BACK TO SCOTLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 747, 24 March 1866, Page 5

BACK TO SCOTLAND.

"I wonder how long the facetious Cockney will go on with making jokes about the Scotchman's aversion to going back to his native land ! This sharp sauce has been kept now for nearly three centuries, and it is a3 pungent and hot i' the mouth as when it was first bottled in the English vials of wrath. We have sunk many differences, forgotten many animosities, buried deep in oblivion many bones of contention which have long since crumbled to dust ; but this taunt is still ready on our tongues even after all sense of its truth and applicability has faded from our minds. Nothing seems to last so long as a national prejudice, especially when it finds expression in a popular witticism. When our enemies or rivals are concerned, we are apt to love a joke better than the truth, and often to sacrifice truth to the petty purpose of raising a laugh. I wonder how many centuries of! opportunity the world has lost through joking ! Look back to Italy in the fifteenth century, and note how tbe seeds of social and political disunion were sawn in that country by the Pasquinaders. Venice made jokes at the expense of Naples, Naples at the exoense of Rome, Rome at the expense of Milan. A score of states and districts in Italy were kept apart by the habit of ridiculing each other's provincialisms. The empire of the Caesars was split into parishes by the laughter excited by village wits. Grandduchies and duchies, with their petty princes and paltry pretensions, were the results of this badinage, and all tbe might of France has not been able to bind up the bundle of sticks which was thus shaken asunder. How long have feelings of jealousy and hatred been sustained between England and France by facetious recriminations, by senseless jokes, and extravagant caricatures! {What were the sort of notions that so long estranged us? That Frenchmen were frog- eating foreigners, poor, half starved, despicable creatures, who could not stand up before an Englishman for a moment. Did we not boast that one Englishman could thrash three Frenchmen any day ? The idea o( a Frenchman managing a ship, or training a race-horse, sent us into convulsions of liughter. Then from the other side, John Ball was viewed as a big fat beast, who swore loudly and drank deeply, 3nd sold his wife at Smith - field*. We held these notions, and held them so long, because we studied each other in the pages of the caricaturists. Even now, when the French have an ironclad fleet equal to our own, and a horse from France has won the highest- honors of the English turf, the idea still lingers that a Frenchman is a ridiculous person, to be laughed at, and caricatured, and despised, . . . " Scotland can -well afford to be joked about. She is apt to toy, 4 Let those laugh who.win.' With herarmour of thistles and self-esteem she ia proof against the petty sh.^s of aimless ridicule. One good

reason for her self-coraplacency is the fact that those petty shafts go very wide of the mark. We cannot admit this joke aboafe our steps being always turned towards England, and never going back, into oar heads, because we are a matter of fact people ,• and the matter of fact is simply this — hear it, ye Saxon jokers — that there are more Englishmen in Scotland thaa there are Scotchmen in England S If yon want proof of this, consult the returns of the last census. Then, as to going back. There are no people on the face of the earth so attached to their native country, or so anxious to end their days amongtheir own kith and kin as the Scotch. Every day of the year Scotch men are coming back from foreign climes to enjoy the friiits of their enterprise amid the scenes of their youth. You meet with instances of this in every town and village, on every hillside, on the borders of every loved river and lake. A handsome villa stands yonder among the fir trees. Who owns it ? *Oh that belongs to Sandy Macpherson, who went to India, or America, or Australia, or where not, and made a fortune. He came back tbe other year and bought land there and built that house, and made all his re«lations ladies and gentlemen as far a=J Billet could make them.' True, a Scotchman, is not apt to go back until he has made his money. He is too proud for that. He went away a poor laddie to seek his fortune, and he does not like to return unless he has fulfilled his ambition. I lately visited the spot where General Brown was gathered to his humble Scottish fathers. All round about was a handsome suburb of villas and mansions peopled by Scotchmen, who had ' gone back. 1 I met one who had been away in Mexico fop nigh forty years, and the native Di>ric was as strong on hia tongue as on that of any laddie who had never left the spot. His talk was all of the old days, and the friends and companions of his youth. In yon old house he had spent many a happy night 5 in yonder stream he had fished for trout—--how often had he fished there in his dreams far away in Mexico, sleeping at the bottom of a mine ! — he remembered the number on the pew door opposite his old seat in the church. He had not, seen it for forty years ; but it was 32, and the tail of the 2 turned up like a rabbit's. Yes, there it was. It had been renewed, possibly, but the quaint character of the figures was still preserved. He remembered i everything ; the inscriptions on the tombstones and the ways and sayings o£ ! those who lay still and "dumb under them. The forty years of his striving Mexican life and his triumphs had almost faded from hia memory, and the life of his boy> i hood was joined on to that of his old age, <»nd hia Scotch habits, feelings, and sympathies were come back to him in all their original simplicity. N"o, my Saxon irien<s, your joke is neither true nor well founded. A Scotchman loves to go back, and the dearest ambition of his heart is never fulfilled until circumstances permit him to return to the land of his birth with honor to himself and advantage to hi 3 kith and kin. Why he is so ready to leave it in the first instance should be obvious to every one who has travelled for days aad days in the Highlands and seen nothing but bare rocks and barren hill-bides. Not even a Scotchman can live upon mos3 and heather ; ans would you have him lie down and die among the rocks while there are fresh, fields and pastures new inviting him to the sunny south? Scotland is but a birth--place, and the inheritance of her children is necessity." — All the Year Mound.

A Sagacious Pcpii, — There wa? a parochial side-school, in a remote muirland district of a SDuthern Scotch county, at which the attendance had, from various causes, at one time dwindled down to & single self-reliant boy ; and one forenoon, in a lull of school-work, the little fellowlooked up with a reflective air, and said, "Maister, a' think ther'li be nae schulinjj the morn." "What puts that in your head, sir," haughtily inquired the master; to which the callant immediately replied, " All no be here" — inferring that Othello'a occupation would then be gone. — Ayrshire Observer. A New Sect. — A new sect has lately sprung up in Berlin. Its members call themselves " The CogUant." Dr Edward Lowenthan, the founder, has published a book about his opinions, which he calls & religion without a confession. The Cogitants also have their magazine, bearing the following motto : — " Oar knowledge is our faith; our dignity is our morality; our worship is life ; and our religion is — our secret." A few of their doctrines and practices are as follows: — Neither theft s nor fraud can be punished with imprisonment. Women are to have a part ia the church governmeat. Only the lower part of a coffin, should be buried in the earth* All good Cogiiants are to have an excellent dinner for nothing, and dine in public on. Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, and Whitsunday, the wealthier members paying for all. The head of the Cogitants is to wear a black camlet cloak with upright collars, ! with three silver stars on it.