Don't think of _analysing_ its nature, or the qualities of which it is composed; enjoy its quaint and amusing flow of oddity and fun; as we may, for instance, suppose it to have flowed on that eventful night so joyously described by Burns:-- "The souter tauld his queerest stories, The landlord's laugh was ready chorus." Or we may think of the delight it gave the good Mr.Balwhidder, when he tells, in his Annals of the Parish, of some such story, that it was a "jocosity that was just a kittle to hear." When I speak of changes in such Scottish humour which have taken place, I refer to a particular sort of humour, and I speak of the sort of feeling that belongs to Scottish pleasantry,--which is sly, and cheery, and pawky.

It is undoubtedly a humour that depends a good deal upon the vehicle in which the story is conveyed.

If, as we have said, our quaint dialect is passing away, and our national eccentric points of character, we must expect to find much of the peculiar 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.