l_ events and national history than for Englishmen. Take as
illustrations the following, as being perhaps as good as any:--The Rev.
Robert Scott, a Scotsman who forgets not Scotland in his southern
vicarage, and whom I have named before as having sent me some good
reminiscences, tells me that, at Inverary, some thirty years ago, he
could not help overhearing the conversation of some Lowland
cattle-dealers in the public room in which he was. The subject of the
bravery of our navy being started, one of the interlocutors expressed
his surprise that Nelson should have issued his signal at Trafalgar in
the terms, "_England expects_," etc. He was met with the answer (which
seemed highly satisfactory to the rest), "Ah, Nelson only said
'_expects_' of the English; he said naething of Scotland, for he _kent_
the _Scotch_ would do theirs."

I am assured the following manifestation of national feeling against the
memory of a Scottish character actually took place within a few
years:--Williamson (the Duke of Buccleuch's huntsman) was one afternoon
riding home from hunting through Haddington; and as he passed the old
Abbey, he saw an ancient woman looking through the iron grating in front
of the burial-place of the Lauderdale family, holding by the bars, and
grinning and dancing with rage. "Eh, gudewife," said Williamson, "what
ails ye?" "It's the Duke o' Lauderdale," cried she. "Eh, if I could win
at him, I wud rax the banes o' him."

To this class belongs the following complacent Scottish remark upon
Bannockburn. A splenetic Englishman said to a Scottish countryman,
something of a wag, that no man of taste would think of remaining any
time in such a country as Scotland. To which the canny Scot replied,
"Tastes differ; I'se tak ye to a place no far frae Stirling, whaur
thretty thousand o' your countrymen ha' been for five hunder years, and
they've nae thocht o' leavin' yet."

In a similar spirit, an honest Scotch farmer, who had sent some sheep to
compete at a great English agricultural cattle-show, and was much
disgusted at not getting a prize, consoled himself for the
disappointment, by insinuating that the judges could hardly act quite
impartially by a Scottish competitor, complacently remarking, "It's aye
been the same since Bannockburn."

Then, again, take the story told in Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott,
of the blacksmith whom Sir Walter had formerly known as a horse-doctor,
and whom he found at a small country town