The Glasgow elder, slow, precise, and very energetic withal, insisted that the land they stood upon was no strangers' land; that they were not expected, like the Israelites of old whilst in a condition of bondage, to hold themselves a people apart; that the English tongue and English laws were lawfully theirs; and that those were the wisest men and the best subjects who learned the first in order that they might neither be ignorant nor forgetful of the last. The hielan' man admitted, frigidly enough I thought, the present supremacy of English law and language, but insisted that the congregation upon their settlement absolutely needed a Gaelic pastor to preach the word, and no other; for, although all of them understood the Gaelic, full one half knew no word of English! "More shame for them!" exclaimed the Glasgow man; "what for don't they learn it? Puir prejudiced bodies that they are!" "What for no?" retorted quickly the nettled Highlander: "why, because they just prefer their ain: and I can't say I wonder at it all; for I know baith, and must aver, Mr. Dalgleish, that my preference is wholly for ta Gaelic, which is a finer language, and a petter and older language, and of a petter and an older nation by far." "Hoot tout!" coolly responded old Glasgow; "Ye're just daft on thae points, Duncan M'Nab: why, man alive! yer' nae people at hame, much less here, where you are as the least plash flung from the paddle-wheel below us to the braid stream on which it drops to mingle with its waters; a lesson ye may tak profit by. Ye've neither country, nor laws, nor government that owns yer tongue on the whole face o' God's airth, if ever ye had either; whilst the laws and language o' England are at this time universal! ay, sir, universal, or at least mair sae than any one tongue ever yet was since the Lord made men strangers to their fellows at the confounding o' Babel." "Ta Gaelic was spoken before tat day!" sharply bolted out M'Nab, "and was spoken since tat day by a bigger nation tan England ever was, or ever will be! Tak tat, now, Mr. Dalgleish!" "Well now, see, Duncan M'Nab," continued the cooler Lowlander, in a tone provokingly unmoved; "that, I'm thinking, must be a matter o' doubt, rather than well-authenticated history; and before I either anger ye by contradicting it, or wrang my ain sense by allowing you the benefit o 't, I'll just seek counsel o' this gentleman, who evidently has a feelin' in our argument, although he taks no part in it by words. What say ye, sir?" he added, directly appealing to me; "shall we allow M'Nab's folk the credit o' havin' given a language to the world more universal than the English tongue?"