Hence has arisen the Scottish saying which is applicable to such cases--"His girn's waur than his bite:" his disposition is of a softer nature than his words and manner would often lead you to suppose. There are two admirable articles in _Blackwood's Magazine,_ in the numbers for November and December 1870, upon this subject. The writer abundantly vindicates the point and humour of the Scottish tongue. Who can resist, for example, the epithet applied by Meg Merrilies to an unsuccessful probationer for admission to the ministry:--"a sticket stibbler"? Take the sufficiency of Holy Scripture as a pledge for any one's salvation:--"There's eneuch between the brods o' the Testament to save the biggest sinner i' the warld." I heard an old Scottish Episcopalian thus pithily describe the hasty and irreverent manner of a young Englishman:--"He ribbled aff the prayers like a man at the heid o' a regiment." A large family of young children has been termed "a great sma' family." It was a delicious dry rejoinder to the question--"Are you Mr. So-and-so?" "It's a' that's o' me" (_i.e._ to be had for him.) I have heard an old Scottish gentleman direct his servant to mend the fire by saying, "I think, Dauvid, we wadna be the waur o' some coals." There is a pure Scottish term, which I have always thought more expressive than any English word of ideas connected with manners in society--I mean the word to blether, or blethering, or blethers. Jamieson defines it to "talk nonsense." But it expresses far more--it expresses powerfully, to Scottish people, a person at once shallow, chattering, conceited, tiresome, voluble. There is a delicious servantgirlism, often expressed in an answer given at the door to an inquirer: "Is your master at home, or mistress?" as the case may be. The problem is to save the direct falsehood, and yet evade the visit; so the answer is--"Ay, he or she is at hame; but he's no _in_" The transition from Scottish _expressions_ to Scottish Poetry is easy and natural. In fact, the most interesting feature now belonging to Scottish life and social habits is, to a certain extent, becoming with many a matter of reminiscence of _Poetry in the Scottish dialect_, as being the most permanent and the most familiar feature of Scottish characteristics. It is becoming a matter of history, in so far as we find that it has for some time ceased to be cultivated with much ardour, or to attract much popularity. In fact, since the time of Burns, it has been losing its hold on the public mind. It is a remarkable fact that neither Scott nor Wilson, both admirers of Burns, both copious writers of poetry themselves, both also so distinguished as writers of Scottish _prose_, should have written any poetry strictly in the form of pure Scottish dialect. "Jock o' Hazeldean" I hardly admit to be an exception. It is not Scottish. If, indeed, Sir Walter wrote the scrap of the beautiful ballad in the "Antiquary"--