Donald is still more religious than John Bull—that is to say, he is still more theological and church-going; but the fashion in which he keeps up relations with the Divinity is very different.

The Englishman entertains the Jewish notion of God—a Deity terrible and avenging, whose very name strikes awe, and is not to be lightly pronounced without drawing down celestial vengeance.

The Scot has a way of treating his Creator very much as if He were the next-door neighbour. He tells Him all his little needs, and will go so far as to gently reproach Him if they are not supplied.

If he has dined well, he is lavish in returning thanks to the Lord for His infinite favours; his gratitude is boundless. If he has had a meagre repast, he thanks Him for the least of His mercies. The thanks are not omitted, but at the same time Donald gives the Lord to understand that he has made a poor dinner.

The following anecdote was told me in Scotland. The first part of it is given by Dr. Ramsay in his Reminiscences, I find. As to the second, I leave the responsibility of it to my host who related the story to me. Se non e vera, e ben trovata.

A Presbyterian minister had just cut his hay, and the weather not being very propitious for making it, he knelt near his open window and addressed to Heaven the following prayer:

"O Lord, send us wind for the hay; no a rantin', tantin', tearin' wind, but a noughin', soughin', winnin' wind...."

His prayer was here interrupted by a puff of wind that made the panes rattle, and scattered in all directions the papers lying on his table.

The minister straightway got up and closed his window, exclaiming:

"Now, Lord, that's ridik'lous!"

If this ending of the anecdote is not authentic, I feel quite sure that none but a Scotchman could have invented it.

Donald's prayers are sermons, just as the sermons of his ministers are prayers.

In these daily litanies the Scotchman enters into the most trifling details with careful forethought: the list of favours he has received, and for which he has to return thanks; the list of the blessings he wishes for, and will certainly receive, for God cannot refuse him anything,—all this is present to his prodigious memory. He dots his i's, as we say in France; and if by chance he should happen to employ a rather far-fetched expression, he explains it to the Lord, so that there shall be no danger of misunderstanding, no pretext for not according him what he asks for—he corners Him.

Thus I was one day present at evening prayers in a Scotch family, and heard the master of the house, among a thousand other supplications, make the following:

"O Lord, give us receptivity; that is to say, O Lord, the power of receiving impressions."

The entire Scotch character is there.

What forethought! what cleverness! what a business-like talent! To explain to God the signification of the far-fetched word receptivity, so that He should not be able to say: "There is a worthy Scotchman who uses outlandish words; I do not know what it is he wants."

Would not one think that this excellent Caledonian imagined that God had been made in his image?

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As gratitude is pretty generally everywhere—but especially in Great Britain—a sense of favours to come, this same Scot, before making known to the Lord the blessings which he expected from Him, had been careful to thank Him for past favours. Here, too, he had been sublime. Judge for yourself.

With the lady who was his third wife in the room, he thus expressed himself:

"Lord, I thank Thee for the pleasure and the comfort that I derived from the company of Jane" (his first wife); "I thank Thee also for the pleasure and comfort that I derived from the company of Mary" (his second wife).

The third wife was there, at the other end of the table, silent and solemn, apparently plunged in profound meditation, and thanking Heaven for the pleasure and comfort that the society of Jane and Mary had given her husband.

When would her turn come to play her part in these thanksgivings?

Her husband is but sixty-five, and I can assure you has no idea of going yet.

Another episode of the same kind came under my notice in a Catholic family; but in this case the same Scotch characteristic showed itself under a different form—a form suggested by belief in purgatory.

Here, too, the master of the house was a widower remarried, but who had only got as far as his second wife. Before this dutiful lady and the rest of his family, which was composed of several big sons and three grown-up daughters, he prayed for the repose of the soul of his first wife, reminding the Lord, in case He should have forgotten it, what an angel on earth this incomparable spouse had been.

"Remember, O Lord," he cried, "how discreet, faithful, wise, careful, and obedient she was!"

This prayer, in my opinion, was meant to serve two ends, for the Scotchman never loses sight of the practical side of things. While it solicited the admission of the first wife into Paradise, it reminded the second of her duty towards her husband and the virtues he expected of her.

Upstairs I saw that which confirmed me in my little theory.

