284 The Four Nations. [MARCH, 



Conclusions like these, drawn from a single circumstance, and that 

 perchance not general to the nation but peculiar to one or two individuals, 

 are really of little value ; and though they be by no means uncommon, 

 they are undeserving of the name of philosophy. Nor do we fare better 

 if we admit the parties to plead, and take the character of each nation as 

 that nation fashions and puts it on for itself. John Bull, indeed, is not 

 very guilty in this respect ; for though he boasts a great deal about Eng- 

 land and Englishmen, his England is narrower and less populous than the 

 world of the midwife in " Tristram Shandy :" she took in a circular mile, 

 of which her own dwelling was the centre, while John Bull's own pre- 

 mises are England, and he himself is the nation. With the Scot, it is 

 very different ; and if you receive him as he offers himself, you would 

 imagine that out of Scotland there is found neither wisdom nor virtue, save 

 what is smuggled thence by the natives. His country is the foremost 

 and the finest of all countries ; his hovel overtops and outshines the palaces 

 of other nations ; a single dip in his springs of knowledge conveys more 

 than repeated plungings in those of any other country ; his women are all 

 lovely ; his very hind is a philosopher, his husbandman is equally master 

 of the flail and the lyre ; none are invincible but his soldiers ; none are 

 eloquent but his orators ; none are profound but his philosophers ; and, in 

 short, if you would bless yourselves by visiting a people who, by the ex- 

 press inspiration of heaven, and without any effort of their own, can " do 

 all deeds, and know all knowledge," why, you must cross the Tweed, 

 or bore into the Land of Cakes by some arm of the eastern, the western, or 

 the hyperborean sea. Do you wish to be bled or blistered, or have your 

 leg, or even your head, amputated secundum artem, where can you pos- 

 sibly find a craftsman, if he has not drudged in " Surgeon's Square," or 

 attended the midnight orgies in the charnel-houses beneath that most 

 classical of all structures, the new University of Edinburgh ? If you would 

 bo served honestly, faithfully, or successfully in any one respect, and be 

 yourself honoured by the service, the man for your money is a subtle Scot; 

 and if you need advice, your Caledonian is an Hushai, who shall instantly 

 overturn for you the sagest opinion of the Achitophel of any other land. 

 In fine, to sum up the whole in the opinion of those who, proverbially 

 speaking, should know best, there is neither honour nor success in this 

 world but what springs from Caledonian soil ; and in nasal strains, there 

 is no salvation in the next world beyond the pale of the Presbyterian kirk. 



Your Cambrian boasts not so much of the passing generation ; but he 

 contrives to base L himself upon a pyramid founded at or before the begin- 

 ning of time, and considering himself as a legitimate part and parcel of 

 this, uncontaminated by foreign admixture, he, in his own person comes 

 down upon you charged with the whole importance of " Cadwallader and 

 all his goats." He sets not much store by his learning, he boasts not of his 

 individual deeds ; but every mountain has its story, and a thousand ages 

 have their annals, all of which are his by direct inheritance, and according 

 to his reply to the king when distanced in the race, " Hur keffel is not so 

 good a keffel, but hur is a better gentleman." In consequence of this 

 immense coma of glory which the Welchman trails behind him from distant 

 and even oblivious antiquity, and which is not very manageable, because of 

 its great magnitude, he has to make every passion of his nature a sentinel 

 continually upon duty; and for this reason, he avows himself at once the 

 most deservedly proud, and the most determinedly pugnacious of God's 

 creatures. 



