, was the Imperial project brought forward, discussed, and finally carried through by Bismarck's tact and diplomacy.

On the 18th January 1871, the anniversary of the coronation of the first king of his house, Wilhelm was proclaimed German Emperor in the Galerie des Glaces of the Château of Versailles. Behind the grand old monarch on the dais were ranged the regimental colours which had been borne to victory at Wörth and the Spicheren, at Mars-la-Tour, Gravelotte, and Sedan. On Wilhelm's right was his handsome and princely son; to right and to left stood potentates and princes and the leaders of the hosts of United Germany. Stalwart and square, somewhat apart on the extreme left of the great semicircle of which his sovereign was the centre, with a face of deadly pallor--for he had risen from a sick-bed--stood Bismarck in full cuirassier uniform leaning on his great sword, the man of all others who might that day most truly say, "Finis Coronat Opus." His strong massive features were calm and self-possessed, yet elevated as it were by some internal power which drew all eyes to the great immobile figure with the indomitable lineaments instinct with will--force and masterfulness. After the solemn religious service His Majesty in a loud yet broken voice proclaimed the re-establishment of the German Empire, and that the Imperial dignity so revived was vested in him and his descendants for all time in accordance with the unanimous will of the German people. Bismarck then stood forward and read in sonorous tones the proclamation which the Emperor addressed to the German nation. As his final words rang through the hall the Grand Duke of Baden strode forward and shouted with all his force, "Long live the Emperor Wilhelm!" With a tempest of cheering, amidst waving of swords and of helmets the new title was acclaimed, and the Emperor with streaming tears received the homage of his liegemen. The first on bended knees to kiss his sovereign's hand was the Crown Prince, the second was Bismarck. The band struck up the National Anthem. Louder than the music, heard above the clamour of the cheering, sounded the thunder of the French cannon from Mont Valérien, the Ave Caesar from the reluctant lips of worsted France. Bismarck, impassive as he seemed, must have had his emotions as he quitted this scene of triumph for the banquet-table of the Kaiser of his own making. He knew himself for the most conspicuous man in Europe, the greatest subject in the world. It was the proudest day of his life.

There were many proud days still to occur in his long life. One of those was on the occasion of the German entry into Paris during the armistice which resulted in peace. The war had been of his making, and he chose to witness with his own eyes the actual triumph of his craft. It was a strange spectacle. There, helmet on head and sword on thigh, he sat in the shadow of the crape-shrouded statue of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde. About him had gathered a group of extremely sinister French of the Belleville type. They had recognised him, and their lurid upward glances at the massive form on the great war-horse were charged with baleful meaning. Bismarck once or twice looked down on them with a grim smile under his moustache. At length the most daring of the "patriots" emitted a tentative hiss. With a little polite wave of his gloved hand Bismarck bent over his holster and requested "Monsieur" to oblige him with a light for his cigar. The man writhed as he compelled himself to comply. Little doubt that in his heart he wished the lucifer were a dagger and that he had the courage to use it.

THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR

1873

"Thursday.--Gathering, hand-shaking, brandy and soda and drams.

"Friday.--Drinking, dandering, and feeling the way in the forenoon; the ordinary in the afternoon; at night a spate of drink and bargaining.

"Saturday.--Bargaining and drink.

"Sunday morning.--Bargains, drink, and the kirk."

Such was the skeleton programme of the Inverness "Character" Fair given by a farmer friend to me, who happened to be lazily rusticating in the north of Scotland during the pleasant month of July. My friend asked me to accompany him in his visit to this remarkable institution and the programme was too tempting for refusal. As we drove to the station he handed me Henry Dixon's Field and Fern, open at a page which gave some particulars of the origin and character of the great annual sheep and wool market of the north. "Its Character Market," wrote "The Druid,"--no longer, alas! among us--"is the great bucolic glory of Inverness. The Fort-William market existed before, but the Sutherland and Caithness men, who sold about 14,000 sheep and 15,000 stones of wool annually so far back as 1816, did not care to go there. They dealt with regular customers year after year, and roving wool-staplers with no regular connection went about and notified their arrival on the church door. Patrick Sellar, 'the agent for the Sutherland Association,' saw exactly that some great caucus of buyers and sellers was wanted at a more central spot; and on 27th February 1817 that meeting of the clans was held at Inverness which brought the fair into being. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, Burnley, Aberdeen, and Elgin signified that their leading merchants were favourable and ready to attend. Sutherland, Caithness, Wester Ross, Skye, the Orkneys, Harris, and Lewis were represented at the meeting; Bailie Anderson also 'would state with confidence that the market was approved of by William Chisholm, Esq., of Chisholm, and James Laidlaw, tacksman, of Knockfin;' and so the matter was settled for ever and aye, and the Courier and the Morning Chronicle were the London advertising media. This Highland Wool Parliament was originally held on the third Thursday in June, but now it begins on the second Thursday of July and lasts till the Saturday; and Argyllshire, Nairnshire, and High Aberdeenshire have gradually joined in. The plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel have always been the scene of the bargains, which are most truly based on the broad stone of honour; not a sheep or fleece is to be seen and the buyer of the year before gets the first offer of the cast or clip. The previous proving and public character of the different flocks are the purchasers' guide far more than the sellers' description."

