REIGN OF GEORGE II.: 1727–1748.

The accession of George II., while not disturbing in England that predominance of the great Whig nobles which had existed since the Revolution, and leaving the practical administration, as before, in the hands of Sir Robert Walpole, produced no change in the system of improvement which the Union had inaugurated. Under the rule of the Argyles, the Dalrymples, and one or two other eminent Whig families, with the mild and virtuous Duncan Forbes as Lord Advocate, the country enjoyed peace, and was enabled to develop its long dormant energies, in the pursuits of agriculture, of manufactures, and of commerce. All but a few of the Highland clans had apparently given their final submission to the Guelph dynasty; and though the Stuart cause was known to be upheld by some, it was generally thought that there was very little chance of further civil war on that subject.

The general tranquillity was broken in 1737 by a riot in Edinburgh, arising out of the harsh measures required for the enforcement of the Excise laws, and ending in the violent death of a public officer who had rendered himself obnoxious to the populace. For an account of this affair, reference is made to the chronicle.

About the same period, there was considerable agitation in the church, in consequence of the insubordination of a small group of clergymen, of ultra-evangelical views, who were at length, in 1740, expelled, and became the founders of a separate church under the name of the Associate Synod.

In 1744, Great Britain was engaged in a war which involved most of the great powers of Europe. The French minister, Cardinal de Tencin, conceived that an invasion of England on behalf of the House of Stuart would be an excellent diversion in favour of the arms of his country. The time was in reality long past for any effective movement of this kind. New men and new things had extinguished all rational hopes in the Jacobite party. Still there were some chiefs in the Highlands who had never abandoned the Stuart cause. In the Lowlands, there were discontents which seemed capable of being turned to some account in effecting the desired revolution. Prince Charles Edward, the eldest son of the so-called Pretender, was an ardent-minded youth, eager to try a last chance for the restoration of his family. The Cardinal really made some preparations for an expedition to be conducted by the Prince; but it was prevented by a storm and an opposing English armament, from leaving the French coast. Disappointed of the promised aid, Charles secretly 536voyaged with seven friends to the western coast of Inverness-shire, and, landing there towards the close of July 1745, was soon surrounded by a few hundreds of friendly Camerons and Macdonalds. He raised his standard at Glenfinnan on the 19th of August, and expressed himself as determined with such as would follow him, to win back a crown, or perish in the attempt.

The best of the national troops being engaged in service abroad, the government could only oppose to this enterprise a few raw regiments under the commander-in-chief for Scotland, Sir John Cope. But Sir John, making an unlucky lateral movement to Inverness, permitted Prince Charles, with about eighteen hundred clansmen, to descend upon Perth unopposed, and even to take possession of Edinburgh. On the 21st of September, having returned by sea to the low country, Cope was encountered at Prestonpans by the Highlanders, and driven in a few minutes from the field. For several weeks, Prince Charles Edward held court at Holyrood, in undisputed possession of Scotland. Marching in November into England by the western border, he captured Carlisle, was well received at Manchester, and pushed on to Derby, where he was only a hundred and twenty-seven miles from London. But here the courage of his little council of chiefs gave way before the terrors of the three armies by which they seemed surrounded. Accomplishing a hurried, yet well-managed retreat to Scotland, they laid Glasgow under contribution, and came to a halt at Stirling, where many fresh clans joined them, making up an army of nine thousand men.

A well-appointed English army under General Hawley met Prince Charles Edward at Falkirk (January 17, 1746), and was driven back to Edinburgh with the loss of camp, cannon, and baggage. The king’s second son, the Duke of Cumberland, soon after took command of the forces in Scotland, and on his advancing to Stirling, the Highland army made a hasty retreat to Inverness, where they spent the remainder of the winter. As soon as the return of spring permitted the English army to march, it was conducted against the rebels by its royal commander. In a regular engagement which took place on Culloden Moor, near Inverness (April 16), the Highland army was broken and dispersed with great slaughter. Prince Charles fled to the west coast, and after several months of fugitive life, during which he endured incredible hardships, escaped back to France. The Duke advanced to Fort Augustus, and there superintended a system of burning, slaughtering, and despoliation, throughout the disaffected territory, by which he hoped to make further efforts for the House of Stuart impossible. These acts, and his having ordered a general slaughter of the wounded Highlanders on the field of battle, have fixed on him indelibly the appellation of ‘the Butcher.’

Further to strike terror into the Jacobite party, two leaders of 537the rebel army, the Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino, with about seventy prisoners of inferior rank, were put to death as traitors. Lord Lovat, who, while preserving an appearance of loyalty, had sent out his clan under his son, was afterwards tried and executed for treason. Scotland generally suffered for some time under a military oppression, for the government, in their ignorance of the country, did not see by how small a part of the community the late insurrection had been supported. It now effected, however, some measures which enlightened men had long felt to be wanting for the cause of civilisation. One of these was for a more effectual disarmament of the Highlanders; another for abolishing the use of their tartan habiliments, which it was supposed had a certain effect in keeping up their warlike spirit. There remained two acts of much more importance, passed in 1748. One took away the hereditary sheriffships and other jurisdictions of the nobility and gentry, so as to render the sovereign in Scotland, as heretofore in England, the fountain of all law and justice. In terms of this statute, the privileges taken away were compensated for by sums of money, amounting in all to £152,000. The other act abolished what was called the tenure of ward-holdings—that is, the holding of lands on the condition of going out to war whenever the superior desired. Tenants and the common people were thus for the first time in Scotland rendered independent of their landlords, or of the great men on whose property they lived. In fact, they now became for the first time a free people.

