An admirable Scotch expression I recollect from one of the Montrose ladies before referred to. Her niece was asking a great many questions on some point concerning which her aunt had been giving her information, and coming over and over the ground, demanding an explanation how this had happened, and why something else was so and so. The old lady lost her patience, and at last burst forth: "I winna be _back-speired_ noo, Pally Fullerton." Back-speired! how much more pithy and expressive than cross-examined! "He's not a man to ride the water on," expresses your want of confidence and of trust in the character referred to. Another capital expression to mark that a person has stated a point rather under than over the truth, is, "The less I lee," as in Guy Mannering, where the precentor exclaims to Mrs. MacCandlish, "Aweel, gudewife, then the less I lee." We have found it a very amusing task collecting together a number of these phrases, and forming them into a connected epistolary composition. We may imagine the sort of puzzle it would be to a young person of the present day--one of what we may call the new school. We will suppose an English young lady, or an English educated young lady, lately married, receiving such a letter as the following from the Scottish aunt of her husband. We may suppose it to be written by a very old lady, who, for the last fifty years has not moved from home, and has changed nothing of her early days. I can safely affirm that every word of it I have either seen written in a letter, or have heard in ordinary conversation:-- "_Montrose_, 1858[69].