was often detained by stormy weather for a day and night at the Pettycur inn. The traveller to the north of Scotland, when hard pushed for time, and nervous ladies bound for Pitcaithly Well, then the fashionable Spa of Scotland, would often, on such occasions, post the journey by Stirling bridge. The few public coaches were slow, and the roads so steep as to compel the frequent descent of passengers, who were obliged to toil uphill in the rear of the vehicle, and at times lend their shoulder to prevent its backsliding. No mail coach ran to Aberdeen til after Waterloo. The macadamization of roads was unknown, and the sides of statute labour roads were worn into ruts, in which the wheels of a carriage were sunk to the axle. The journey from Edinburgh to London by mail occupied three days; and the voyage to London by the Leith smacks, though these vessels were admirable sailers, was in winter tedious and dangerous, and frequently entailed an unwelcome view of the coast of Holland. Cities were dully lighted with oil lamps, and that in winter only; country towns had no such lights; and the guardians of the night in our larger towns were old men who dozed in sentry boxes, till the town-clocks sent them forth on their beat to give in sonorous chaunt the announcement of a new hour, and the fact of a "star-light morning." Bow windows, lighted up with patent lamps, had begun to mark out the shops of the more enterprising traders-but the majority of the shops, even in our large towns, had the small window still seen in our remote villages—the diminutive showbottles dimly revealed by a tallow candle. Each shop was guarded by a half-door-over which during the day the shopman leaned to enjoy the fresh air, or to have a chat with some passer-by. There was still in our streets a sprinkling of elderly gentlemen in spencers, with threecornered hats and queues, knee-breeches buckled at the

knee, and buckled shoes. The last of these, so far as I recollect, was Dr James Hamilton of Edinburgh, who died nearly forty years ago. Women walked to church and market on pattens; servants had not yet dared to clutch a muff or hoist a parasol, and none but the higher classes walked buchted, or arm in arm. Many of our beauish tradesmen, however, sported top-boots and swallow-tailed coats, and all of them wore high toupees. Forenoon draughts of tea, and sometimes a meridian draught of greater potency, went under the name of "eleven hours," and the afternoon tea was generally called "four hours." Dinners were, of course, much earlier than now-even fashionable dinners would commence at four o'clock. Suppers then, among the middle classes, occupied the place of dinners now, and were nearly as substantial and varied. Among all classes taverns were much frequented—whether arising from the severer virtue of our ladies, or in burghs from the necessity of members of the same council meeting together, whose families were not in the same sphere or at feud with each other. The bowl, not the tumbler, was then the medium of inspiration; and when the company was large, a jug supplied from the bowl, called a shelty, went round the table-the punchmaker watching the filling of each glass with severe jealousy, and calling out with stentorian voice to the shirker of his composition, "no heel taps." At family parties old ladies still tarried, who would tender you a pinch of snuff from a silver box, and would rally you in that Doric tongue which is yet remembered as genteel Scotch, such as was employed at times by Cockburn even in his patheticsin which words now obsolete and but partially known to the present generation from the poetry of Burns and the Scottish novels, were dovetailed into English, broad in accent, but still grammatical. A general exchange of snuff-boxes commenced after the removal of the cloth, or

they were launched along the mahogany from one side to another. Beside you at that time might be seated one who had been "out in the forty-five," or had borne a part in the Seven Years' war, or the American war. If the ladies showed symptoms of remaining an unreasonable time in the dining-room, the mistress of the house was admonished by suppressed vindictive looks from her husband, that she should give the signal for the withdrawal of the lady guests; and if she for a time affected not to see her husband's impatience, some coarse joke, of course not understood by the clergyman at her elbow, acted on the fair ones like a shot among pigeons; and their disappearance was the prelude to a style of equivocal toasts and songs which would shock the present generation. At our county balls, the nobles and gentry varied the country dances with those reels and strathspeys which yet bear the names of our lords and ladies, and were animated in their movements to an ectasy which could only be raised by the bow-hand of Neil Gow. The quadrille and the waltz had not yet crossed the Channel. In all companies at this time, a considerable number were disfigured with small-pox-the discovery of Jenner had come too late for the adults of the beginning of the century for though inoculation had been practised in the previous century, it was regarded by many with suspicion and superstitious dislike.

Such were a few of the aspects of society at the commencement of this century. The great men of the last had almost all died out, and the public interest was engrossed with the events of the French war. But new literary and moral influences had begun. The "Pleasures of Hope," which the youthful poet had composed while a tutor in Edinburgh, was winning admirers. A higher tone was being imparted to criticism by the Edinburgh Review; The " Lay of the Last Minstrel" had struck a new key in

the poetic art; Allan and Wilkie had just left the Trustees' Academy, where they sat on the same bench; "Waverley," though not published, was partly in manuscript; the eloquence of Chalmers was muttering, and gathering strength in the Vale of Kilmany; and the influence of the Bible Society was bringing together the best Christian men, who had long stood apart in jealousy and dislike.

After this general and hasty sketch, I shall attempt to bring before you something of the rural life in Scotland, and something of its villages and larger towns during the first years of our present century, and especially of the period antecedent to the general peace. In my younger days, I had an opportunity of residing in parts of the country where the village system still preserved its principal features, and where somewhat of the feudal tenure and spirit still lingered. These feus were gradually expiring in many places, and nothing but the life of an aged holder stood between the alienation of a small piece of land, which, in the estimation of his family, was hereditary, and their expatriation to large manufacturing villages or towns. The young laird and the factor had in their mind disposed of these allotments, and the only outlet to many was to squat in the moorland which had long formed a common to the decaying village. Many such villages were to be found during the first decade of the century stretching along the base of the first wall or barbican of the Grampians in the valley of Strathmore. Through the vista of many years, I yet perceive the humble village in the distance, with its intermixture of thatched roofs and stacks of peat below the stately trees, which bespoke the residence of a century. The names of these hamlets, and of many of the small farms which then existed, can now only be found in the oldest tombstones of our more remote churchyards. Each family had its allotment of a few acres in-field and

out-field, and on the production of these acres many families were reared, assisted in part by the employment of some of their members in the linen manufacture, which was then extending. In many of these villages, and even in lonely tenements on the moor, the sound of the shuttle was heard. Independently of their supply of meal and potatoes, they had a great portion of their clothing from their own acres. Amid the narrow fields of barley, oats, and rye, there were always rigs of lint (flax), which in its process towards cloth engaged the hands of the household and varied their mode of labour. The rippling-comb, now little known, was a part of the stocking of these small farms. In autumn, there was to be seen in many fields two men sitting opposite to each other bringing under the ripplingcomb handfuls of lint, and thus stripping the stalks of their heads, or bows as they were called; the younger members of the family then forming the stalks into sheaves. Then followed the steeping of it in dams or burns, to the destruction of the minnow and trout, the laying it out to dry before it was sent to the mill for the extraction of the fibre. It was next spun by the females, and frequently woven into cloth by members of the family. We are reminded of this era of agriculture in Scotland by Burns, in his Cottar's Saturday Night, when the guidwife, in praising the kebbuck which is bestowed or waured on Jennie's lover, tells garrulous 'it was a towmond auld sin' lint was in the bell.' Of these annual crops, rye, which has now nearly disappeared from the south of Scotland, bore a goodly proportion, and was a main ingredient of the household bread. Indeed, the bread was altogether home-made, whether it consisted of oat cake, the rye or barley bannock, or of compounds of these called mashlum bannocks. Bakers' bread, or, as it was called, white bread, was a rare luxury, and was seen only perhaps after