I recollect a familiar example of this, which I may well term a Reminiscence.

At a party assembled in a county house, the Earl of Elgin (grandfather of the present Earl) came up to the tea-table, where Mrs.
Forbes of Medwyn, one of the finest examples of the past Scottish _lady_, was sitting, evidently much engaged with her occupation.

"You are fond of your tea, Mrs.Forbes ?" The reply was quite a characteristic one, and a pure reminiscence of such a place and such interlocutors; "'Deed, my Lord, I wadna gie my tea for your yerldom." My aunt, the late Lady Burnett of Leys, was one of the class of Scottish ladies I have referred to;--thoroughly a good woman and a gentlewoman, but in dialect quite Scottish.

For example, being shocked at the sharp Aberdonian pronunciation adopted by her children, instead of the broader Forfarshire model in which she had been brought up, she thus adverted to their manner of calling the _floor_ of the room where they were playing: "What gars ye ca' it '_fleer_ ?' canna ye ca' it '_flure_ ?' But I needna speak; Sir Robert winna let me correc' your language." In respect of language, no doubt, a very important change has taken place in Scotland during the last seventy years, and which, I believe, influences, in a greater degree than many persons would imagine, the turn of thought and general modes and aspects of society.

In losing the old racy Scottish tongue, it seems as if much originality of _character_ was lost.