s where words and expressions, which are
peculiarly Scotch, impart the humour and the point. Sometimes they are
altogether incapable of being rendered in other language. As, for
example, a parishioner in an Ayrshire village, meeting his pastor, who
had just returned after a considerable absence on account of ill
health, congratulated him on his convalescence, and added, anticipatory
of the pleasure he would have in hearing him again, "I'm unco yuckie to
hear a blaud o' your gab." This is an untranslatable form of saying how
glad he should be to hear his minister's voice again speaking to him the
words of salvation and of peace from the pulpit.

The two following are good examples of that Scottish style of expression
which has its own character. They are kindly sent by Sir Archibald
Dunbar. The first illustrates Scottish acute discernment. A certain
titled lady, well known around her country town for her long-continued
and extensive charities, which are not withheld from those who least
deserve them, had a few years since, by the unexpected death of her
brother and of his only son, become possessor of a fine estate. The news
soon spread in the neighbourhood, and a group of old women were
overheard in the streets of Elgin discussing the fact. One of them said,
"Ay, she may prosper, for she has baith the prayers of the good and
of the bad."

The second anecdote is a delightful illustration of Mrs. Hamilton's
_Cottagers of Glenburnie_, and of the old-fashioned Scottish pride in
the _midden_. About twenty years ago, under the apprehension of cholera,
committees of the most influential inhabitants of the county of Moray
were formed to enforce a more complete cleansing of its towns and
villages, and to induce the cottagers to remove their dunghills or
dung-pits from too close a proximity to their doors or windows. One
determined woman, on the outskirts of the town of Forres, no doubt with
her future potato crop in view, met the M.P. who headed one of these
committees, thus, "Noo, Major, ye may tak our lives, but ye'll no tak
our middens."

The truth is, many of the peculiarities which marked Scottish society
departed with the disuse of the Scottish dialect in the upper ranks. I
recollect a familiar example of this, which I may well term a
Reminiscence. At a party assembled in a county house, the Earl of Elgin
(grandfather of the present Earl) came up to the tea-table, where Mrs.
Forbes of Medwyn, one of the finest examples