Thus far "The Druid"; and my companion as we drove supplemented his information. It is from the circumstance that not a head of sheep or a tait of wool is brought to the market but that everything is sold and bought unseen and even unsampled, that the market derives its appellation of "character" fair. Of the value of the business transacted, the amount of money turned over, it is impossible to form with confidence even an approximate estimate since there is no source for data; but none with whom I spoke put the turnover at a lower figure than half a million. In a good season such as the past, over 200,000 sheep are disposed of exclusive of lambs, and of lambs about the same number. The stock sold from the hills are for the most part Cheviots and Blackfaces; from the low grounds half-breds, being a cross between Leicester and Cheviot and crosses between the Cheviot and Blackface. All the sales of sheep and lambs are by the "clad score" which contains twenty-one. The odd one is thrown in to meet the contingency of deaths before delivery is effected. Established when there was a long and wearing journey for the flocks from the hills where they were reared down to their purchasers in the lowlands or the south country, the altered conditions of transit have stimulated farmers to efforts for the abolition of the "clad score." Now that sheep are trucked by railway instead of being driven on foot or conveyed from the islands to their destination in steamers specially chartered for the purpose, the farmers grudge the "one in" of the "clad score." In 1866 they seized the opportunity of an exceptionally high market and keen competition to combine against the old reckoning and in a measure succeeded. But next year was as dull as '66 had been brisk, and then the buyers and dealers had their revenge and re-established the "clad score" in all its pristine firmness of position. The sheep-farmers wean their lambs about the 24th of August and delivery of them is given to the buyers as soon as possible thereafter. The delivery of ewes and wethers is timed by individual arrangement. A large proportion of the old ewes--no ewes are sold but such as are old--go to England where a lamb or two is got from them before they are fattened. Most of the lambs are bought by sheep-farmers who, not keeping a ewe flock, are not themselves breeders, and are kept till they are three years old--"three shears" as they are technically called--and sold fat into the south country. There they get what Mr. M'Combie called the last dip and the butcher sells them as "prime four-year-old wedder mutton."

The size of some of the Highland sheep farms is to be reckoned by miles not by acres; and the stock, as in Australia, by the thousand. The largest sheep-owner, perhaps, that the Highlands ever knew was Cameron of Corrichollie, now dead. He was once examined before a Committee of the House of Commons, and came to be questioned on the subject of his ownership of sheep. "You may have some 1500 sheep, probably, sir?" quoth the interrogating M.P. "Aiblins," was Corrichollie's quiet reply as he took a pinch of snuff; "aiblins I have a few more nor that." "Two thousand, then?" "Yes, I pelieve I have that and a few more forpye," calmly responded the Highlander with another pinch. "Five thousand?" "Oh, ay, and a few more." "Twenty thousand, sir?" cried the M.P., capping with a burst his previous bid. "Oh, ay, and some more forpye," was the imperturbable response. "In Heaven's name how many sheep have you, man?" burst out the astonished catechist. "I'm no very sure to a thousan' or two," replied Corrichollie in his dry laconic way and with an extra big pinch; "but I'm owner of forty thousan' sheep at the lowest reckoning." Lochiel, known to the Sassenach as Mr. Cameron, M.P., is perhaps the largest living sheep-owner in Scotland. He has at least 30,000 sheep on his vast tracks of moorland on the braes of Lochaber. In the Island of Skye Captain Cameron of Talisker has a flock of some 12,000; and there are several other flocks both in the islands and on the mainland of more than equal magnitude. Sheep-farming, at least in many instances, is an hereditary avocation, and some families can trace a sheep-farming ancestry very far back. The oldest sheep-farming family in Scotland are the Mackinnons of Corrie in Skye. They have been on Corrie for four hundred years and they were holding sheep-farms elsewhere even earlier. The Macraes of Achnagart in Kintail, paid rent to Seaforth for two hundred years. For as long before they had held Achnagart on the tenure of a bunch of heather exigible annually and their fighting services as good clansmen. Two hundred years ago an annual rental of £5 was substituted for the heather "corve"; the clansmen's service continuing and being rendered up till the '45. Now clanship is but a name: a Seaforth Mackenzie is no longer chief in Kintail, and the Macrae who has succeeded his forbears in Achnagart finds the bunch of heather and the £5 alike superseded by the very far other than nominal rent of £1000. The modern Achnagart with his broad shoulders and burly frame, looks as capable as were any of his ancestry to render personal service to his chief if a demand were made upon him; and very probably would be quite prepared to accept a reduction of his money rental if an obligation to perform feudal clan-service were substituted. Achnagart with his £1000 a year rental by no means tops the sheep-farming rentals of his county. Perhaps Robertson of Achiltie, whose sheep-walks stretch up on to the snow-patched shoulders of Ben Wyvis and far away west to Loch Broom, pays the highest sheep-farming rental in Ross-shire, when the factor has pocketed his half-yearly check for £800.

