e race, whose name, if
the world were not too apt to forget its most excellent ones, would be
eternised in the memory of mankind.

It is from this soil--this sensitive and fervid national temperament--that
there has sprung up such a harvest of ballads, and songs, and
heart-moving, soul-breathing melodies. Hence the hearty old habits and
curious suggestive customs of the people: the hospitality, exuberant as
Abraham's, who sat in the tent-door bidding welcome even to the passing
traveller; the merry-meetings and "rockings" in the evening, where each
had to contribute his or her song or tale, and at the same time ply some
piece of work; the delight in their native dances, furious and whirling
as those of the Bacchantes; the "Guisarding" of the boys at Christmas,
relic of old-world plays, when the bloody melodrama finished off into
the pious benediction--

"God bless the master of the house,
The mistress also,
And all the pretty babies
That round the table go;"

the "first foot," on New Year's morning, when none must enter a house
empty-handed; the "Hogmanay," or first Monday of the new year, when the
whole boys and girls invaded the country-side, and levied from the
peaceful inhabitants black-mail of cakes, and cheese, and ha'pence--

"Get up, gudewife! and shake your feathers,
Dinna think that we are beggars;
We are bairns come out to play,
Rise up and gie 's our Hogmanay!"--

the "Halloween," whose rites of semi-diablerie have been immortalised by
Burns; and the "Kirn," or Harvest Home, the wind-up of the season, the
epitome of the lyric joyousness of the whole year. Hence it is that
under an exterior, to strangers so reserved, austere, and frigid, they
all cherish some romantic thought, or feeling, or dream: they are all
inly imbued with an enthusiasm which surmounts every obstacle, and burns
the deeper and faster the more it is repressed. Every one of us, calling
up the history of our own little circle of cottage mates and
schoolfellows, could recount numerous pregnant examples of this national
characteristic. And hence, also, after wandering the wide world, and
buffeting in all the whirlpools of life, cautiously waiting chances,
cannily slipping in when the door opens, and struggling for distinction
or wealth in all kinds of adventure, and under the breath of every
clime--there are few, indeed, of our people, when twilight begins to
gather over their path, but turn towards