Many scenes of a similar incongruous character are still traditionally connected with such occasions.  Within the last thirty years, a laird of Dundonald, a small estate in Ross-shire, died at Inverness.  There was open house for some days, and great eating and drinking.  Here the corpse commenced its progress toward its appointed home on the coast, and people followed in multitudes to give it a partial convoy, all of whom had to be entertained.  It took altogether a fortnight to bury poor Dundonald, and great expense must have been incurred.  This, however, is looked back to at Inverness as the last of the real grand old Highland funerals.  Such notions of what is due to the memory of the departed have now become unusual if not obsolete.  I myself witnessed the first decided change in this matter.  I officiated at the funeral of the late Duke of Sutherland.  The procession was a mile long.  Refreshments were provided for 7000 persons; beef, bread, and beer; but not one glass of whisky was allowed on the property that day!

It may, perhaps, be said that the change we speak of is not peculiar to Scotland; that in England the same change has been apparent; and that drunkenness has passed away in the higher circles, as a matter of course, as refinement and taste made an advancement in society.  This is true.  But there were some features of the question which were peculiar to Scotland, and which at one time rendered it less probable that intemperance would give way in the north.  It seemed in some quarters to have taken deeper root amongst us.  The system of pressing, or of compelling, guests to drink seemed more inveterate.  Nothing can more powerfully illustrate the deep-rooted character of intemperate habits in families than an anecdote which was related to me, as coming from the late Mr. Mackenzie, author of the Man of Feeling.  He had been involved in a regular drinking party.  He was keeping as free from the usual excesses as he was able, and as he marked companions around him falling victims to the power of drink, he himself dropped off under the table among the slain, as a measure of precaution; and lying there, his attention was called to a small pair of hands working at his throat; on asking what it was, a voice replied, “Sir, I’m the lad that’s to lowse the neckcloths.”  Here, then, was a family, where, on drinking occasions, it was the appointed duty of one of the household to attend, and, when the guests where becoming helpless, to untie their cravats in fear of apoplexy or suffocation[32].  We ought certainly to be grateful for the change which has taken place from such a system; for this change has made a great revolution in Scottish social life.  The charm and the romance long attached in the minds of some of our countrymen to the whole system and concerns of hard drinking was indeed most lamentable and absurd.  At tavern suppers, where, nine times out often, it was the express object of those who went to get drunk, such stuff as “regal