392 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
ageries may co-exist with admirable qualities of
head and heart. The only people who can con-
sistently despair of the future for even the low-
est of our mountaineers are those who deny evo-
lution and who believe, with Archbishop Usher,
that man was created perfect at 9 A. M. on the
2ISt of October, in the year B. C. 4004.
  Let us remember, Sir and Madam, that we
ourselves are descended from white barbarians.
From William the Conqueror, you Very well;
how many other ancestors of yours were walking
about England and elsewhere at the time of
William Untold thousands of them were just
such people as you can find to-day brawling in
some mountain still-house (unless there has been
a deal of incest somewhere along your line), and
you have infinitely more of their blood in your
veins than you have of the Conqueror's-who,
by the way, could he be re-incarnated, would
not be tolerated in your drawing-room for half
an hour. I may have made the point too bru-
tally plain; but if it sinks through the smug self-
complacency of those who " do not belong to the
masses," who act as though civilization and
morals and good manners were entailed to them
through a mere dozen or so of selected ancestors,
I remain unrepentant and unashamed. Let us