'"
Now when we linger over these old stories, we seem to live at another
period, and in such reminiscences we converse with a generation
different from our own. Changes are still going on around us. They have
been going on for some time past. The changes are less striking as
society advances, and we find fewer alterations for us to notice.
Probably each generation will have less change to record than the
generation that preceded; still every one who is tolerably advanced in
life must feel that, comparing its beginning and its close, he has
witnessed two epochs, and that in advanced life he looks on a different
world from one which he can remember. To elucidate this fact has been my
present object, and in attempting this task I cannot but feel how
trifling and unsatisfactory my remarks must seem to many who have a more
enlarged and minute acquaintance with Scottish life and manners than I
have. But I shall be encouraged to hope for a favourable, or at least an
indulgent, sentence upon these Reminiscences, if to any of my readers I
shall have opened a fresh insight into the subject of social changes
amongst us. Many causes have their effect upon the habits and customs of
mankind, and of late years such causes have been greatly multiplied in
number and activity. In many persons, and in some who have not
altogether lost their national partialities, there is a general
tendency to merge Scottish usages and Scottish expressions into the
English forms, as being more correct and genteel.
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