But presiding in the like court as Kings of England, the Anglo-Norman monarchs were very different personages from what they were when presiding in their ducal courts. Here was the real Basileus- the undoubted Princeps. When the great feudatories of France set up courts which virtually excluded the judicial supremacy of the Monarch, they, and yet more the canon and civil lawyers who then composed their tribunals, were quite aware that the overgrown pretensions of these subordinates were fraudulent, and that they were dressing up impostors of their own in the attributes really belonging to the supreme authorities to which their codes taught them to bow. It was otherwise in England: here the real and substantial attributes of the Prince belonged honestly to the Ruler; and his military resources and strength of character gave full efficiency to his prerogatives. But though thus far we can trace distinctly the ancient materials of tribunals of the Frankish institutions, by degrees King, Judges, Missi, and all inferior tribunals, were about to change their relations, and give birth to codes and tribunals very powerfully modified. The Teutonic institutions and tribunals of England had a common origin with those which the Franks carried into Gaul; but even before the Frankish invasion, we can see that the Salic institutions had undergone a partial change. Meantime the Anglo-Saxons preserved their ancient manners and habits somewhat more intact; and the difference is important, when we are tracing the steps by which the very happy junction of Norman and Saxon tribunals was gradually effected. The proportion of Roman influence on French and English law respectively is probably about the same as on the French and English language. The Curia Palatii of the Franks always confined itself to an appellate jurisdiction, except in the cases of a few great crimes, which, even in their forests, the Germans had reserved for the judgment of the whole tribe. But the Curia Regis, with the aid of the Missi in the form of Justices of Eyre and Judges of Assize, soon organised a great original jurisdiction, which gradually, and by no violent steps, put into shade the inferior courts. Here, however, we come to ground which Sir F. Palgrave has already worthily and ably occupied in his rise and progress of the English Commonwealth. The transactions of the men and the institutions we have been sketching led to the establishment of the English common and constitutional law. Strong hands have unfolded various portions of the story of the periods we have been rapidly sketching. Hallam, Savigny, Guizot, and Palgrave himself, will ever, live in the grateful recollection of those who bend themselves 1852. The Ordnance Survey of Scotland. 179 to the task of observing the obscure steps through which the varying progress of successive generations placed us in the possession of the laws and habits, manners and opinions, which form our legal and political heritage. The light thrown, and to be thrown, on our early institutions, cannot but appear more valuable when contrasted with the thick night which at one time covered and concealed their history. The notions of Hale, Coke, and Blackstone, on the undiscoverable origin and independent progress of the Common Law, were calculated not only to impart false and imperfect knowledge, but to debar investigation; and the real and very great obligations which we owe to the author of the Commentaries' need not blind us to his enormous errors as an historian of the sources and early state of our institutions, in which he could only see 'great Alfred's soul pervade and regulate the whole.' What is less excusable, he scarcely quotes a passage from the elements of the Civil Law, without mistranslating it, or misapplying it. The clouds, however, have at last lifted up their skirts, and when the territory and landscape they concealed are fully before the English public, no man, in spite of many eccentricities and some failings, will have a clearer title to the gratitude of future students than Sir Francis Palgrave. ART. VII.-1. Report from the Select Committee on the Ordnance Survey (Scotland); together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, &c. Printed by Order of the House of Commons. July, 1851. 2. Trigonometrical Survey, Great Britain. Memorial of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Printed by Order of the House of Commons. February, 1836. WHEN the high rank in physical science which many Scots men have attained is taken into consideration, it may well excite surprise that they should have done so little to promote the accurate geographical knowledge of their native country. Whilst every other region of the civilised earth rejoices in a good, or, at least, tolerably correct, map, Scotland is universally allowed to possess nothing deserving of the name. How this has originated, a short account of the progress of Scottish Geography may explain, referring our readers to a recent Memoir by Mr. Keith Johnston for further particulars.* * Historical Notice of the Progress of the Ordnance Survey in Scotland. Proceedings of Edinburgh Royal Society, 1851. The first map of Scotland, as of most other countries, was the work of a man of science, seeking to extend his own knowledge and that of others, and not the result of any national or royal enterprise. This map, ascribed to Ptolemy, the ancient Greek geographer, who flourished about A.D. 130, is remarkable for the singular distortion of the northern regions of the island, which are represented as stretching to the east instead of towards the north. This peculiar deviation of the western parts of Europe from their true northerly direction may be seen in many other ancient maps. It has never been explained; but has arisen, we believe, from the old geographers estimating the relative position of places more by their climate than from astronomical observation, so that their parallels of latitude were rather isothermal lines than real geographical circles. In other respects, the map shows more knowledge of these remote regions than might have been expected; and, except in the general bearing of the country being rectified, is closely followed by that of Richard of Cirencester in the fourteenth century. How these maps were prepared, history does not inform us; but the next attempts were based on more accurate data. In 1608, Timothy Pont commenced a survey of Scotland, and his notes and sketches, with those of Sir Robert Gordon of Straloch, who completed the design, were transmitted to Bleau of Amsterdam, who published his Atlas Scotia in 1654. This very remarkable work, now, however, chiefly valuable to the antiquary, was probably completed at the public expense, though the funds were at first