analysis was an exhaustive one, and the intelligence displayed by the
landlady was every way worthy of the shrewdness indigenous to her
country; but her answer was not so lucid to her listener as to herself,
as appeared by his bewildered looks, and his further half-despairing
interrogatory. "But what is _intilt_?" said he, impatiently striking in
before she had well finished. "Haven't I been tellin' ye what's
intilt?" she replied. And she began the enumeration again, only with
longer pause and greater emphasis at every step, as if she were
enlightening a slow apprehension,--"There's water intilt, there's mutton
intilt;" quietly and self-complacently adding, as she finished, "Ye
surely ken now what's intilt." Whether her guest now understood her
meaning, or whether he had to succumb, contented with his ignorance, we
are not informed; but few of my readers need to be told that "intilt" is
a Scotch provincialism for "into it," and that the landlady meant by
using it to signify that the particulars enumerated entered as
constituents _into_ her mysterious dish.

My aim is to discourse on the same constituents as they display their
virtues and play their parts on a larger scale, in a wider economy; and
when I have said my say, I hope I may be able to lay claim to the credit
of having spoken intelligibly and profitably, though I must at the
outset bespeak indulgence by promise of nothing more than the serving up
of a dish of simple hodge-podge. The question I put in a wider reference
is the question of the Englishman, as expressed in the Scotchwoman's
dialect, What's intilt? and I assume that there enter into it, as
radically component parts, at least the ingredients of this motley soup.
Into the large hodge-podge of nature and terrestrial economics, as into
this small section of Scotch cookery, there enter the element of water,
the flesh of animals, and the fruits of the earth, as well as the
processes by which these are brought to hand and rendered serviceable to