the Loch, which we went in a boat to survey. The heaviness of the rain shortened our voyage, but we landed on one island planted with yew and stocked with deer, and on another containing not more perhaps than half an acre, remarkable for the ruins of an old castle, on which the osprey builds her annual nest. Had Loch Lomond been in a happier climate, it would have been the boast of wealth and vanity to own one of the little spots which it encloses, and to have employed upon it all the arts of embellishment. But as it is, the islets, which court the gazer at a distance, disgust him at his approach, when he finds, instead of soft lawns and shady thickets, nothing more than uncultivated ruggedness.

Where the loch discharges itself into a river called the Leven, we passed a night with Mr. Smollett, a relation to Dr. Smollett, to whose memory he has raised an obelisk on the bank near the house in which he was born.

The

civility and respect which we found at every place, it is ungrateful to omit, and tedious to repeat. Here we were met by a post-chaise that conveyed us to Glasgow.

To describe a city so much frequented as Glasgow is unnecessary. The prosperity of its commerce appears in the greatness of many private houses, and a general appearance of wealth. It is the only Episcopal city whose cathedral was left standing in the rage of the

Reformation. It is now divided into many separate places of worship, which, taken altogether compose a great pile, that had been some centuries in building, but was never finished; for the change of religion intercepted its progress before the cross aisle was added, which seems essential to a Gothic cathedral.

The college has not had a sufficient share of the increasing magnificence of the place. The session was begun (for it commences on the 10th of October and continues to the 10th of June), but the students appeared not numerous, being, I suppose, not yet returned from their several homes. The division of the academical year into one session and one recess, seems to me better accommodated to the present state of life than variegation of time, by terms and vacations, derived from distant centuries, in which it was probably convenient, and still continued in English Universities. So many solid months as the Scotch scheme of education joins together, allow and encourage a plan for each part of the year; but with us, he that has settled himself to study in the college is soon tempted into the country, and he that has adjusted his life in the country is summoned back to his college.

Yet when I have allowed to the Universities of Scotland a more rational distribution of time, I have given them, so far as my inquiries have

informed me, all that they can claim. The students for the most part, go thither boys and depart before they are men; they carry with them little fundamental knowledge, and therefore the superstructure cannot be lofty. The grammar schools are not generally well supplied; for the character of a schoolmaster, being there less honourable than in England, is seldom accepted by men who are capable to adorn it, and where the school has been deficient, the college can effect little.

Men bred in the Universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them, and which, countenanced in general by a national combination so invidious that their friends cannot defend it, and actuated in particulars by a spirit of enterprise so vigorous that their enemies are constrained to praise it, enables them to find, or make their way to employment, riches, and distinction.

From Glasgow we directed our course to Auchinleck, an estate devolved, through a long series of ancestors, to Mr. Boswell's father, the present possessor. In our way we found several places remarkable enough in themselves,

but already described by those who viewed them at more leisure, or with much more skill; and stopped two days at Mr. Campbell's, a gentleman married to Mr. Boswell's sister.

Auchinleck, which signifies a Stony Field, seems not now to have any particular claim to its denomination. It is a district generally level, and sufficiently fertile, but, like all the Western side of Scotland, incommoded by very frequent rain. It was, with the rest of the country, generally naked, till the present possessor finding, by the growth of some stately trees near his old castle, that the ground was favourable enough to timber, adorned it very diligently with annual plantations.

Lord Auchinleck, who is one of the judges of Scotland, and therefore not wholly at leisure for domestic business or pleasure, has yet found time to make improvements in his patrimony. He has built a house of hewn stone, very stately and durable, and has advanced the value of his lands with great tenderness to his tenants.

I was, however, less delighted with the elegance of the modern mansion, than with the sullen dignity of the old castle. I clambered with Mr. Boswell among the ruins which afford striking images of ancient life. It is, like other castles, built upon a point of rock, and point of rock, and was, I believe, anciently surrounded with a moat. There is, another rock near to it, to which the drawbridge,

when it was let down, is said to have reached. Here, in the ages of tumult and rapine, the laird was surprised and killed by the neighbouring chief, who perhaps might have extinguished the family had he not in a few days been seized and hanged, together with his sons, by Douglas, who came with his forces to the relief of Auchinleck.

At no great distance from the house runs a pleasing brook, by a red rock, out of which has been hewn a very agreeable and commodious summerhouse, at less expense, as Lord Auchinleck told me, than would have been required to build a room of the same dimensions. The rock seems to have no more dampness than any other wall. Such opportunities of variety it is judicious not to neglect.

We now returned to Edinburgh, where I passed some days with men of learning, whose names want no advancement from my commemoration, or with women of elegance which perhaps disclaims a pedant's praise.

The conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to the English; their peculiarities wear fast away; their dialect is likely to become in half a century provincial and rustic, even to themselves. The great, the learned, the ambitious, and the vain, all cultivate the English phrase, and the English pronunciation, and in splendid companies Scotch is not much heard, except now and then from an old lady.