and customs of
mankind, and of late years such causes have been greatly multiplied in
number and activity. In many persons, and in some who have not
altogether lost their national partialities, there is a general
tendency to merge Scottish usages and Scottish expressions into the
English forms, as being more correct and genteel. The facilities for
moving, not merely from place to place in our own country, but from one
country to another; the spread of knowledge and information by means of
periodical publications and newspapers; and the incredibly low prices at
which literary works are produced, must have great effects. Then there
is the improved taste in art, which, together with literature, has been
taken up by young men who, fifty, sixty, seventy years ago, or more,
would have known no such sources of interest, or indeed who would have
looked upon them as unmanly and effeminate. When first these pursuits
were taken up by our Scottish young men, they excited in the north much
amazement, and, I fear, contempt, as was evinced by a laird of the old
school, who, the first time he saw a young man at the pianoforte, asked,
with evident disgust, "Can the creature _sew_ ony?" evidently putting
the accomplishment of playing the pianoforte and the accomplishment of
the needle in the same category.

The greater facility of producing books, prints, and other articles
which tend to the comfort and embellishment of domestic life, must have
considerable influence upon the habits and tastes of a people. I have
often thought how much effect might be traced to the single circumstance
of the cheap production of pianofortes. An increased facility of
procuring the means of acquaintance with good works of art and
literature acts both as cause and effect. A growing and improved taste
tends to stimulate the _production_ of the best works of art. These, in
return, foster and advance the power of forming a due _estimate_ of art.
In the higher department of music, for example, the cheap rate not only
of _hearing_ compositions of the first class, but of _possessing_ the
works of the most eminent composers, must have had influence upon
thousands. The principal oratorios of Handel may be purchased for as
many shillings each as they cost pounds years ago. Indeed, at that time
the very names of those immortal works were known only to a few who were
skilled to appreciate their high beauties. Now associations are formed
for practising and studying the