we set sail for the Port, where, after a prosperous voyage of ten hours, we arrived. The English gentlemen had got before us to the inn, and engaged four horses, all there were; two might have drawn them one very short stage, and they saw us prepare to set out in a cart, which we did, and I trust with a cargo of more good manners and good humour aboard us, than the two churls could boast in their chaise and four.

I was greatly delighted with this country; you see no trace here of the devil working against the wisdom and beneficence of God, and torturing and degrading his creatures. It seems the romancing of travelling; but I am satisfied of the fact, that the poorest man here has his children taught to read and write, and that in every house is found a Bible, and in almost every house a clock; and the fruits of this are manifest in the intelligence and manners of all ranks. The natural effect of literary information, in all its stages, is to give benevolence and modesty. Let the intellectual taper burn ever so brightly, the horizon which it lights is sure, but scanty; and if it soothes our vanity a little, as being the circle of our light, it must check it also, as being the boundary of the interminable region of darkness that lies beyond it. I never knew any person of any real taste and feeling, in whom knowledge and humility were not in exact proportion. In Scotland, what a work have the four-and-twenty letters to shew for themselves !-the natural enemies of vice,

and folly, and slavery; the great sowers, but the still greater weeders, of the human soil. Nowhere can you see the cringing hypocrisy of dissembled detestation, so inseparable from oppression; and as little do you meet the hard, and dull, and right lined angles of the southern visage; you find the notion exact and the phrase direct, with the natural tone of the Scottish muse.

The first night, at Ballintray, the landlord attended us at supper; he would do so, though we begged him not. We talked to him of the cultivation of potatoes. I said, I wondered at his taking them in place of his native food, oatmeal, so much more substantial. His answer struck me as very characteristic of the genius of Scotland-frugal, tender, and picturesque. "Sir," said he, "we are not so much i' the wrong as you think; the tilth is easy, they are swift i' the cooking, they take little fuel; and then it is pleasant to see the gudewife wi' a' her bairns aboot the pot, and each wi' a potatoe in its hand.”

We got on to Ayr. It was fortunate; it was the last day of the rain, and the first of the races; the town was unusually full, and we stood at the inn door-no room for us. "My dear Captain,”* said I, "I suppose we must lie in the streets.”

“No,

that you shall not," says a good-looking man-it was Campbell of Fairfield-" my wife and I knew you were coming, and we have a warm bed ready

The late Joseph Atkinson, Esq. of Dublin.

for you; she is your countrywoman, and I am no stranger to you; I had a trial in Dublin eight years ago, and you were in the cause." “Oh! yes, sir, " Oh! yes,

I remember; we beat the enemy." sir," says Campbell of Fairfield, “I beat the enemy, though you were at his head." I felt my appetite keen. I was charmed with the comical forgiveness of his hospitality. I assured him I heartily forgave him for threshing my rascal client; and a few moments brought me to the kind greeting of my very worthy countrywoman. They went a little aside, and I overheard their whispers about dinner. Trouble, you may suppose, I did not wish to give; but the feeling of the possible delay by an additional dish, was my panic. "My dear madam, I hope you won't make me feel that I am not one of your family, by adding any thing." "No, that I won't," says she; "and if you doubt my word, I'll give you the security of seven gentlemen against any extravagance." So saying, she pointed to a group of seven miniatures of young men that hung over the fireplace. "Six of those poor fellows are all over the earth; the seventh, and these two little girls, are with us; you will think that good bail against the wickedness of extravagance. Poor fellows!" she repeated. "Nay, madam, don't say 'poor fellows;' at the moment when you feel that hospitality prevents the stranger from being a poor fellow, you don't think this the only house in the world where the wanderer gets a dinner and a bed: who knows, my

dear countrywoman, but Providence is at this moment paying to some of your poor fellows far away from you, for what your kind heart thinks it is giving for nothing." "Oh! yes," cried she: "God bless you for the thought." "Amen, my dear madam," answered I;" and I feel that he has done it."

We were much pleased with the races; not, you may suppose, at a few foolish horses forced to run after each other, but to see so much order and cheerfulness; not a single dirty person, nor a ragged coat. I was introduced to many of their gentry, Lord Eglinton, Lord Cassillis, Lord Archibald Hamilton, &c. and pressed very kindly to spend some time with them.

Poor Burns!-his cabin could not be passed unvisited or unwept to its two little thatched rooms -kitchen and sleeping place-a slated sort of parlour is added, and 'tis now an alehouse. We found the keeper of it tipsy; he pointed to the corner on one side of the fire, and, with a most mal-à-propos laugh, observed, "there is the very spot where Robert Burns was born." The genius and the fate of the man were already heavy on my heart; but the drunken laugh of the landlord gave me such a view of the rock on which he foundered, I could not stand it, but burst into tears.

On Thursday we dine with Lord Eglinton, and thence I hope to pursue our little tour to Lochlomond, Glasgow, Edinburgh, &c. These places are

Q

at this time of the year, much deserted: however, we sha'n't feel it quite a solitude; and, at all events, public buildings, &c. do not go to watering-places, so that still something will be visible. In this re gion the winter is always mild; but the rain is almost perpetual, and still worse as you advance to the north. An Englishman said to an Highlander, "Bless me, sir, does it rain for ever?" The other answered, "Oh! nay, sir, it snaws whiles."

See what a chronicle I have written, &c. &c.,
J. P. C...

His

The preceding is not the only record that Mr. Curran has left of his admiration of Scotland. defence of Mr. Hamilton Rowan contains a short but glowing eulogium upon the genius of that country, for whose splendid services in the cause of the human mind no praises can be too great. After speaking of the excessive terror of French principles, by which juries were governed in their verdicts, he proceeded:" There is a sort of aspiring and adventurous credulity, which disdains assenting to obvious truths, and delights in catching at the improbability of circumstances, as its best ground of faith. To what other circumstance can you ascribe, that, in the wise, the reflecting, and the philosophie nation of Great Britain, a printer has been gravely found guilty of a libel, for publishing those resolutions to which the present minister of that kingdom had actually subscribed his name? To what other