They are a shrewd people, indeed, but so destitute of ease, grace, pliability of manners, and insinuation of address, that they eternally seem to suffer actual misery in their attempts to look gay and careless.

Then their pride heads them back at one turn, their poverty at another, their pedantry at a third, their _mauvaise honte_ at a fourth; and with so many obstacles to make them bolt off the course, it is positively impossible they should win the plate.

No, Harry, it is the grave folk in Old England who have to fear a Caledonian invasion--they will make no conquests in the world of fashion.

Excellent bankers the Scots may be, for they are eternally calculating how to add interest to principal;--good soldiers, for they are, if not such heroes as they would be thought, as brave, I suppose, as their neighbours, and much more amenable to discipline;--lawyers they are born; indeed every country gentleman is bred one, and their patient and crafty disposition enables them, in other lines, to submit to hardships which other natives could not bear, and avail themselves of advantages which others would let pass under their noses unavailingly.

But assuredly Heaven did not form the Caledonian for the gay world; and his efforts at ease, grace, and gaiety, resemble only the clumsy gambols of the ass in the fable.