not much heard, except now and then from an old lady." At first it seems as if this were only a somewhat bombastical account of our daily experience, but such is by no means the case; for, however general the use of English may have been, there can be no doubt that, at the time of Johnson's visit, Scotch was the household tongue even of the higher middle classes when no Englishman was present. In the generation which followed, and to which Sir Walter Scott belonged, a much more important innovation took place. It was then for the first time that Scotch ceased to form the substance of the national speech, and came to be used as a sort of Doric salt to give pungency and variety to English, which, though still spoken with a very marked accentuation, was the sole language of business, and of graver social communication. At this period, however, Scotch, with all the characteristics of a separate dialect, was still usually spoken to servants, invariably by them; and, as a necessary consequence, very frequently by children of the higher classes. Within the last thirty years even this has been changed; the lowland Scotch have ceased to be a bi-lingual people, and the language of Burns, when spoken by the upper classes at all, is spoken, not spontaneously, but as a small tour de force. No Scotchman, as a general rule, speaks to servants otherwise in Edinburgh than he would do in London; and the speech of the lower classes, in the capital at all events, is distinguished from that of England chiefly by a stronger colouring of the accent, which still retains its hold on the whole people. Lord Brougham's statement, then, that Scotch is "a national language, used by the whole people in their early years, and by many learned and gifted persons throughout life," is a tradition of the past. The tone of voice of a Scotchman and an Englishman is still strikingly dissimilar, but the words which they employ, and, in a great degree, the pronunciation, are identical. The English of Edinburgh now stands to the English of London, very much in the same relation that the French of Geneva does to the French of Paris.

But is it correct to assume that all these changes have resulted from the political union, or even from the increased intercourse between the two nations? Did the speech of any people ever remain unchanged for a century and a half? and is there any reason to suppose that an older and ruder spoken dialect would not have assimilated itself to a later and more accurate written dialect, in Scotland itself, during that period of time, without the intervention of any foreign cause? That some change would have occurred is certain; and that it would have been a change in the same direction, if not perhaps quite to the same extent, is scarcely more doubtful. The accent, which is influenced less by education than by habit, is what one would have expected to be

Gradual Disappearance of the Scottish Dialect.

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chiefly affected by the increased intercourse with England, and it is the accent alone which has remained nearly unchanged. But even the accent has undergone modification, and it is not unlikely that, in the course of another generation, it also will, in a great degree, disappear from the speech of the educated classes. Already there is one unequivocal indication of the insecurity of its hold, viz., that it is frequently exaggerated for a purpose. From a belief that it is popular with the lower orders, almost all Presbyterian clergymen use it in the pulpit more broadly than in their habitual speech; and several of the grand old Scottish lawyers who have recently disappeared, certainly gave themselves some trouble to preserve it on the bench,-perhaps from a feeling that, as patriarchs and old-fashioned grandees, the tones of a former generation became them better than those of the present. In the mouths of the late Lord Mackenzie and the late Lord Cockburn, it certainly had a striking, and by no means unpleasing effect; and no one who has had the privilege of hearing the brief admonitions with which it was their custom to preface their sentences of transportation and of death, will lightly forget the masçuline pathos which they thus contrived to communicate to the tidings. These two eminent persons were perhaps the last who positively added to the grandeur of their demeanour by their use of the Scottish accent; for even in their case it was accent merely,-what they said, when written down, being, in point of language, nothing but very simple and terse, if sometimes quaint English.

Making all due allowance, then, for the accidents of individual influence and for the caprices of fashion,-taking into account the possibility of another Scottish poet, the probability of another gifted judge or two with antiquarian leanings, and the still greater likelihood of a Scoto-mania which, in place of kilts and Skye terriers, shall have the dialect of Scotland for its object,-we may still, without much rashness, assume that, in less than a century, there will be neither dialect nor accent by which to distinguish an educated Scotchman from an educated Englishman. There will still be Cockneys in London, and the lower class of Edinburghers will be distinguished from Londoners, and from Englishmen in general, by what will still be called Scotch, but which in reality will resemble the standard dialect of the whole people quite as closely as the speech of the inhabitants of any of the provincial towns of England. Now, when this occurrence takes place, will every other characteristic by which Scotchmen. are known likewise disappear; or will they, by being at length put fully in possession of what we must pay our neighbours the compliment of assuming to be a more finished language, be only enabled thereby to give fuller and freer expression to intellectual

and moral peculiarities by which they are, and will continue to be, distinguished from the inhabitants of South Britain?

An answer to this question involves, to a certain extent, an anticipation of the future, and we are fully aware of the risk of error that attends all attempts at predicting the course of national events. Other assimilating influences besides identity of speech may intervene, and these influences may be not only of a kind which we should least of all expect in the particular instance, but, in an age and a country so progessive, they may be of a kind of which mankind hitherto has had no experience anywhere. All the length to which we can go with safety is to assert that, if there be a radical and essential distinction between the genius of Scotchmen and of Englishmen, that distinction lies deeper than differences either of institutions or of speech, is their cause more probably than their effect, and in all likelihood will survive their total disappearance.

Is there, then, such a distinction as we here speak of between the inhabitants of the two divisions of this island? We reply in the affirmative, without hesitation and without reluctance, because, for reasons which will be presently apparent, we believe the difference to be of such a kind as to render the one national character the complement of the other. How far this diversity of type may have arisen from original or pre-historic diversity of blood,' and how far it has been the result of the different circumstances of the two nations, and the different relations in which they have stood to other nations during the course of centuries which are within the range of authentic history, it would perhaps be impossible, and is not very important for our purpose, to determine. Its existing characteristics are what concern us here, and we shall endeavour to state them, not from preconceived notions of what might be anticipated, but from actual observation of what is.

