land the percentage varies from 74.8 in Fife to 2.4 in Sutherland, and over all is only 24.2; good roads, canals, extensive railway and telegraph systems knit all parts of the country together; Presbyterianism is the established form of religion, and in 1872 the old parish schools were supplanted by a national system under school-boards similar to England; the lowlanders and highlanders still retain distinctive characteristics of their Teutonic and Celtic progenitors, the latter speaking in many parts of the Highlands their native Gaelic; originally the home of the PICTS (q. v.), and by them called Alban or Albyn, the country, already occupied as far as the Forth and Clyde by the Romans, was in the 5th century successfully invaded by the Scots, a Celtic tribe from Ireland; in 843 their king Kenneth was crowned king of Picts and Scots, and by the 10th century the country (known to the Romans as Caledonia) began to be called Scotia or Scotland; government and power gradually centred in the richer lowlands, which, through contact with England, and from the number of English immigrants, became distinctively Anglo-Saxon; since the Union with ENGLAND (q. v.) the prosperity of Scotland has been of steady and rapid growth, manufactures, commerce, and literature (in all branches) having flourished wonderfully.

SCOTS, THE, a tribe of Celts from Ireland who settled in the W. of North Britain, and who, having gained the ascendency of the Picts in the E., gave to the whole country the name of Scotland.

SCOTT, DAVID, Scotch painter, born in Edinburgh; he was an artist of great imaginative power, and excelled in the weird; his best picture, exhibited in 1828, was “The Hopes of Early Genius Dispelled by Death,” though his first achievements in art were his illustrations of the “Ancient Mariner”; but his masterpiece is “Vasco da Gama encountering the Spirit of the Cape”; he was a sensitive man, and disappointment hastened his death (1806-1849).

SCOTT, SIR GEORGE GILBERT, English architect, born in Buckinghamshire, son of Scott the commentator; was the builder or restorer of buildings both in England and on the Continent after the Gothic, and wrote several works on architecture.

SCOTT, MICHAEL, a sage with the reputation of a wizard, who lived about the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, of whose art as a magician many legends are related.

SCOTT, THOMAS, commentator, born in Lincolnshire; became rector of Aston Sandford, Bucks; was a Calvinist in theology, author of the “Force of Truth” and “Essays on Religion,” the work by which he is best known being his “Commentary on the Bible,” a scholarly exposition (1747-1821).