In the bedroom I occupied hung a portrait of Mrs. X. (No. 1). Underneath the portrait a card, illuminated with a garland of roses and foliage, and bearing the inscription "Rest in Peace," announced to the stranger that the original was no longer of this world.

One evening, on opening a drawer of the dressing-table, I beheld a card exactly similar to that underneath the portrait, but with the inscription:

There it was, all ready to replace the other card, should Mrs. X. (No. 2) cease to be "discreet, wise, careful, and obedient." I wonder if it has seen the light yet!

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No liturgy, no formulas for Donald, when he prays. He will not be dictated to as to what he shall say. He knows his own wants, and communicates them to his Maker without reserve or restraint.

The Scotch tell of a Presbyterian minister, of the time of George III., who used to officiate in a church in Edinburgh, and prayed for the Town Council thus:

"O Lord, have mercy on all fools and idiots, and the members of the Town Council of Edinburgh."

What a pity that in Paris churches it is not possible to put up a similar petition!

Here is a prayer of an old farmer who lived in the North of Scotland, and was well known for his long and forcible addresses to Heaven.

"We thank Thee, Lord, for Thy great goodness to Meg, and that it ever cam into thy heid to tak' ony thocht o' sic a useless baw-waw as her. For Thy mercy's sake, and for the sake o' Thy poor sinfu' servants that are now addressin' Thee in their ain shilly-shally way, hae mercy on Rob. Ye ken yersel' he is a wild, mischievous callant, and thinks nae mair o' committing sin than a dog does o' lickin' a dish; but put Thy hook in his nose, an' Thy bridle in his gab, an' gar him come back to Thee with a jerk that he'll ne'er forget the langest day he has to leeve.

"We're a' like hawks, we're a' like snails, we're a' like sloggie riddles: like hawks to do evil, like snails to do guid, and like sloggie riddles that let through a' the guid and keep a' the bad.

"Bring doon the tyrant and his lang neb, for he has done muckle ill the year; gie him a cup o' Thy wraith, an' 'gin he winna tak that, gie him kelty" (two cups, a double dose).

The finest and most characteristic prayer that it has been my good luck to come across is the following, which I have kept for a bonne bouche. The good folks of Dumbarton used it in the year 1804, when the inhabitants of Scotland firmly believed that Napoleon had resolved to invade Great Britain:

"Lord, bless this house and a' that's in this house, and a' within twa miles ilka side this house. O bless the coo and the meal and the kail-yard and the muckle toun o' Dumbarton.

"O Lord, preserve us frae a' witches and warlocks, and a' lang nebbet beasties that gang through the heather.

"O build a strong dyke between us and the muckle French. Put a pair o' branks about the neck of the French Emperor; gie me the helter in my ain hand, that I may lead him about when I like: for Thy name's sake. Amen."

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To this day you will hear, in any country church in Scotland, these interminable litanies. It is the minister's work to watch over the interests of his flock; he knows their wants and their wishes, and he expresses them in his prayers. That does not prevent Donald from going through the same process again at home; it is always well to know how to conduct one's own affairs.

Every Scot is a born preacher. Even his conversation has a certain smack of the pulpit. By dint of preaching and listening to preachers, his conversation gets a sermonising turn.

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That familiarity with which Donald keeps up his relations with his Maker—a familiarity which comes from the good-humoured frankness of the Scotch character—shows itself above all in the ministers of the various religious sects of the country.

Thus a pastor of the Free Church, wishing to explain how Jesus had performed a miracle in walking across the waves to join His disciples, hit upon this forcible way of bringing it home to his hearers:

"My dear brethren, to walk on the sea is a very wonderful thing: you would find it just as difficult as to walk across this ceiling with your head downwards."

Another, wishing to illustrate how God is everywhere and sees everything, told his congregation:

"The Lord is like a moose in a dry stane dyke, aye keekin' out at us frae holes and crannies, and we canna see Him."

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The Scotch preachers of the old school knew how to recommend their parishioners to the care of Heaven—and occasionally to the shop of a friend.

A Scotchman told me that he remembered to have heard, when a boy, a Free Church minister thus express himself in the pulpit:

"Lord, protect us from the cholera, at this time making such terrible ravages in Glasgow; endow the doctors of this town with wisdom; give them also health, especially to James Macpherson, who is getting old and cannot afford to pay a substitute. And you, my dear friends, be prudent: keep yourselves warm, that is the essential thing; wear flannel clothing. If you have none at home, lose no time in going to Donald Anderson. He has just received from London a large stock of the best flannels, which he is selling very cheap. I bought some of him at a shilling a yard, and I am perfectly satisfied with it. Donald Anderson lives at 22 Lanark Street; don't go elsewhere."

