CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
ON THE OLD SCOTTISH DOMESTIC SERVANT.
I come now to a subject on which a great change has taken place in this country during my own experience--viz.

those peculiarities of intercourse which some years back marked the connection between masters and servants.

In many Scottish houses a great familiarity prevailed between members of the family and the domestics.

For this many reasons might have been assigned.

Indeed, when we consider the simple modes of life, which discarded the ideas of ceremony or etiquette; the retired and uniform style of living, which afforded few opportunities for any change in the domestic arrangements; and when we add to these a free, unrestrained, unformal, and natural style of intercommunion, which seems rather a national characteristic, we need not be surprised to find in quiet Scottish families a sort of intercourse with old domestics which can hardly be looked for at a time when habits are so changed, and where much of the quiet eccentricity belonging to us as a national characteristic is almost necessarily softened down or driven out.