Every one does not know how the Scottish pedlar has left heirs of direct succession in our day of stores and bargain sales. Quiet houses in certain streets of London that look down on open shops, would be found to have their back rooms full of drapery goods for hawking about at area doors or to working-men’s wives, cajolable into making purchases on credit which may ruin domestic peace. These tempters of humble Eves are likely to be Scots of the baser sort, and I venture to guess them as Lowlanders; they are said to be chiefly recruited in Galloway. Their dubious business is popularly known as the Scotch trade; and this seems to be responsible for keeping asmoulder among the lower classes such prejudices against the Scot as were fanned by Wilkes and Johnson, unequally yoked together in one antipathy. In Scotland, where the law is less hard-hearted and customers are more hard-headed, the “Scotch trade” does not now flourish; it is one thing Scottish which we need not be proud of bringing into England. Of course, there was a time when the northern pedlar played a useful and grateful part, as he tramped about out-of-the-way countrysides with his burden of wares and gossip-- A lone pedestrian with a scanty freight, Wished-for, or welcome, wheresoe’er he came Among the tenantry of thorpe and vill. But I would bet all Whiteley’s stock against the poet laureate’s butt of sherry, that Wordsworth’s Wanderer spake not with the accent of Atholl but of Paisley or Kirkcudbright. Having thus criticised an English poet, I venture to raise some doubt as to whether a native school of minstrels had gone deep into the matter, when they made lads with the philibeg come down from Atholl, chanting such ditties as-- The crown was half on Charlie’s head, Ae gladsome day, ae gladsome day; The lads that shouted joy to him, Are in the clay, are in the clay.