onald, man, _for she's drunk_."

I cannot help thinking that a change of national language involves to
some extent change of national character. Numerous examples of great
power in Scottish Phraseology, to express the picturesque, the feeling,
the wise, and the humorous, might be taken from the works of Robert
Burns, Ferguson, or Allan Ramsay, and which lose their charms altogether
when _unscottified_. The speaker certainly seems to take a strength and
character from his words. We must now look for specimens of this racy
and expressive tongue in the more retired parts of the country. It is no
longer to be found in high places. It has disappeared from the social
circles of our cities. I cannot, however, omit calling my reader's
attention to a charming specimen of Scottish prose and of Scottish
humour of our own day, contained in a little book, entitled
"_Mystifications_" by Clementina Stirling Graham. The scenes described
in that volume are matters of pleasing reminiscence, and to some of us
who still remain "will recall that blithe and winning face, sagacious
and sincere, that kindly, cheery voice, that rich and quiet laugh, that
mingled sense and sensibility, which met, and still to our happiness
meet, in her who, with all her gifts, never gratified her consciousness
of these powers so as to give pain to any human being[53]." These
words, written more than ten years ago, might have been penned
yesterday; and those who, like myself, have had the privilege of seeing
the authoress presiding in her beautiful mansion of Duntrune, will not
soon forget how happy, how gracious, and how young, old age may be.

"No fears to beat away--no strife to heal;
The past unsighed for, and the future sure."

In my early days the intercourse with the peasantry of Forfarshire,
Kincardineshire, and especially Deeside, was most amusing--not that the
things said were so much out of the common, as that the language in
which they were conveyed was picturesque, and odd, and taking. And
certainly it does appear to me that as the language grows more uniform
and conventional, less marked and peculiar in its dialect and
expressions, so does the character of those who speak it become so. I
have a rich sample of Mid-Lothian Scotch from a young friend in the
country, who describes the conversation of an old woman on the property
as amusing her by such specimens of genuine Scottish raciness and
humour. On one occasion, for instance, the young