Highlands and Islands, as we Scots chuckle to ourselves, is the one phrase which an Englishman cannot mispronounce. I read lately a book of Scottish travel by an American, who made my countrymen leave out their _h_’s like any Cockney; then I at once laid aside this writer’s observations as vain. The humblest Scot never drops an _h_, unless in words like _hospital_, which the Southron painfully aspirates in his anxiety not to be judged vulgar, as in living memory he has tacked this test of breeding on to _h_umour and _h_umble. More fairly we may be charged with overdoing the _h_ sound; and there are two or three words in which we insert it: _huz_, for instance, said in some parts for “us.” In…
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