Part of this I learn from my friend as we drive to the station; part I gather afterwards from other sources. The station for which we are bound is Elgin, the county town of Morayshire. Between Elgin and Inverness, it is true, we shall see but few of the great sheep-farmers and flock-masters of the west country, who converge on the annual tryst from other points of the compass and by various routes--by the Skye railway, by that portion of the Highland line which extends north of Inverness, through Ross into Sutherland, by the Caledonian Canal, etc. But it is promised to me that I shall see many of the notable agriculturists of Moray land, who go to the market as buyers; and a contingent of sheep-breeders are sure to join us at Forres, coming down the Highland line from the Inverness-shire Highlands on Upper Strathspey. There is quite an exceptional throng on the platform of the Elgin station, of farmers, factors, lawyers, and ex-coffee-planters--all very plentiful in Elgin; tanners bound for investments in prospective pelts; and men of no avocation yet as much bound to visit Inverness to-day as if they meant to invest thousands. In a corner towers the mighty form of Paterson of Mulben, famous among breeders of polls with his tribe of "Mayflowers." From beneath a kilt peep out the brawny limbs of Willie Brown of Linkwood and Morriston, nephew of stout old Sir George who commanded the light division at the Alma, son to a factor whose word in his day was as the laws of the Medes and Persians over a wide territory, and himself the feeder of the leviathan cross red ox and the beautiful gray heifer which took honours so high at one of the recent Smithfield Christmas Shows. There is the white beard and hearty face of Mr. Collie, late of Ardgay, owner erstwhile of "Fair Maid of Perth" and breeder of "Zarah." Here, too, is a fresh, sprightly gentleman in a kilt whom his companions designate "the Bourach." Requesting an explanation of the term I am told that "Bourach" is the Gaelic for "through-other," which again is the Scottish synonym for a kind of amalgam of addled and harum-scarum. A jolly tanner observes: "I'll get a compartment to oursels." The reason of the desire for this exclusive accommodation is apparent as soon as we start. A "deck" of cards is produced and a quartette betake themselves to whist with half-crown stakes on the rubber and sixpenny points. This was mild speculation to that which was engaged in on the homeward journey after the market, when a Strathspey sheep-farmer won £8 between Dalvey and Forres. As my friends shuffle and deal, I look out of window at the warm gray towers of the cathedral, beautiful still spite of the desecrating hand of the "Wolf of Badenoch." Our road lies through the fertile "Laigh of Moray," one of the richest wheat districts in the Empire and as beautiful as fertile. At Alves we pick up a fresh, hale gentleman, who is described to me as "the laird of three properties," bought for more than £100,000 by a man who began life as the son of a hillside crofter. We pass the picturesque ruins of Kinloss Abbey and draw up at Forres station, whose platform is thronged with noted agriculturists bound for the "Character" Fair. Here is that spirited Englishman Mr. Harris of Earnhill, whose great cross ox took the cup at the Agricultural Hall seven or eight years ago; and the brothers Bruce--he of Newton Struthers, whose marvellous polled cow beat everything in Bingley Hall at the '71 Christmas Show and but for "foot and mouth" would have repeated the performance at the Smithfield Show; and he of Burnside who likewise has stamped his mark pretty deeply in the latter arena. At Forres we first hear Gaelic; for a train from Carr Bridge and Grantown in Upper Strathspey has come down the Highland Railway to join ours, and the red-haired Grants around the Rock of Craigellachie--where a man whose name is not Grant is regarded as a lusus naturae--are Gaelic speakers to a man. No witches accost us, and speaking personally I feel no "pricking of the thumbs" as we skirt the blasted heath on which Macbeth met the witches; the most graphic modern description of which on record was given to Henry Dixon in the following quaint form of Shakespearean annotation: "It's just a sort of eminence; all firs and ploughed land now; you paid a toll near it. I'm thinking, it's just a mile wast from Brodie Station."

