Turning to the Scholia of Villanovanus, we find it not a little interesting in these days to have a glimpse of ourselves in our sires, and of our neighbours in theirs, from the pen of a man of genius hard upon three centuries and a half ago; and as Michael Servetus is really only known to us through his works and the judicial trials he underwent, we make no apology for referring briefly to his additions to the bald and matter-of-fact text of the original Ptolemy.
The map of the first country in the series of fifty by which the work is illustrated is that of Great Britain. The people of SCOTLAND, Villanovanus informs his reader, are hot-tempered, prone to revenge, and fierce in their anger; but valiant in war and patient beyond belief of cold, hunger, and fatigue. They are handsome in person, and their clothing and language are the same as those of the Irish, their tunics being dyed yellow, their legs bare, and their feet protected by sandals of undressed hide with the hair on. They live mainly on fish and flesh; they have numerous flocks, mostly of sheep, for the country is free from wolves; and they have milk and cheese in abundance. Their arms are bows and arrows and broad swords--_lati gladii_. Instead of wood, they have coal for fuel. Unlike the people of the last few generations, he says the Scotch are not a particularly religious people. He ‘who never feared the face of man,’ as the Earl of Morton said of Knox, when looking down on his dead body, had not yet made himself felt in the land of his birth; and the School-house had not yet risen as a necessary complement to the Kirk and the Manse, to make the people of Scotland what they have become since his day--among the very foremost of the sons of men.
ENGLAND, Villanovanus observes, is wonderfully well peopled, and the inhabitants are long-lived. Tall in stature, they are fair in complexion, and have blue eyes. They are brave in war, and admirable bowmen. He has the familiar tale of the English children seen as captives at Rome by the blessed Gregory, who said they were called Angli, indeed; but in form and feature showed like Angeli. He must, as it seems, have given some little attention to the English language, if he did not study it more particularly. He says it is so difficult to learn and to pronounce, because the people who speak it are a compound of so many different races.