Jacobite histories, Jacobite
songs, and Jacobite novels, and much the same figure as the scoundrel
menials in the comedy cut when personating their masters, and retailing
their masters' conversation do they cut as Walter Scotts. In their
histories, they too talk about the Prince and Glenfinnan, and the
pibroch; and in their songs about 'Claverse' and 'Bonny Dundee.' But
though they may be Scots, they are not Walter Scotts. But it is perhaps
chiefly in the novel that you see the veritable hog in armour; the time
of the novel is of course the '15 or '45; the hero a Jacobite, and
connected with one or other of the enterprises of those periods; and the
author, to show how unprejudiced he is, and what _original_ views he
takes of subjects, must needs speak up for Popery, whenever he has
occasion to mention it; though, with all his originality, when he brings
his hero and the vagabonds with which he is concerned before a
barricadoed house, belonging to the Whigs, he can make them get into it
by no other method than that which Scott makes his rioters employ to get
into the Tolbooth, _burning down_ the door.

To express the more than utter foolishness of this latter Charlie o'er
the water nonsense, whether in rhyme or prose, there is but one word, and
that word a Scotch word. Scotch, the sorriest of jargons, compared with
which even Roth Welsch is dignified and expressive, has yet one word to
express what would be inexpressible by any word or combination of words
in any language, or in any other jargon in the world; and very properly;
for as the nonsense is properly Scotch, so should the word be Scotch
which expresses it; that word is 'fushionless,' pronounced
_fooshionless_; and when the writer has called the nonsense
fooshionless--and he does call it fooshionless--he has nothing more to
say, but leaves the nonsense to its fate.

CHAPTER VIII--ON CANTING NONSENSE

The writer now wishes to say something on the subject of canting
nonsense, of which there is a great deal in England. There are various
cants in England, amongst which is the religious cant. He is not going
to discuss the subject of religious cant; lest, however, he should be
misunderstood, he begs leave to repeat that he is a sincere member of the
old-fashioned Church of England, in which he believes there is more
religion, and consequently less cant, than in any other church in the
world; nor is he going to discuss many other cants; he shall content