and "hechs," and "ou-ays," and "dod-mons," and "loshes," and "tods," ad libitum to which after listening with the most earnest attention, he returned the answer that he was not acquainted with any Oriental language.
Nor could I by any argument convince this beetle-head that I was simply speaking the barbarous accents of his native land!
Since which, after some similar experiments upon various peasants, &c., I have made a rather peculiar discovery.
There is no longer any such article as a separate Scottish language, and, indeed, I am in some dubitation whether it ever existed at all, and is not rather the waggish invention of certain audacious Scottishers, who have taken advantage of the insular ignorance and credulity of the British public to palm off upon it several highly fictitious kinds of unintelligible gibberish!
Nay, I will even go farther and express a grave suspicion whether the Scotland of these bookish romances is not the daring imposture of a ben trovato. For, after a prolonged residence of over a fortnight, I have never seen anything approaching a mountain pass, nor a dizzy crag, surmounted by an eagle, nor any stag drinking itself full at eve among the shady trunks of a deer-forest! I have never met a single mountaineer in feminine bonnet and plumes and short petticoats, and pipes inserted in a bag. Nor do the inhabitants dance in the street upon
