itution, must have often taken an eminent
place here. We were not, however, immediately in quest of the
antiquities of the Royal Society. Our object was to form some
acquaintance with the valuable institution which has succeeded to it
in the possession of this house.

We must advert to a peculiarity of our Scottish countrymen, which can
be set down only on the credit side of their character--their sympathy
with each other when they meet as wanderers in foreign countries.
Scotland is just a small enough country to cause a certain unity of
feeling amongst the people. Wherever they are, they feel that Scotsmen
should stand, as their proverb has it, _shoulder to shoulder_. The
more distant the clime in which they meet, they remember with the more
intensity their common land of mountain and flood, their historical
and poetical associations, the various national institutions which
ages have endeared to them; and the more disposed are they to take an
interest in each other's welfare. This is a feeling in which time and
modern innovations work no change, and it is one of old-standing.

When James VI. acceded to the throne of Elizabeth, he was followed
southward by some of his favourite nobles, and there was of course an
end put to that exclusive system of the late monarch which had kept
down the number of Scotsmen in London, to what must now appear the
astonishingly small one of fifty-eight. Perhaps some exaggerations
have been indulged in with regard to the host of traders and craftsmen
who went southward in the train of King James, but there can be no
doubt, that it was considerable in point of numbers. But where wealth
is sought for, there also, by an inevitable law of nature, is poverty.
The better class of Scotchmen settled in London, soon found their
feelings of compassion excited in behalf of a set of miserable
fellow-countrymen who had failed to obtain employment or fix
themselves in a mercantile position, and for whom the stated charities
of the country were not available. Hence seems to have arisen, so
early as 1613, the necessity for some system of mutual charity among
the natives of Scotland in London. So far as can be ascertained, it
was a handful of journeymen or hired artisans, who in that year
associated to aid each other, and prevent themselves from becoming
burdensome to strangers--an interesting fact, as evincing in a remote
period the predominance of that spirit of independence for which the
modern Scottis