Europe, the mother of parliaments, the most dignified assemblage under the sun, is just a branch of the Stock Exchange. As the exceedingly clever young man who recently wrote a book about the Scot might say, this shows what the English really are. It has been remarked, and possibly not without truth, that the Scot keeps the Sabbath and everything else he can lay his hands upon. He is credited with being the perfect money-grubber; his desire for competence, we have been told by the clever young man before mentioned, has blighted his soul and brought him into opprobrium among Turks and Chinamen. Well, the Scot does look after money: he desires competence, he loves independence; and, when he can get them, ease and pleasure are gratifying to him. If he comes off the rock and attains affluence, he is not averse to the goodnesses that affluence commands. He will start a castle and a carriage and a coat-of-arms with the best of them; he will lift up his family and leave his children well provided for. In these connections he is just as human as the next man; but he never has played and he never will play the English game of lavishness and wastefulness and swaggering profusion, and, least of all, will he play it on a basis of undesirable association. The Scotsman who has compassed wealth, even though he be the son of a mole-catcher or a sweetie-wife or a Glasgow beer-seller, can always remember that there is such a thing as spiritual integrity. And though he may or may not boo and boo and boo in accordance with the good old kindly English legend, he certainly will not do it in Jews' houses. This, I take it, is where he has some little advantage over Englishmen.