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.
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