With all this excellence of character and achievement, the clergy of Scotland have maintained an individuality which has strongly marked them as a class among the other professions of the country. This peculiarity is well exemplified in the innumerable anecdotes which, either directly or indirectly connected with clergymen, form so large a proportion of what are known as ‘Scotch Stories.’ If we seek for the cause of the prominence of the clerical element in the accepted illustrations of Scottish humour, we shall hardly find it in any exceptional exuberance of that quality among the reverend gentlemen themselves, taken as a body, though many of their number have been among the most humorous and witty of their countrymen. As they were long drawn from almost every grade in the social scale of the kingdom, they have undoubtedly presented an admirable average type of the national idiosyncrasies, though they are now recruited in diminishing measure from the landed and cultured ranks of society. Their number, their general dispersion over the whole land, their prominence in their parishes, the influence wielded by many of them in the church-courts and on public platforms, and the free intercourse between them and the people, have all helped to draw attention to them and to their sayings and doings. Moreover, since dissent from the National Church began, the clergy have been greatly multiplied. In each parish, where there was once only one minister, there are now two or even more. [Sidenote: CLERICAL CHARACTERISTICS]