" But Cowper says, no less
truly, of a despised and rebel Queen;
_Regions Caesar never knew,
Thy posterity shall sway;
Where his Eagles never flew,
None invincible as they._
The last battles of Agricola were fought in Scotland; and, in the pages of
Tacitus, he achieved a splendid victory among the Grampian hills. Gibbon
remarks, however, "The native Caledonians preserved in the northern
extremity of the island their wild independence, for which they were not
less indebted to their poverty than to their valour. Their incursions were
frequently repelled and chastised; but their country was never subdued.
The masters of the fairest and most wealthy climates of the globe turned
with contempt from gloomy hills assailed by the winter tempest, from lakes
concealed in a blue mist, and from cold and lonely heaths, over which the
deer of the forest were chased by a troop of naked barbarians." The Scotch
themselves are never tired of asserting, and of celebrating, their
"independence"; Scotland imposed a limit to the victories of the Roman
People, Scaliger says in his compliments to Buchanan:
_Imperii fuerat Romani Scotia lines.
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