ologist, and at length, going up to him,
quietly said, "Sir, ye're breaking something there forbye the stanes!"

The same feeling, under a more fastidious form, was exhibited to a
traveller by a Scottish peasant:--An English artist travelling
professionally through Scotland, had occasion to remain over Sunday in a
small town in the north. To while away the time, he walked out a short
way in the environs, where the picturesque ruin of a castle met his eye.
He asked a countryman who was passing to be so good as tell him the name
of the castle. The reply was somewhat startling--"It's no the day to be
speerin' sic things!"

A manifestation of even still greater strictness on the subject of
Sabbath desecration, I have received from a relative of the family in
which it occurred. About fifty years ago the Hon. Mrs. Stewart lived in
Heriot Row, who had a cook, Jeannie by name, a paragon of excellence.
One Sunday morning when her daughter (afterwards Lady Elton) went into
the kitchen, she was surprised to find a new jack (recently ordered, and
which was constructed on the principle of going constantly without
winding up) wholly paralysed and useless. Miss Stewart naturally
inquired what accident had happened to the new jack, as it had stopped.
The mystery was soon solved by Jeannie indignantly exclaiming that "she
was nae gaeing to hae the fule thing clocking and rinning about in _her_
kitchen a' the blessed Sabbath day."

There sometimes appears to have been in our countrymen an undue
preponderance of zeal for Sabbath observance as compared with the
importance attached to _other_ religious duties, and especially as
compared with the virtue of sobriety. The following dialogue between Mr.
Macnee of Glasgow, the celebrated artist, and an old Highland
acquaintance whom he had met with unexpectedly, will illustrate the
contrast between the severity of judgment passed upon treating the
Sabbath with levity and the lighter censure attached to indulgence in
whisky. Mr. Macnee begins, "Donald, what brought you here?" "Ou, weel,
sir, it was a baad place yon; they were baad folk--but they're a
God-fearin' set o' folk here!" "Well, Donald," said Mr. M., "I'm glad to
hear it." "Ou ay, sir, 'deed are they; an' I'll gie ye an instance o't.
Last Sabbath, just as the kirk was skailin,' there was a drover chield
frae Dumfries comin' along the road whustlin,' an' lookin' _as happy_ as
if it was ta middle o' ta week; weel, sir, oor laads is a God