<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0065" id="link2H_4_0065"></SPAN></p>
<h2> To Dr LEWIS. </h2>
<h3> DEAR DOCTOR, </h3>
<p>The peasantry of Scotland are certainly on a poor footing all over the
kingdom; and yet they look better, and are better cloathed than those of
the same rank in Burgundy, and many other places of France and Italy; nay,
I will venture to say they are better fed, notwithstanding the boasted
wine of these foreign countries. The country people of North-Britain live
chiefly on oat-meal, and milk, cheese, butter, and some garden-stuff, with
now and then a pickled-herring, by way of delicacy; but flesh-meat they
seldom or never taste; nor any kind of strong liquor, except two-penny, at
times of uncommon festivity—Their breakfast is a kind of hasty
pudding, of oat-meal or pease-meal, eaten with milk. They have commonly
pottage for dinner, composed of cale or cole, leeks, barley or big, and
butter; and this is reinforced with bread and cheese, made of skimmed-milk—At
night they sup on sowens or flummery of oat-meal—In a scarcity of
oats, they use the meal of barley and pease, which is both nourishing and
palatable. Some of them have potatoes; and you find parsnips in every
peasant's garden—They are cloathed with a coarse kind of russet of
their own making, which is both decent and warm—They dwell in poor
huts, built of loose stones and turf, without any mortar, having a
fireplace or hearth in the middle, generally made of an old mill-stone,
and a hole at top to let out the smoke.</p>
<p>These people, however, are content, and wonderfully sagacious—All of
them read the Bible, and are even qualified to dispute upon the articles
of their faith; which in those parts I have seen, is entirely
Presbyterian. I am told, that the inhabitants of Aberdeenshire are still
more acute. I once knew a Scotch gentleman at London, who had declared war
against this part of his countrymen; and swore that the impudence and
knavery of the Scots, in that quarter, had brought a reproach upon the
whole nation.</p>
<p>The river Clyde, above Glasgow, is quite pastoral; and the banks of it are
every where adorned with fine villas. From the sea to its source, we may
reckon the seats of many families of the first rank, such as the duke of
Argyle at Roseneath, the earl of Bute in the isle of that name, the earl
of Glencairn at Finlayston, lord Blantyre at Areskine, the dutchess of
Douglas at Bothwell, duke Hamilton at Hamilton, the duke of Douglas at
Douglas, and the earl of Hyndford at Carmichael. Hamilton is a noble
palace, magnificently furnished; and hard by is the village of that name,
one of the neatest little towns I have seen in any country. The old castle
of Douglas being burned to the ground by accident, the late duke resolved,
as head of the first family of Scotland, to have the largest house in the
kingdom, and ordered a plan for this purpose; but there was only one wing
of it finished when he died. It is to be hoped that his nephew, who is now
in possession of his great fortune, will complete the design of his
predecessor—Clydesdale is in general populous and rich, containing a
great number of gentlemen, who are independent in their fortune; but it
produces more cattle than corn—This is also the case with Tweedale,
through part of which we passed, and Nithsdale, which is generally rough,
wild, and mountainous—These hills are covered with sheep; and this
is the small delicious mutton, so much preferable to that of the
London-market. As their feeding costs so little, the sheep are not killed
till five years old, when their flesh, juices, and flavour are in
perfection; but their fleeces are much damaged by the tar, with which they
are smeared to preserve them from the rot in winter, during which they run
wild night and day, and thousands are lost under huge wreaths of snow—'Tis
pity the farmers cannot contrive some means to shelter this useful animal
from the inclemencies of a rigorous climate, especially from the perpetual
rains, which are more prejudicial than the greatest extremity of cold
weather.</p>
<p>On the little river Nid, is situated the castle of Drumlanrig, one of the
noblest seats in Great-Britain, belonging to the duke of Queensberry; one
of those few noblemen whose goodness of heart does honour to human-nature—I
shall not pretend to enter into a description of this palace, which is
really an instance of the sublime in magnificence, as well as in
situation, and puts one in mind of the beautiful city of Palmyra, rising
like a vision in the midst of the wilderness. His grace keeps open house,
and lives with great splendour—He did us the honour to receive us
with great courtesy, and detain'd us all night, together with above twenty
