It may be surprising to persons unacquainted with Scotland, that the people should be so fond of removing, since the day on which that event takes place is apt to be so very disagreeable. They might as well wonder that people should ever marry, when they know so very well that the charge of a family is apt to be burdensome. Candlemas day, on which people take their houses, is a day of heedless joy, a day of fond and delirious anticipation; and Whitsunday is to it what execution-day is to the particular time when an unfortunate man was tempted to enrich himself at some other body’s expense. “On Wednesday I killed my wife, on Saturday I was hanged,” as the child’s rhyme goes: no one can doubt that Wednesday was in this case a very pleasant day, whatever might be the state of the honest man’s feelings at the end of the week. So it is with Candlemas and Whitsunday. On the former of these days we are actuated by a spirit of spite and dissatisfaction with our present abode; it is every thing that is disagreeable, and we must at all hazards get quit of it. Accordingly, the taking of another, and, as we think, better habitation, naturally appears as the opening of a haven of relief, and, of course, we have a great deal of either positive or negative pleasure in the day. Nor is this satisfaction confined to the day on which the new house is leased: it extends up to the very commencement of that week of suffering which involves Whitsunday—up to the first material disarrangement of furniture preparatory to removal. During the time which elapses between the leasing of the new habitation and our removal to it, we abandon all care for our present abode. Any thing that goes wrong about it must just remain so. If a lock were required for the door, we would scarcely put ourselves to the trouble of getting it, but remain content with some provisional system of security, such as putting a table behind it. A large piece of plaster might fall down from the ceiling, or half of the floor of the dining-room sink into the kitchen—a whole gable or side-wall, almost, might fall away, but we would never think of troubling ourselves with any attempt at repairs. It is a horrid house at any rate, and, for all the time we are to be in it, it does not matter. We’ll soon be getting into our nice new house, and I’ll warrant you no plaster will fall down from the ceiling _there_, nor either floor or gable give way. Every thing will be right when we get to —— Street. The house, under this system of feeling, begins to wear a desolate look. Every thing is permitted, according to the old Scottish phrase, just to hang as it grows. The whole bonds of household discipline are relaxed. The servants, who are to be changed too perhaps, as well as the house, begin to do things _any way_, and yet the mistress hardly chides them. The fact is, she has given up all idea of comfort in the condemned house, and lives entirely on the hope of seeing every thing trig in her new abode.