When the usual quantity of quadrilles, waltzes, lancers, country dances, cotillons, reels, and “pop-go-the-weasels,” have been danced or struggled through, in the nature of things comes supper, and then you will observe that a comic man, generally recognized as such, and evidently a great favourite in that part of the country, is called upon to make a speech—returning thanks for the toast of “The Ladies,” probably; and he rises to do so with the air of one who feels that he is the right man, and the confidence following from a conviction that he is in the right place. He proceeds to deliver a speech, which the county paper afterwards describes as “replete with wit and humour,” and as received by the delighted company with “one continued roar of laughter.” I began by saying something about hardship and suffering, but those words are now withdrawn. What does it matter, if people are good-humoured, and bent upon being amused and amusing others, whether they are driven to the scene of the festivity one or twenty miles, or if the state of the weather is many degrees above freezing point? If the party be a merry one, the longer the journey the better. May County Balls continue and flourish! My Scotch School. I have read a good deal of late, in this Magazine and elsewhere, about English public schools, their advantages and disadvantages, their merits and their shortcomings. Have the public any ears to hear something about the public schools of Scotland? Professor John Stuart Blackie has written often and with great force about the Scottish universities, showing that they exhibit the very defects which “Paterfamilias” has pointed out as existing in the public schools of England, with some others to boot. I am not aware that any one has treated in the same way of the Scottish public schools. I am desirous to supply this defect for two—as I think—good reasons. First, because I myself received the rudiments of my education at one of those Scottish schools, and therefore know something of the subject; and, secondly, because there is a great deal of misapprehension in England with respect to Scotch schools and Scotch education generally. The popular idea here seems to be that Scotland, as regards education, is a sort of Tom Tiddler’s ground, a place where the people, both high and low, roll and wallow in education—a land where the rivers run with fertilizing lore; where all the pines are trees of knowledge; where grammar is raked out of the ditches; and where even Greek roots are to be had on the barren hill-sides for the trouble of digging. If this be true, Scotland stands not where it did when I went to school.