An admirable Scotch expression I recollect from one of the Montrose ladies before referred to.  Her niece was asking a great many questions on some point concerning which her aunt had been giving her information, and coming over and over the ground, demanding an explanation how this had happened, and why something else was so and so.  The old lady lost her patience, and at last burst forth:  “I winna be back-speired noo, Pally Fullerton.”  Back-speired! how much more pithy and expressive than cross-examined!  “He’s not a man to ride the water on,” expresses your want of confidence and of trust in the character referred to.  Another capital expression to mark that a person has stated a point rather under than over the truth, is, “The less I lee,” as in Guy Mannering, where the precentor exclaims to Mrs. MacCandlish, “Aweel, gudewife, then the less I lee.”  We have found it a very amusing task collecting together a number of these phrases, and forming them into a connected epistolary composition.  We may imagine the sort of puzzle it would be to a young person of the present day—­one of what we may call the new school.  We will suppose an English young lady, or an English educated young lady, lately married, receiving such a letter as the following from the Scottish aunt of her husband.  We may suppose it to be written by a very old lady, who, for the last fifty years has not moved from home, and has changed nothing of her early days.  I can safely affirm that every word of it I have either seen written in a letter, or have heard in ordinary conversation:—­

     “Montrose, 1858[69].

“My Dear Niece—­I am real glad to find my nevy has made so good a choice as to have secured you for his wife; and I am sure this step will add much to his comfort, and we behove to rejoice at it.  He will now look forward to his evening at home, and you will be happy when you find you never want him.  It will be a great pleasure when you hear him in the trance, and wipe his feet upon the bass.  But Willy is not strong, and you must look well after him.  I hope you do not let him snuff so much as he did.  He had a sister, poor thing, who died early.  She was remarkably clever, and well read, and most intelligent, but was always uncommonly silly[70] In the autumn of ’40 she had a sair host, and was aye speaking through a cold, and at dinner never did more than to sup a few family broth.  I am afraid she did not change her feet when she came in from the wet one evening.  I never let on that I observed anything to be wrong; but I remember asking her to come and sit upon the fire.  But she went out, and did not take the door with her.  She lingered till next spring, when she had a great income[71], and her parents were then too poor to take her south, and she died.  I hope you will like the lassie Eppie we have sent you.  She is a discreet