Nairn is that town by the citation of a peculiarity of which King Jamie put to shame the boastings of the Southrons as to the superior magnitude of English towns. "I have a town," quoth the sapient James, "in my ancient kingdom of Scotland, whilk is sae lang that at ane end of it a different language is spoken from that whilk prevails at the other." To this day the monarch's words are true; one end of Nairn is Gaelic, the other Sassenach. Here we obtain a considerable accession of strength. The attributes of one kilted chieftain are described to me in curious scraps of illustrative patchwork. "A great litigant, an enthusiastic agriculturist, a dealer in Hielan' nowt--something of a Hielan' nowt himself, a semi-auctioneer, a great hand as chairman at an agricultural dinner, a visitor to the Baker Street Bazaar when the Smithfield Shows were held there and where the Cockneys mistook him for one of the exhibits and began pinching and punching him." Stewart of Duntalloch swings his stalwart form into our carriage--a noted breeder of Highland cattle and as fine a specimen of a Highlander as can be seen from Reay to Pitlochrie. "Culloden! Culloden!" chant the porters in that curious sing-song peculiar to the Scotch platform porter. The whistle of the engine and the talk about turnips and cattle contrast harshly with that bleak, lonely, moorland swell yonder--the patches of green among the brown heather telling where moulders the dust of the chivalrous clansmen. It is but little longer than a century and a quarter ago since Charles Stuart and Cumberland confronted each other over against us there; and here are the descendants of the men that fought in their tartans for the "King over the Water," who are discussing the right proportion of phosphates in artificial manures and of whom one asks me confidentially for my opinion on the Leger favourite.

Here we are at Inverness at length; that city of the Clachnacudden stone. There is quite a crowd in the spacious station of business people who have been awaiting the arrival of the train from the east, and the buyers and sellers whom it has conveyed find themselves at once among eager friends. Hurried announcements are made as to the conditions and prospects of the market. The card-players have plunged suddenly in medias res of bargaining. The man who had volunteered to stand me a seltzer and sherry has forgotten all about his offer, and is talking energetically about clad scores and the price of lambs. I quit the station and walk up Union Street through a gradually thickening throng, till I reach Church Street and shoulder my way to the front of the Caledonian Hotel. I am now in "the heart of the market," standing as I am on the plain-stones in front of the Caledonian Hotel and looking up and down along the crowded street. What physique, what broad shoulders, what stalwart limbs, what wiry red beards and high cheek-bones there are everywhere! You have the kilt at every turn, in every tartan, and often in no tartan at all. Other men wear whole-coloured suits of inconceivably shaggy tweed, and the breadth of the bonnets is only equalled by that of the accents. Every second man has a mighty plaid over his shoulder. It may serve as a sample of his wool, for invariably it is home made. Some carry long twisted crooks such as we see in old pastoral prints; others have massive gnarled sticks grasped in vast sinewy hands on the back of which the wiry red hairs stand out like prickles. There is falling what in the south we should reckon as a very respectable pelt of rain, but the Inverness Wool Fair heeds rain no more than thistledown. Hardly a man has thought it worth his pains to envelop his shoulders in his plaid, but stands and lets the rain take its chance. There is a perfect babel of tongues; no bawling or shouting, however, but a perpetual gruff susurrus of broad guttural conversation accentuated every now and then by a louder exclamation in Gaelic. Quite half of the throng are discoursing in this language. It is possible to note the difference in the character of the Celt and Teuton. The former gesticulates, splutters out a perfect torrent of alternately shrill, guttural, and intoned Gaelic; he shrugs his shoulders, he throws his arms about, he thrills with vivacity. The Teuton expresses quiet, sententious canniness in every gesture and every utterance; he is a cold-blooded man and keeps his breath to cool his porridge.