other guests, with all their servants and horses to a very considerable
number—The dutchess was equally gracious, and took our ladies under
her immediate protection. The longer I live, I see more reason to believe
that prejudices of education are never wholly eradicated, even when they
are discovered to be erroneous and absurd. Such habits of thinking as
interest the grand passions, cleave to the human heart in such a manner,
that though an effort of reason may force them from their hold for a
moment, this violence no sooner ceases, than they resume their grasp with
an increased elasticity and adhesion.</p>
<p>I am led into this reflection, by what passed at the duke's table after
supper. The conversation turned upon the vulgar notions of spirits and
omens, that prevail among the commonalty of North-Britain, and all the
company agreed, that nothing could be more ridiculous. One gentleman,
however, told a remarkable story of himself, by way of speculation 'Being
on a party of hunting in the North (said he), I resolved to visit an old
friend, whom I had not seen for twenty years—So long he had been
retired and sequestered from all his acquaintance, and lived in a moping
melancholy way, much afflicted with lowness of spirits, occasioned by the
death of his wife, whom he had loved with uncommon affection. As he
resided in a remote part of the country, and we were five gentlemen with
as many servants, we carried some provision with us from the next market
town, lest we should find him unprepared for our reception. The roads
being bad, we did not arrive at the house till two o'clock in the
afternoon; and were agreeably surprised to find a very good dinner ready
in the kitchen, and the cloth laid with six covers. My friend himself
appeared in his best apparel at the gate, and received us with open arms,
telling me he had been expecting us these two hours. Astonished at this
declaration, I asked who had given him intelligence of our coming? and he
smiled without making any other reply. However, presuming upon our former
intimacy, I afterwards insisted upon knowing; and he told me, very
gravely, he had seen me in a vision of the second sight—Nay, he
called in the evidence of his steward, who solemnly declared, that his
master had the day before apprised him of my coming, with four other
strangers, and ordered him to provide accordingly; in consequence of which
intimation, he had prepared the dinner which we were now eating; and laid
the covers according to the number foretold.' The incident we all owned to
be remarkable, and I endeavoured to account for it by natural means. I
observed, that as the gentleman was of a visionary turn, the casual idea,
or remembrance of his old friend, might suggest those circumstances, which
accident had for once realized; but that in all probability he had seen
many visions of the same kind, which were never verified. None of the
company directly dissented from my opinion; but from the objections that
were hinted, I could plainly perceive that the majority were persuaded
there was something more extraordinary in the case.</p>
<p>Another gentleman of the company, addressing himself to me, 'Without all
doubt (said he), a diseased imagination is very apt to produce visions;
but we must find some other method to account for something of this kind,
that happened within these eight days in my neighbourhood—A
gentleman of a good family, who cannot be deemed a visionary in any sense
of the word, was near his own gate, in the twilight, visited by his
grandfather, who has been dead these fifteen years—The spectre was
mounted seemingly on the very horse he used to ride, with an angry and
terrible countenance, and said something, which his grandson, in the
confusion of fear, could not understand. But this was not all—He
lifted up a huge horse whip, and applied it with great violence to his
back and shoulders, on which I saw the impression with my own eyes. The
apparition was afterwards seen by the sexton of the parish, hovering about
the tomb where his body lies interred; as the man declared to several
persons in the village, before he knew what had happened to the gentleman—Nay,
he actually came to me as a justice of the peace, in order to make oath of
these particulars, which, however, I declined administering. As for the
grandson of the defunct, he is a sober, sensible, worldly minded fellow,
too intent upon schemes of interest to give in to reveries. He would have
willingly concealed the affair; but he bawled out in the first transport
of his fear, and, running into the house, exposed his back and his sconce
to the whole family; so that there was no denying it in the sequel. It is
now the common discourse of the country, that this appearance and
