Standing on the ramparts of Stirling Castle, the spectator cannot help noticing an unsightly excresence of stone and lime rising on the brow of the Abbey Craig. This is the Wallace Tower. Designed to commemorate the war for independence, the building is making but slow progress. It is maintained by charitable contributions, like a lying-in hospital. It is a big beggar man, like O'Connell. It is tormented by an eternal lack of pence, like Mr Dick Swiveller. It sends round the hat as frequently as ever did Mr Leigh Hunt. The Wallace Monument, like the Scottish Rights' Association, sprang from the desire--a good deal stronger a few years ago than now--to preserve in Scotland something of a separate national existence. Scotland and England were married at the Union; but by many Scotsmen it is considered more dignified that, while appearing as "one flesh" on great public occasions, the two countries should live in separate apartments, see their own circles of friends, and spend their time as to each other it may seem fit. Whether any good could arise from such a state of matters it is needless to inquire--such a state of matters being a plain impossibility. It is apparent that through intimate connexion, community of interest, the presence of one common government, and in a thousand other ways, Time is crumbling down Scotland and England into--Britain. [Sidenote: Narrowness of Scottish feeling.] We may storm against this from platforms, declaim passionately against it in "Lays of the Cavaliers," lift up our voices and weep over it in "Braemar Ballads," but necessity cares little for these things, and quietly does her work. In Scotland one is continually coming into contact with an unreasonable prejudice against English manners, institutions, and forms of thought; and in her expression of these prejudices Scotland is frequently neither great nor dignified. There is a narrowness and touchiness about her which is more frequently found in villages than in great cities. She continually suspects that the Englishman is about to touch her thistle rudely, or to take liberties with her unicorn. Some eight years ago, when lecturing in Edinburgh, Mr Thackeray was hissed for making an allusion to Queen Mary. The audience knew perfectly well that the great satirist was correct in what he stated; but being an Englishman it was impertinent in him to speak the truth about a Scottish Queen in the presence of Scotsmen. When, on the other hand, an English orator comes amongst us, whether as Lord Rector at one of our universities, or the deliverer of an inaugural address at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, and winds up his harangue with flowing allusions to Wallace, Bruce, Burns, our blue hills, John Knox, Caledonia stern and wild, the garb of old Gaul--the closing sentences are lost to the reporters in the frantic cheers of the audience. Several years ago the Scottish Rights' Association, headed