Edinburgh, Jan. 28, Keep your eye on Paisley" la the hardest worked phrase of the day. Disraeli was its first begetter 5 ever since it has been kept alive as a piece of local chaff; and now it is proving as useful to secondhand wits as ever it was 60 years ago. But at the moment it la peculiarly appropriate. The eyes of the whole country are certainly fixed on Paisley; and on the rosults of the struggle taking place within its bounds, to a very large extent there depends the future of one of our two great historic parties.
Mr. Asquith has just opened the campaign, and.we have no doubt that in the friendly and exhilarating atmosphere with which he was surrounded by his own supporters his first glimpse of "the dark and difficult adventure" were somewhat more encouraging than tke distant view taken at Cambridge suggested they would be. We has come, like the pious Aeneas, bearing the fortunes of his party—the penates of fallen Troy—on the quest for his Latium. Whether ho finds it in Paisley or not, the truth of the saying that adventures are to the adventurous will be once more vindicated.
A Crry or Ports, We in Scotland, somehow, cannot help seeing a sense of whimsical humour in the idea that Paisley should have a deciding voice, ever for a brief moment, upon the policy of the nation, " Thread-town" is identified in our minds. with shawls and sewing cotton, and the name of it at once calls up a famous story with many variants, but all with one point, that every Paisley buddy carries a corkscrew in his pocket.
Above all, Paisley is identified with its poets—the poets of the burgh are reputed to be the whole adult population. And we cannot. help smiling at the spectacle community of singing birds, writing odes upon the political situation and dredging their souls for rhymes to "Coalition" and" Lloyd George."" No gallant Paisley poet would meanly stick these awkward: words at the beginning of his lines in order to evade the difficulty of" fitting them with rhyming partners. You may remember the mathematic ian, when told that the word "month" had no rhyme in the English language, instantly obliged' with—
He spent his days for many a month Raising binomials to the plus anth.
With this spirited example before them the poets of Paisley may be trusted to carry on.
One is tempted to prophesy about the election, to back ones own fancy; but the risks are too great. In all probability the result of the: election will reach you before the prophecy. One is much safer to "keep your eye on Paisley,' vale and see."
add the Asquithian wisdom of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.