LITMIR.BIZ

      n the eyes of the French, the Scot is a British subject—in other words, an Englishman—dressed in a Tam-o'-Shanter, a plaid, and kilt of red and green tartan, and playing the bagpipes; for the rest, speaking English, eating roast beef, and swearing by the Bible.

      For that matter, many English people are pleased to entertain the same illusions on the subject of the dwellers in the north of Great Britain.

      Yet, never were two nations[A] so near on the map, and so far removed in their ways and character.

      The Scots English! Well, just advance that opinion in the presence of one, and you will see how it will be received.

      The Scotchman is a British subject; but if you take him for an Englishman, he draws himself up, and says:

      "No, Sir; I am not English. I am a Scotchman."

      He is Scotch, and he intends to remain Scotch. He is proud of his nationality, and I quite understand it.

      Of all the inhabitants of the more-or-less-United Kingdom, Friend Donald is the most keen, sturdy, matter-of-fact, persevering, industrious, and witty.

      The most witty! Now I have said something.

      Yes, the most witty, with all due respect to the shade of Sydney Smith.

      So little do the English know the Scotch, that when I spoke to them of my intention to lecture in Scotland, they laughed at me.

      "But don't you know, my dear fellow," they exclaimed, "that it is only by means of a pickaxe that you can get a joke into the skull of a Scotchman?"

      And the fact is, that since the day when Sydney Smith, of jovial memory, pronounced his famous dictum, that it required a surgical operation to make a Scotchman understand a joke, poor Donald has been powerless to prevent past and present generations from repeating the phrase of the celebrated wit.

      All in vain did Scotland produce Smollett, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and Thomas Carlyle, in the eyes of the English, the Scotchman has remained the personification of slow-wittedness—a poor fellow incapable of making much beyond prayers and money, and the Londoner who has never travelled—the poor Cockney who still firmly believes that the French are feeble creatures, living on snails and frogs—this Londoner, the most stupid animal in the world (after the Paris badaud, perhaps), goes about repeating to all who will listen to such nonsense:

      "Dull and heavy as a Scotchman!"

      Give a few minutes' start to a hoax, and you will never be able to overtake it.

      To tell the truth, the wit of, I will not say, an Englishman, but a Cockney, is not within the reach of the Scot. Jokes, play upon words, and bantering are not in his line. A pun will floor him completely; but I hope to be able to prove, by means of a few anecdotes, that Donald has real wit, and humour above all—humour of the light, subtle kind, that would pass by a Cockney without making the least impression.

      I do not wish to say that there is more intelligence in Scotland than in England; but I can in all security say there is more intellectuality.

      The Cockney must have his puns and small jokes. On the stage, he delights in jigs; and to really please him, the best of actors have to become rivals of the mountebanks at a fair. A hornpipe delights his heart. An actor who, for an hour together, pretends not to be able to keep on his hat, sends him into the seventh heaven of delight; and I have seen the tenants of the stalls applaud these things. Such performances make the Scotch smile, but with pity. The Cockney! When you have said that you have said everything: it is a being who will find fault with the opera of Faust, because up to the present time no manager has given the Kermess scene the attraction of an acrobat turning a wheel or standing on his head.

      No, no; the Scotchman has no wit of this sort. In the matter of wit, he is an epicure, and only appreciates dainty food. A smart repartee will tickle his sides agreeably; he understands demi-mots; he is good-tempered, and can take a joke as well as see through one. His quick-wittedness and the subtlety of his character make him full of quaint remarks and funny and unexpected comparisons. He is a stranger to affectation—that dangerous rock to the would-be wit; he is natural, and is witty without trying to be a wit.

      Yes, Donald is witty; but he possesses more solid qualities as well.

      We will make acquaintance with his intellectual qualities presently.

      As to his exterior—look at him: he is as strong as his own granite, and cut out for work.

      A head well planted on a pair of broad shoulders; a strong-knit, sinewy frame; small, keen eyes; iron muscles; a hand that almost crushes your own as he shakes it; and large flat feet that only advance cautiously and after having tried the ground: such is Donald.

      Needless to say that he generally lives to a good old age.

      I never knew a Christian so confident of going to Paradise, or less eager to set out.

      Why does the Scotchman succeed everywhere? Why, in Australia, New Zealand, and all the other British Colonies, do you find him landowner, director of companies, at the head of enterprises of all kinds? Again, why do you find in almost all the factories of Great Britain that the foreman is Scotch?

      Ah! it is very simple.

      Success is very rarely due to extraordinary circumstances, or to chance, as the social failures are fond of saying.

      The

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