impressions, I shall scarcely fall into those glaring
errors which are so often, committed by travellers
who, visiting strange lands for the first
time, see only the surface of things. Standing
on the top of a hill, which is rather irreverently
said to command a view of "all the kingdoms
of the world," I observe that a great advance
has been made in the cultivation of the land
since I last stood on that hill twenty years ago.
On every hand cultivation has crept up the
barren hill-sides, and wrested corn and other
fruits from tracts of land which were formerly
black moss or heath-covered rock. These
improvements have been made by the people
themselves, without any aid, and sometimes without
any encouragement from their landlords; so a
trustworthy tenant informs me. And here a
word or two on the great Scotch landowners.
In many quarters the Scotch have as much
reason as the Irish to complain of absenteeism.
The lord, who owns the soil, and derives his
income from the industry of his tenants, too
often passes the greater part of his time in
London, leaving his estates to be managed by
agents, or, as they are called here, "factors."
The people do not complain, but they deeply feel
the injustice of such neglect. It means much
when some poor little farmer says to a Lon-
doner, "Well, and what does our lord do up in
London; do you hear of him much; is he gay?"
I heard of a Scotch proprietor, whose rent-roll
is nearly a hundred thousand pounds a year,
who never visits his estates except to shoot the
game. The money which his tenants make
for him, struggling with a stubborn soil under
a most inclement sky, is nearly all spent in
the neighbourhood of Pall-Mail. Very little of
it, indeed, goes back into the channel whence
it came. In many things some of the Scotch
landowners are quite as selfish, quite as
exacting, quite as tyrannical, as any privileged
serf-owning noble in the empire of the Czar.
For example. Here is an honest hard-working
man renting a farm which yields him and his
family only a bare living; and one of the
conditions on which he holds his lease is, that he
will not only abstain from killing game himself,
but do everything in his power to preserve the
game, to afford sport for his lord. I walked
over a farm one day, which was overrun with
game and ravenous birds of every description.
In addition to hares, rabbits, pheasants, and
partridges, which feasted at all times upon the
corn and the turnips, thousands of rooks (from
my lord's rookery) came every morning, and
spent the day in the richest field they could
find. And it was more than this poor farmer's
lease was worth, to shoot even a rabbit. It made
my blood boil to think of such selfishness and
injustice; but the farmer took it very quietly.

"I knew all this before I took the farm," he
said.

It is hard to get a Scotchman to own that he
is oppressed in any way. He does not mind
owning to a sentimental grievance about the
place which his lion holds in the British shield,
or the precedence of the Lord Provost of
Edinburgh in a state ceremonial; but he will not
admit that there is any hardship in the
conditions under which he lives in his native land.
He is too proud for that. He will not be pitied.

The contrast between the condition, manners,
and habits, of the agricultural classes of Scotland,
and those of England, is very remarkable.
Take, for example, any farm of a hundred acres
or so, in the midland counties of England.
What sort of person is the farmer? In some
cases he is a person who wears a smock-frock
and hobnailed boots, who smokes his pipe and
drinks his ale at the beer-shop, his convivial
"sentiment" being "more pigs and fewer
parsons," who "ain't no scollard," who takes
his meals in the kitchen with his labourers, and
who brings his sons up to be carters and ploughmen,
or, at the very highest, veterinary
surgeons. In Scotland, a person renting a farm of
the same extent is a gentleman. If he have not
been to college, he has attended the parochial
school and received a good general education.
His house, though it may be small, and covered
with a thatch roof, is furnished with elegances
as well as comforts. He has his silver spoons,
and his silver toddy ladles, and is in a position
to entertain his aristocratic landlord if he should
happen to call. His sons are at college, learning
Greek and Latin; his daughters are at boarding-
school in the county town, learning French and
the piano; his wife can cook, but she can also
play and sing; and the domestic life of the
family is marked by the graces of refinement
and the courtesies of polite society. I need
not say what is the condition of English
labourers and farm-servants, but I will ask you
to step into the kitchen of a Scotch farm-
house, and see how the ploughmen and harvest-
workers spend the evening after the labours of
the day. The supper has just been finished.
What does a London cab-driver or dock-labourer
say to the bill of fare? A dish of greens, or
mashed turnips, or potatoes, oat cakes, and
milk. Not a scrap of butcher's meat of any
kind. And now, the reapers, the gatherers, the
binders, and the rakers, are seated round the
fire to enjoy themselves. "Black Janet," as
the old-fashioned shell-lamp (which burns with
train oil and the pith of a rush) is called, assists
the blazing peat fire to shed a light on the scene;
the hearth is cleanly swept; the lasses in their
trim cotton jackets and wincey petticoats are
seated at their spinning-wheels; the herd-boy
is in a corner, perhaps learning his multiplication-
table; and the grieve or foreman of the
labourers is reading aloud the news of the world
from the county paper. These people have an
interest for topics which possess little attraction
for the same classes in England. They know
all that is going on in parliament; in the general
assemblies of their two kirks; they follow foreign
wars, and the events of the world generally; and
the names of eminent public men and their
characteristics are as well known to them as
they are to some people who move in higher
circles and call themselves politicians. Hot
political and theological debates are carried