ey were so tight that,
after waxing hot and red in the attempt to try them on, he _let out_
rather savagely at the tailor, who calmly assured him, "It's the fash'n;
it's jist the fash'n." "Eh, ye haveril, is it the fashion for them _no
to go on_?"

An English gentleman writes to me--"We have all heard much of Scotch
caution, and I met once with an instance of it which I think is worth
recording, and which I tell as strictly original. About 1827, I fell
into conversation, on board of a Stirling steamer, with a well-dressed
middle-aged man, who told me he was a soldier of the 42d, going on
leave. He began to relate the campaigns he had gone through, and
mentioned having been at the siege of St. Sebastian.--'Ah! under Sir
Thomas Graham?' 'Yes, sir; he commanded there.' 'Well,' I said, merely
by way of carrying on the _crack_, 'and what do you think of _him_?'
Instead of answering, he scanned me several times from head to foot,
and from foot to head, and then said, in a tone of the most diplomatic
caution, 'Ye'll perhaps be of the name of Grah'm yersel, sir?' There
could hardly be a better example, either of the circumspection of a real
canny Scot, or of the lingering influence of the old patriarchal
feeling, by which 'A name, a word, makes clansmen vassals to
their lord.'"

Now when we linger over these old stories, we seem to live at another
period, and in such reminiscences we converse with a generation
different from our own. Changes are still going on around us. They have
been going on for some time past. The changes are less striking as
society advances, and we find fewer alterations for us to notice.
Probably each generation will have less change to record than the
generation that preceded; still every one who is tolerably advanced in
life must feel that, comparing its beginning and its close, he has
witnessed two epochs, and that in advanced life he looks on a different
world from one which he can remember. To elucidate this fact has been my
present object, and in attempting this task I cannot but feel how
trifling and unsatisfactory my remarks must seem to many who have a more
enlarged and minute acquaintance with Scottish life and manners than I
have. But I shall be encouraged to hope for a favourable, or at least an
indulgent, sentence upon these Reminiscences, if to any of my readers I
shall have opened a fresh insight into the subject of social changes
amongst us. Many causes have their effect upon the habits