We might indeed adduce many more causes which seem to produce changes of habits, tastes, and associations, amongst our people.  For example, families do not vegetate for years in one retired spot as they used to do; young men are encouraged to attain accomplishments, and to have other sources of interest than the field or the bottle.  Every one knows, or may know, everything that is going on through the whole world.  There is a tendency in mankind to lose all that is peculiar, and in nations to part with all that distinguishes them from each other.  We hear of wonderful changes in habits and customs where change seemed impossible.  In India and Turkey even, peculiarities and prejudices are fading away under the influence of time.  Amongst ourselves, no doubt, one circumstance tended greatly to call forth, and, as we may say, to develop, the peculiar Scotch humour of which we speak—­and that was the familiarity of intercourse which took place between persons in different positions of life.  This extended even to an occasional interchange of words between the minister and the members of his flock during time of service.  I have two anecdotes in illustration of this fact, which I have reason to believe are quite authentic.  In the church of Banchory on Deeside, to which I have referred, a former minister always preached without book, and being of an absent disposition, he sometimes forgot the head of discourse on which he was engaged, and got involved in confusion.  On one occasion, being desirous of recalling to his memory the division of his subject, he called out to one of his elders, a farmer on the estate of Ley, “Bush (the name of his farm), Bush, ye’re sleeping.”  “Na, sir, I’m no sleeping—­I’m listening.”  “Weel, then, what had I begun to say?” “Oh, ye were saying so and so.”  This was enough, and supplied the minister with the thread of his discourse; and he went on.  The other anecdote related to the parish of Cumbernauld, the minister of which was at the time referred to noted for a very disjointed and rambling style of preaching, without method or connection.  His principal heritor was the Lord Elphinstone of the time, and unfortunately the minister and the peer were not on good terms, and always ready to annoy each other by sharp sayings or otherwise.  The minister on one occasion had somewhat in this spirit called upon the beadle to “wauken my Lord Elphinstone,” upon which Lord Elphinstone said, “I’m no sleeping, minister.”  “Indeed you were, my lord.”  He again disclaimed the sleeping.  So as a test the preacher asked him, “What I had been saying last then?” “Oh, juist wauken Lord Elphinstone.”  “Ay, but what did I say before that?” “Indeed,” retorted Lord Elphinstone, “I’ll gie ye a guinea if ye’ll tell that yersell, minister.”  We can hardly imagine the possibility of such scenes now taking place amongst us in church.  It seems as if all men were gradually approximating to a common type or form in their manners and views