isdom. But what enrageth us the more is,
that, while all our fun of Beltane, Halloween, Hogmanay, Hanselmonday, and
all our old merrymakings, are gone with our absentee lords and thanes--

"Wha will their tenants pyke and squeize,
And purse up all their rent;
Syne wallop it to far courts, and bleize
Till riggs and schaws are spent"--

and to whose contempt of our old customs we attribute a great part of their
decay--we, in the very midst of the glorious improvement that has
succeeded, are still cheated, belied, robbed, and plundered on all hands by
political adventurers, private jobbers, and saintly hypocrites, in an
artful, clean-fingered, and beautiful style of the trade, a thousand times
more provoking than the clumsy, old-fashioned, _honest_ kind of roguery
that used to be in fashion, when folk were not too large for innocent
mirth, and not too wise for enjoying what was liked by their ancestors. The
people cry improvement--so do we; but we cherish a theory that has no
charm, in these days of absolute faith in politics and parliament for the
regeneration of man, that the true good of society--that is, the
improvement of the heart and morals of a great country--lies in a sphere
far humbler than the gorgeous recesses of Westminster--the fireside; a
place that in former days, was revered, and honoured, and cherished, not
only as the cradle of morals, but the abode of soul-stirring joys, and the
scene of the celebration of many old and sacred amusements which humanized
the young heart, and moulded and prepared it for the reception of those
feelings which are interwoven with the very principle of social good. A
political wrangle is a poor substitute for the old moral tales of the
winter evenings of old Scotland. Even our legends of superstitious fear
carried in them the boon of heartfelt obligation, which, when the subject
was changed for the duties of life, still retained its strength, and
wrought for good. These things are all gone; and, dissatisfied as we are
with the bold substitutes of modern wisdom, let us use that which they
cannot take from us, our books of "auld lear," and refresh ourselves with a
peep at Leslie, in the Hogmanay of 16--. Who has not heard of "Christ's
Kirk" in the kingdom of Fife, that place so celebrated by King James, in
his incomparable "Christ's Kirk on the Green," for the frolics of wooers
and "kittys washen clean," and "damsels bright," and "maidens mild?" That
celebra