It is perhaps inevitable that a firm with a long title should come to be best known by the name of the prominent partner. One never could be expected to style Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap in full, unless by way of formal address; had it been no more than Dodson and Fogg, one might make shift at an Austria-Hungary bracketing. Lord Bute is accused of prompting George III. to pride in being born a _Briton_; but the grievance seems more philosophically handled in a story of two Sandy tars at Trafalgar, one of whom found fault with Nelson’s famous signal: “‘England expects’--aye, but nothing about poor old Scotland!” was his grumble. “Hoots!” answered his comrade, “don’t they know that every Scotsman is sure to do his duty?” I confess to having lukewarm sympathy with the perfervid patriotism that is too ready to find quarrel in straws. Scotland has got quite her share of practical benefit from the “sad and sorrowful Union,” and need not grudge to England the nominal advantages of size and wealth, which the latter sometimes appears to occupy as caretaker for her neighbour. So long as Scottish enterprise, thrift, and industry are allowed fair play on both sides of the Border, it seems childish to lament over lost titles and ensigns, toys of history, that only in a museum may escape being broken, and sooner or later will be swept into time’s dustbin. When one sees how we have peacefully imbued our fellow subjects with our best blood, I for one am not too sorry that our dark record of feuds and slaughter and bigotry falls into its place in the background of a grander scene, and that instead of cherishing thistly independence as a romantic Norway or an austere Portugal, we merge our national life into the greater kingdom’s, which, by good luck or good guidance, has come to stand so high in the world for freedom, enlightenment, and solidity. In this kingdom we take much the same place as the Manchus in China. All over the world we go forth to prosper like that Chosen People of the old dispensation, with this difference, that we have our Sion in our own hands, to which come pilgrims from all nations. The comparison would fit better if it allowed me to call Perthshire the Scottish land of Judah.