My father was the laird and farmed the small property I speak of, in the lowlands of Stirlingshire, but he was unfortunately cut off in early life, and long before his young family were capable of appreciating the extent of their loss, and I may add, to the universal regret of the community to which he belonged; and in no country have I met, in the same walks of life, a body of men to equal in intelligence, prudence, and respectability, the small lowland Scotch laird. Marrying and dying are ceremonies which almost every one has to go through at some period of his life, and from being so common, one would expect that they might cease to be uncommon; but people, nevertheless, still continue to look upon them as important events in their individual histories. And while, with the class I speak of, the joys of the one and the grief at the other was as sensibly and unaffectedly shewn as amongst any, yet with them the loss of the head of the house produces no very material change in the family arrangements; for while in some places the proprietary of a sheep confers a sort of patent of gentility upon the whole flock, leaving as a bequest a scramble for supremacy, yet the lowland laird is another manner of man; one in fact who is not afraid to reckon his chickens before they are hatched, and who suffers no son of his to be born out of his proper place. The eldest therefore steps into his father's shoes as naturally as his father steps out of them. The second is destined to be a gentleman, that is, he receives a superior education, and as soon as he is deemed qualified, he is started off with a tolerable outfit and some ha'pence in his pocket to fulfil his destiny in one of the armed or learned professions, while the junior members of the family are put in such other way of shifting for themselves as taste and prudence may point out. And having thus, gentle reader, expounded as much of my family history as it behoveth thee to know, it only remains for me, with all becoming modesty, to introduce myself to you as, by birthright, the gentleman of the family, and without further ceremony to take you by the hand and conduct you along the path which I found chalked out for myself. In my native country, as elsewhere, Dame Fortune is to be seen cutting her usual capers, and often sends a man starving for a life-time as a parson looking for a pulpit, a doctor dining on his own pills, or as a lawyer who has nothing to insert in his last earthly testament, who would otherwise have flourished on the top of a hay-stack, or as a cooper round a tar-barrel. How far she was indulgent in my case is a matter of moonshine. Suffice it that I commenced the usual process at the usual place, the parish school, under that most active of all teachers--Whipping, "That's Virtue's governess, Tutress of arts and sciences; That mends the gross mistakes of nature, And puts new life into dull matter."