If the Englishman has, as I said elsewhere, knocked down to himself the kingdom of Heaven, which he looks upon as a British possession, the Scotchman has discerned to himself all the best places therein.

A few months ago an amiable Scotchman offered me his hospitality in the environs of Edinburgh. On entering my bedroom, I saw a picture of the Last Judgment. It quite took my breath away, the sight of that picture. And no wonder! At God's right hand came—first, John Knox; next, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott; then an immense crowd of good folk, who, if they had been in complete attire, would have had kilts and plaids; and then next, but at some distance, John Wesley and a number of other well-known English divines; and beyond them—no one. But that is not all. On the left hand were a good sprinkling of popes, among people of all sorts and conditions, but all foreigners.

I called my host quickly.

"Well," I said, "what have you been up to in this country? What! Without giving anybody warning, without a 'by your leave,' you install yourselves in the best seats to the exclusion of the poor outside world! My dear sir, it looks to me as if, when all your Britannic subjects are supplied with places, there will be room for no one else."

It was enough to make a Frenchman cry, "Stop thief!"

I was fain to console myself, however, with the thought that in France we can draw pictures of the Last Judgment too, but with a decided improvement on this arrangement of figures. To look for John Knox in ours would be sheer waste of time.

As to Robert Burns, who certainly was no saint, far from it, I do not remember to have seen him, but I guarantee that he is to be found in the midst of the angels, beside Beethoven, Shakespeare, Raphael, Victor Hugo, and kindred spirits.

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The following anecdote, told me in Scotland, will perhaps tend to prove that even the libations of overnight do not hinder a true-born Scot from believing himself in Paradise the following morning.

Donald had imbibed whisky freely in the house of a friend, and towards two in the morning set out for home, describing wonderful zigzags as he went.

It suddenly occurred to him, in one of those lucid moments which the tipsiest man will occasionally have, that the cemetery of Kirkcaldy formed a short cut to his house. He steered for the place, but had not gone far when an open grave arrested his progress. He tried to jump, his foot caught, he slipped, and the next moment was lying full length in the improvised bed. Here he soon fell fast asleep. About six in the morning the Kirkcaldy coach came speeding past, the coachman making the air ring with a shrill trumpet blast. Donald awakes, rubs his eyes, and, taking it to be the Last Trump calling the elect from their tombs, arises awe-stricken. He looks around him. No one; not a soul!

"Weel, weel," cries Donald; "weel, weel, this is a fery puir show for Kirkcaldy!!!"

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The French beggar accosts one with a "God bless you." If he is blind, he plays the flute. The Scotch beggar's stock-in-trade is generally a Bible. For a penny he will recite you a chapter; Old and New Testament are equally familiar to him. If he is blind, he does the same as his English confrÈre: he reads aloud from a Bible printed in raised characters.

Those who can get enough to invest in an organ or a discordeon abandon the Bible business, which is not lucrative. Besides, turning the handle is easy work; whereas learning the Bible by heart demands study.

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The beggar reciting the Bible to fill his pocket is very well; but he does not come up to the preaching street arab.

A learned professor at the University of Aberdeen told me, last February, that he was one day accosted by a beggar-boy of about ten, who asked him for a penny.

"A penny! What are you going to do to earn it?" asked the professor.

"Shall I sing?" replied the boy.

"No."

"Shall I dance?"

"No."

"Shall I preach?"

The professor pulled out his penny without "asking for further change."

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I cannot take leave of performing beggars without relating a little incident that I was a witness of in Edinburgh:

A beggar came up to me, asking for alms.

"You have a violin there," I said to him; "but you do not play it. How is that?"

"Oh, sir!" he replied; "give me a penny, and don't make me play. I assure you you won't regret it."

I understood his delicacy, and to show him that I appreciated it launched out my penny.

"But," I added, "do you never use your violin?"

"Yes, sir, sometimes," he said, lowering his voice, "as a threat."

I lost my penny, but saved my ears.

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