There is one country, for instance - its frontier not so far
from London, its people closely akin, its language the same in all
essentials with the English - of which I will go bail he knows
nothing. His ignorance of the sister kingdom cannot be described;
it can only be illustrated by anecdote. I once travelled with a
man of plausible manners and good intelligence - a University man,
as the phrase goes - a man, besides, who had taken his degree in
life and knew a thing or two about the age we live in. We were
deep in talk, whirling between Peterborough and London; among other
things, he began to describe some piece of legal injustice he had
recently encountered, and I observed in my innocence that things
were not so in Scotland. "I beg your pardon," said he, "this is a
matter of law." He had never heard of the Scots law; nor did he
choose to be informed. The law was the same for the whole country,
he told me roundly; every child knew that. At last, to settle
matters, I explained to him that I was a member of a Scottish legal
body, and had stood the brunt of an examination in the very law in
question. Thereupon he looked me for a moment full in the face and
dropped the conversation. This is a monstrous instance, if you
like, but it does not stand alone in the experience of Scots.
England and Scotland differ, indeed, in law, in history, in
religion, in education, and in the very look of nature and men's
faces, not always widely, but always trenchantly.
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