the conversation of some Lowland cattle-dealers in the public room in which he was.  The subject of the bravery of our navy being started, one of the interlocutors expressed his surprise that Nelson should have issued his signal at Trafalgar in the terms, “England expects,” etc.  He was met with the answer (which seemed highly satisfactory to the rest), “Ah, Nelson only said ‘expects’ of the English; he said naething of Scotland, for he kent the Scotch would do theirs.”

I am assured the following manifestation of national feeling against the memory of a Scottish character actually took place within a few years:—­Williamson (the Duke of Buccleuch’s huntsman) was one afternoon riding home from hunting through Haddington; and as he passed the old Abbey, he saw an ancient woman looking through the iron grating in front of the burial-place of the Lauderdale family, holding by the bars, and grinning and dancing with rage.  “Eh, gudewife,” said Williamson, “what ails ye?” “It’s the Duke o’ Lauderdale,” cried she.  “Eh, if I could win at him, I wud rax the banes o’ him.”

To this class belongs the following complacent Scottish remark upon Bannockburn.  A splenetic Englishman said to a Scottish countryman, something of a wag, that no man of taste would think of remaining any time in such a country as Scotland.  To which the canny Scot replied, “Tastes differ; I’se tak ye to a place no far frae Stirling, whaur thretty thousand o’ your countrymen ha’ been for five hunder years, and they’ve nae thocht o’ leavin’ yet.”

In a similar spirit, an honest Scotch farmer, who had sent some sheep to compete at a great English agricultural cattle-show, and was much disgusted at not getting a prize, consoled himself for the disappointment, by insinuating that the judges could hardly act quite impartially by a Scottish competitor, complacently remarking, “It’s aye been the same since Bannockburn.”

Then, again, take the story told in Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott, of the blacksmith whom Sir Walter had formerly known as a horse-doctor, and whom he found at a small country town south of the Border, practising medicine with a reckless use of “laudamy and calomy[169],” apologising at the same time for the mischief he might do, by the assurance that it “would be lang before it made up for Flodden.”  How graphically it describes the interest felt by Scotchmen of his rank in the incidents of their national history.  A similar example has been recorded in connection with Bannockburn.  Two Englishmen visited the field of that great battle, and a country blacksmith pointed out the positions of the two armies, the stone on which was fixed the Bruce’s standard, etc.  The gentlemen, pleased with the intelligence of their guide, on leaving pressed his acceptance of a crown-piece.  “Na, na,” replied the Scotsman, with much pride, “it has cost ye eneuch already.”  Such an example of self-denial on the part of a Scottish cicerone is, we fear, now rather a “reminiscence.”