humour allied with them to have passed away also.  In other departments of wit and repartee, and acute hits at men and things, Scotsmen (whatever Sydney Smith may have said to the contrary) are equal to their neighbours, and, so far as I know, may have gained rather than lost.  But this peculiar humour of which I now speak has not, in our day, the scope and development which were permitted to it by the former generation.  Where the tendency exists, the exercise of it is kept down by the usages and feelings of society.  For examples of it (in its full force at any rate) we must go back to a race who are departed.  One remark, however, has occurred to me in regard to the specimens we have of this kind of humour—­viz. that they do not always proceed from the personal wit or cleverness of any of the individuals concerned in them.  The amusement comes from the circumstances, from the concurrence or combination of the ideas, and in many cases from the mere expressions which describe the facts.  The humour of the narrative is unquestionable, and yet no one has tried to be humorous.  In short, it is the Scottishness that gives the zest.  The same ideas differently expounded might have no point at all.  There is, for example, something highly original in the notions of celestial mechanics entertained by an honest Scottish Fife lass regarding the theory of comets.  Having occasion to go out after dark, and having observed the brilliant comet then visible (1858), she ran in with breathless haste to the house, calling on her fellow-servants to “Come oot and see a new star that hasna got its tail cuttit aff yet!” Exquisite astronomical speculation!  Stars, like puppies, are born with tails, and in due time have them docked.  Take an example of a story where there is no display of any one’s wit or humour, and yet it is a good story, and one can’t exactly say why:—­An English traveller had gone on a fine Highland road so long, without having seen an indication of fellow-travellers, that he became astonished at the solitude of the country; and no doubt before the Highlands were so much frequented as they are in our time, the roads sometimes bore a very striking aspect of solitariness.  Our traveller, at last coming up to an old man breaking stones, asked him if there was any traffic on this road—­was it at all frequented?  “Ay,” he said, coolly, “it’s no ill at that; there was a cadger body yestreen, and there’s yoursell the day.”  No English version of the story could have half such amusement, or have so quaint a character.  An answer even still more characteristic is recorded to have been given by a countryman to a traveller.  Being doubtful of his way, he inquired if he were on the right road to Dunkeld.  With some of his national inquisitiveness about strangers, the countryman asked his inquirer where he came from.  Offended at the liberty, as he considered it, he sharply reminded the man that where he came from was nothing to him; but all the answer he got was the quiet rejoinder,