The characteristics attributed by one nation to another are never patented without some foundation in truth; but, in time, by means of successive overlays of jest, constant repetition, and the heaping up of one exaggeration upon another, national portraiture flashes forth into glaring caricature. If we were to believe old plays and old novels, we should suppose that, only a half century since, every Englishman fed exclusively on roast beef and plum-pudding—rattled his guineas in ample pockets, tightened by the portly protuberance of his figure, and rapped out oaths against “frog-eating Mounseers” with the same energy with which, after dinner, he imbibed crusted port to the health and prosperity of Church and State. On Sunday morning we view him, through the same medium, standing upright in his red-cushioned pew, pronouncing the responses with the _ore rotundo_ of Sir Roger de Coverley, and, like that worthy baronet, looking daggers at little boys whom he catches napping. The Scotchman of the same authorities was invariably a long, lean, raw-boned, hungry, grey-eyed Sawney, with high cheek-bones, reddish hair, and a diffused aroma of brimstone pervading his threadbare garments. Pertaining to him also, by inalienable birth-right, was an insatiable appetite for oaten-cakes, haggis, and singed sheep’s head; of which viands the supply usually fell very far short of the demand. No matter what his rank in life might be, he was forced, as a necessary condition of his existence, to talk “braid scots,” and to look sharply after the “siller.” Somehow, he regularly found his way to London, where a lucrative place, and a rich wife, to whom he continually proclaimed the glories of the “Land o’ Cakes,” gratified and rewarded his cautious persevering endeavours to replenish his “pouch and sporran;” for all Scotchmen were Highlanders, and were supposed only to have abandoned their kilts in deference to decency and English prejudice while in the act of crossing the border. The Irishman of novel, tale, or comedy, was a Phelim or a Patrick, always either immersed in love or drink and often the victim of both these exciting predicaments:—telling humorous lies, making unheard-of blunders, winning money by his tricking cleverness, and losing it by his unaccountable folly; leading a good-humoured, reckless, rollicking life, breaking the hearts and emptying the purses of maid, wife, and widow; and carrying off every shade of embarrassment with the cut-and-dry exclamation, “By the powers!”—“Arrah, honey!”—or, “Och, my jewel!”