behaviour of the old man's spirit, portends some great calamity to the
family, and the good-woman has actually taken to her bed in this
apprehension.'</p>
<p>Though I did not pretend to explain this mystery, I said, I did not at all
doubt, but it would one day appear to be a deception; and, in all
probability, a scheme executed by some enemy of the person who had
sustained the assault; but still the gentleman insisted upon the clearness
of the evidence, and the concurrence of testimony, by which two creditable
witnesses, without any communication one with another, affirmed the
appearance of the same man, with whose person they were both well
acquainted—From Drumlanrig we pursued the course of the Nid to
Dumfries, which stands seven miles above the place where the river falls
into the sea; and is, after Glasgow, the handsomest town I have seen in
Scotland. The inhabitants, indeed, seem to have proposed that city as
their model; not only in beautifying their town and regulating its police,
but, also in prosecuting their schemes of commerce and manufacture, by
which they are grown rich and opulent.</p>
<p>We re-entered England, by the way of Carlisle, where we accidentally met
with our friend Lismahago, whom we had in vain inquired after at Dumfries
and other places—It would seem that the captain, like the prophets
of old, is but little honoured in his own country, which he has now
renounced for ever—He gave me the following particulars of his visit
to his native soil—In his way to the place of his nativity, he
learned that his nephew had married the daughter of a burgeois, who
directed a weaving manufacture, and had gone into partnership with his
father-in-law: chagrined with this information, he had arrived at the gate
in the twilight, where he heard the sound of treddles in the great hall,
which had exasperated him to such a degree, that he had like to have lost
his senses: while he was thus transported with indignation, his nephew
chanced to come forth, when, being no longer master of his passion, he
cried, 'Degenerate rascal! you have made my father's house a den of
thieves;' and at the same time chastised him with his horse-whip; then,
riding round the adjoining village, he had visited the burying-ground of
his ancestors by moon-light; and, having paid his respects to their manes,
travelled all night to another part of the country—Finding the head
of the family in such a disgraceful situation, all his own friends dead or
removed from the places of their former residence, and the expence of
living increased to double of what it had been, when he first left his
native country, he had bid it an eternal adieu, and was determined to seek
for repose among the forests of America.</p>
<p>I was no longer at a loss to account for the apparition, which had been
described at Drumlanrig; and when I repeated the story to the lieutenant,
he was much pleased to think his resentment had been so much more
effectual than he intended; and he owned, he might at such an hour, and in
such an equipage, very well pass for the ghost of his father, whom he was
said greatly to resemble—Between friends, I fancy Lismahago will
find a retreat without going so far as the wigwams of the Miamis. My
sister Tabby is making continual advances to him, in the way of affection;
and, if I may trust to appearances, the captain is disposed to take
opportunity by the forelock. For my part, I intend to encourage this
correspondence, and shall be glad to see them united—In that case,
we shall find a way to settle them comfortably in our own neighbourhood.
I, and my servants, will get rid of a very troublesome and tyrannic
gouvernante; and I shall have the benefit of Lismahago's conversation,
without being obliged to take more of his company than I desire; for
though an olla is a high-flavoured dish, I could not bear to dine upon it
every day of my life.</p>
<p>I am much pleased with Manchester, which is one of the most agreeable and
flourishing towns in Great-Britain; and I perceive that this is the place
which hath animated the spirit, and suggested the chief manufactures of
Glasgow. We propose to visit Chatsworth, the Peak, and Buxton, from which
last place we shall proceed directly homewards, though by easy journies.
If the season has been as favourable in Wales as in the North, your
harvest is happily finished; and we have nothing left to think of but our
October, of which let Barns be properly reminded. You will find me much
better in flesh than I was at our parting; and this short separation has
given a new edge to those sentiments of friendship with which I always
have been, and ever shall be,</p>
<p>Yours, MATT. BRAMBLE MANCHESTER, Sept. 15.</p>
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