supplied by Sir John Scott of Scotstarvet, better known from his curious treatise on the • Staggering State of Scottish Statesmen,' than for the enlightened encouragement of science. Other surveys, partly of the coasts, partly of the interior, followed, of which it is enough to name those of Bryce, Adair, Dorret and Mackenzie, by which the accurate knowledge of the country was greatly extended. Making use of these materials and his own observations, John Ainslie, a land surveyor in Edinburgh, published in 1789 a map of Scotland on nine sheets, being the largest map of the country that even yet exists. Though tolerably accurate in some portions, this map has still many defects, even to the omission of whole parishes, and the mountains are only represented by isolated summits with few traces of the connecting ridges. But in this the author acted with more good faith than some of his successors, who have filled up his sketches from mere imagination, and drawn in chains of mountains and watersheds of basins with more beauty than fidelity to nature. Thus far the geography of Scotland had been left to depend on private enterprise, with only slight encouragement from the 1852. Roy's Survey of Scotland. 181 national resources. It is, however, gratifying to find that it had been making decided progress, and that each map based on those which preceded it bore marks of rapid improvement. The next step was, however, made at the public expense, and originated in what has always formed the great inducement to governments to undertake such works; for it is.not less true than humiliating that rulers have usually been more ready to expend money for purposes of war and bloodshed than for the arts of peace or the advancement of science. During the rebellion of 1745, the want of any tolerable map of Scotland had been so much felt, that the Government, at the suggestion of the officers who had commanded there, commenced a survey of the country. The work was entrusted to Lieut-General Watson, at that time deputy quarter-master in North Britain, but was in great part executed by Major-General Roy, then a young officer of engineers. It was originally intended to embrace only the Highlands, but was gradually extended over the whole mainland, and completed in 1755; the field-work being carried on in summer, and the drawings, on the scale of one inch and three-quarters to the mile, prepared during winter in Edinburgh Castle. General Roy himself says that the survey having been carried on with inferior instruments, and the sum allowed having been very inadequate for its proper execution, it is rather to be considered as a magnificent 'military sketch than a very accurate map of a country.' With all its defects, however, the survey had great merit, and had it been published in the original form, we should probably have had a very different state of Scottish geography to describe. Unfortunately, this was not the case; the war of 1755 broke out; the Government had no time to think of maps of the Highlands, now crushed down into peace; and the drawings were consigned to the Royal Library, where they lay almost forgotten and totally useless for many years; whilst Ainslie and others were wasting their time and energies in repeating General Roy's work in a far less accurate manner, instead of endeavouring to improve his map. Thus early, we must remark in passing, did the geography of Scotland begin to suffer from the Government, with ill-judged parsimony, delaying the publication of this valuable national work. Yet this survey was not altogether fruitless; as it gave rise to the idea of a general map of the whole island, first proposed in 1763, though, in consequence of renewed troubles abroad, only begun in 1784. In that year, General Roy, trained by his experience in Scotland, commenced the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, by measuring a base line on Hounslow Heath. Before describing the extension of this survey to North Britain, we must notice the map, prepared by Arrowsmith, on the suggestion of the Commissioners for Highland Roads and Bridges, as forming the last really original map of Scotland which private enterprise has ventured to undertake in the immediate prospect of competition with the Ordnance. It was begun in 1805, and published in 1807, on the scale of a quarter inch to the mile, on four sheets. The author having had the use of General Roy's survey and of various more recent materials, his work far surpasses in merit and accuracy any of the former attempts. Dr. Macculloch also employed it to record his geological observations; and consequently, though fully aware of and ready to expose its defects, gave it still wider circulation and influence. It has formed the basis of all more recent maps, whether geographical or geological, and may therefore be assumed as the standard representative of Scottish geography; and the following remarks on it will be found to apply with almost equal force to every subsequent undertaking, all of which, we may mention, are on a much smaller scale. The objects, of which the position and features are to be represented on a map, belong either to physical or political geography. The most important in the latter class are towns, villages, churches, houses, and roads. Roy's survey having been made at the time when the country was just emerging from the rude unsettled, we may almost say, semibarbarous state consequent on the wars, persecutions, and rebellions which from time immemorial had almost incessantly desolated the land, could be no proper representative of its condition after fifty, still less a hundred, years of peace and prosperity. At the time when General Roy made his survey, the common mode of carriage, even for coal and lime, was in sacks or paniers slung across the backs of horses; and we have known men living within a few years who remembered when this was the only method of transport, and had seen all the turnpike roads in the neighbourhood first formed. When that survey was completed, the population of Scotland numbered less than one-half of that given in the last census and the annual value of lands and houses was hardly one-twelfth part of its present amount. It can scarcely, therefore, excite surprise that a map formed on data collected at such an epoch, should represent not the existing state of things, but one in many respects entirely different: that it should exhibit a system of roads now almost unknown; the paths used by our moss-trooping ancestors in their raids across the border, or the thieves' roads,' as they are appropriately named in some districts, instead of the highways on which their improving successors bring their grain to market. Towns, of course, have altered less; but numerous villages |