It appears to us, then, that the Scottish intellect is more intense, more generally active, but in its highest manifestations

The difference between the Scottish lowlander and the Englishman in this respect is probably very trifling. Gothic and Celtic elements exist in both, and perhaps nearly in the same proportions. In the former, however, there is reason to believe that the Scandinavian variety of the Goth, and the Gaelic variety of the Celt, preponderate; whilst the other has drawn chiefly from the Saxon variety of the Goth and the Cymbric variety of the Celt. The greater amount of Scandinavian blood in Scotland during the Saxon period was pretty well counterbalanced in England by the Norman conquest, which scarcely extended to Scotland. The English connection with France during this period, and for centuries after, must have had the effect of increasing the Celtic element, and supplying the other Gaelic elements which Scotland in time derived from a later connection with that country. On the whole, we may probably assume, that, avoiding persons of Highland descent on the one hand, and of Welsh or Cornish descent on the other, an individual Englishman and an individual Scotchman, taken at random, will very frequently be as homogeneous in blood as any two individual Scotchmen or Englishmen selected in the same manner.

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less complete, than the English. This latter feature is usually attributed to certain imperfections in the higher educational institutions of Scotland, which are at present in the way of being removed. We believe that it is not wholly attributable to this cause, because we think we have observed that it is not greatly affected by an education almost exclusively English.

But, if less perfect in degree, Scottish intellect is more fre quently high in kind. There is a greater number of Scotchmen than of Englishmen, in proportion, who get beyond the condition of being mere recipients of knowledge. The tendency to generalize and form new combinations of thought is less the exception in Scotland. Speculation thus lies nearer to Scotchmen; they are more apt to betake themselves to the region of principle, and consequently they begin more and finish less than Englishmen. The germ of a discovery is, and will probably continue to be, very often Scotch, its completed form English; and in this respect the two nations seem destined, as it were, to play into each other's hands.

Many illustrations might be mentioned, and many consequences pointed out, of this more general thoughtfulness of the Scotch as a nation. The Scotchman is more conscious and less spontaneous than the Englishman; and this peculiarity frequently exhibits itself in a species of mauvaise honte, which sometimes betrays him into awkwardness, and which, at other times, he conceals by an affectation of indifference, which exceeds even that for which the English are proverbial.

But a more important consequence is a tendency to run into logical extremes, and to carry out principles with a rigour and exclusiveness which shut out many of the incidental considerations which come to be important in shaping a course of action. This tendency, which is thoroughly un-English, constituted the chief point of resemblance between the Scotch and their ancient allies the French. It exhibits itself both in politics and religion. A Scotchman's political creed is more finished, more logically worked out and rounded off, more scientific, than an Englishman's; but on that very account, perhaps, it is frequently less suited to the multifarious and contradictory requirements of human affairs. The "freedom" which

"Broadens slowly down

From precedent to precedent,"

and which aims at no greater symmetry in its ultimate form than it exhibited at the various stages of its formation, has been an English conception from the first. The Scotchman has always some political theory, however imperfect; there is always a trace of thinking, and, as the result of it, the outline of some sort of

scheme at the bottom of his views of life; and he never can get rid of the expectation that something like an ideal state of matters is to come about at last. According to him, political arrangements are to be fitted to social requirements-society is to be brought into harmony with ethical conceptions; and these, as they spring up in the natural man, are to be purified and elevated by Christian influences. The life of the ordinary Englishman, even the educated Englishman, is the reverse of all this. He lives de jour en jour, does his duty, eats his dinner, reads his Greek chorus and scans it, all with great relish and respectability, and never troubles himself about the end at all. And really, if men are to be but men at the end, as they were at the beginning, perhaps he is right. Still an extreme is possible on his side also: it is possible to exclude the influences of human reason from human affairs to an extent that God never designed, and that He will not bless: and if this is a contingency worth guarding against, it will be averted, we believe, more effectually by the intervention of a section of the same community, whose tendencies run in the opposite direction, than by any other means. The manner in which the genius of the one people supplements that of the other in this respect, is very apparent. The Scotchman brings back politics from a blind groping after the expedient to the region of principle; he urges the necessity of taking an observation, ascertaining our course, and looking at the chart which human possibilities has marked out, lest we heedlessly run our heads against some universal principle of nature, or some unalterable law of social life. The Englishman, though somewhat averse to the proceeding in the first instance, ultimately acquiesces in its propriety, and comes to the aid of the Scotchman with his precedents drawn from the rich treasury of a "land of old and just renown," precisely at the point where his interposition is wanted. He points out to the Scotchman numberless sources of error, which his more limited experience might never have suggested; or, perhaps, availing himself of the hint which his neighbour's too hasty generalization afforded, takes the task of observation into his own hands, and performs it with far greater completeness than he could have done.

In proof of the correctness of the view which we have taken of the political tendencies of Scotchmen, it may be mentioned that their representatives in Parliament are, as a body, less conservative than the English. From being more abstract, the Scotch are likewise, we fear, less loyal. Cousin has remarked, as a consequence of their more thoughtful temper, that they remained unaffected by the intoxication of loyalty which succeeded the Restoration; and it is certain that, whatever may