SOCIAL LIFE IN SCOTLAND FROM EARLY TO RECENT TIMES BY THE REV. CHARLES ROGERS, D.D., LL.D., F.S.A. SCOT. = ETC., ETC., ETC. VOLUME FIRST. EDINBURGH WILLIAM PATERSON, 67 PRINCES STREET PREFACE. CONVERSING With Principal Robertson about history, Dr Samuel Johnson remarked, "I wish much to have one branch well done, and that is the history of the manners of common life." Towards effecting, in connection with Scotland, what the great lexicographer regarded as important in relation to any country, I early dedicated a share of my attention. attention. From my father, a parish minister in Fife, whose power in delineating the manners of a former age was only surpassed by his acuteness of observation, I derived a first impulse. What in expressive phraseology he delighted to set forth, I with juvenile ardour rejoiced to record; hence commenced those researches which I have sought diligently to sustain and carry out. When, in 1869, my gleanings for nearly a quarter of a century had considerably accumulated, I put them together, in a work, entitled "Scotland, Social and Domestic," which I then published. As my researches were desultory, so was this first record of them; yet the volume experienced a recep |