1727. June.

From the eagerness of the proprietors of the Equivalent Stock to be engaged in some profitable business, as detailed under December 1719, it might have been expected that they would sooner or later fall upon some mode of effecting their wishes. All attempts to come into connection with the Bank of Scotland having failed, they at length formed the bold design of setting up a new bank—bold, in as far as it was entirely a novelty, there being no thought of a second bank even in England, where business was conducted upon so much greater a scale than in Scotland. It seems to have been by engaging the good-will or interest of the Earl of Islay, that the object was attained. The Bank of Scotland in vain published a statement shewing how it was quite competent, with its thirty thousand pounds of paid-up capital, to conduct the business of the country, and really was conducting it satisfactorily. In vain did Scottish jealousy try to raise a cry about the large proportion of English shareholders in the new concern. It received a royal charter, which was the last document 538|1727.| of the kind prepared before the king set out on his fatal visit to Hanover, and required a warrant from the new sovereign before the seal could be appended to it. The Earl of Islay was made governor, and the Lord President Dundas became deputy-governor. In December they opened their office, with a capital of £111,000; and in the first week of the new year, they began to issue notes ‘having his present majesty King George II.’s picture in front.’^[661] At first, these notes were expressed in Scots money; but the time had now come when the people of Scotland began pretty generally to adopt the English denominations, both in their accounts and in common parlance; so this fashion was not kept up by the Royal Bank above two years. It is unnecessary to remark that the new bank prospered, and now ranks second to none in respectability. But this only makes the more remarkable the dreary anticipations which were formed at the time by those whom it rivalled.

‘Whatever was said while the Equivalent Society’s charter with banking powers was a-seeking, or what has been said since the passing thereof, that there was no design of prejudicing the Old Bank—nobody that knows the nature of banking does believe that two banks can be carried on in the same country; for it is impossible to manage and keep them up, without interfering and rubbing upon one another, unless rules and regulations could be made to prevent it; and it is impossible to digest regulations for executing such a design, but what must make the interests of the two companies reciprocal, and the product of their trade mutually to be communicated; and so two different offices, under distinct management and direction, would be a needless charge and trouble. Therefore the gentlemen of the [Old] Bank did from the beginning lay their account with an attack from an enemy, and a foreign one too, with home alliances.’^[662]

Following up this terrible view of the case, the Bank of Scotland, for some time before the new establishment was opened, discontinued lending money, as a matter of precaution, thus creating considerable distress among the mercantile classes, and of course justifying, so far, the establishment of a new source of accommodation. When the Royal Bank was fairly afloat, the Bank of Scotland proceeded to the yet greater extremity of calling up former loans, thus deepening the distress. ‘The country,’ says Mr Wodrow in a kind of despair, ‘is not able to bear both banks. The new bank would fain have the old coalescing with them; but 539|1727.| they bear off. It’s a wonder to me how there’s any money at all in the country.’^[663]

A pamphlet having been published in the interest of the Bank of Scotland on this occasion—being the Historical Account already more than once quoted—another soon after appeared in justification of the Royal Bank, though professedly by a person unconnected with it.^[664] ‘It can be no secret,’ says this writer, ‘that a great number of people of all ranks were creditors to the public in Scotland by reason of offices civil and military, and that the Equivalent stipulated by the act of Union fell short of their payment; that in 1714 they obtained an act of parliament constituting the debts due to them, but that no parliament provision was made for a fund for their payment till the year 1719, when a second act was made, appropriating to that purpose a yearly fund of £10,000 sterling, payable out of the revenues of customs, Excise, &c., preferable to all payments except the civil list. Between the first and the second act, many of the proprietors, being doubtful that any provision would be made for them by parliament, and others being pressed by necessity, chose to dispose of their debentures (these were the legal vouchers ascertaining the debts due to the persons named in them) as they best could, and to the best bidder. Many of them were carried to London, but a very considerable part of them still remains in the hands of Scots proprietors, partly out of choice, partly by reason of some legal bars that lay in the way of issuing debentures, and partly by purchasing them back from England.’

In consequence of powers in the act of 1719, ‘his late majesty did, by letters-patent in 1724, incorporate all persons who then were, or thereafter should be, proprietors of the debentures whereby that public debt was constituted, to the end that they might receive and distribute their annuity.’ His majesty having at the same time promised powers and privileges to the corporation as they might request, it petitioned him for those of a bank in Scotland, which he and his successor complied with, limiting the power to ‘such of the company as should, on or before Michaelmas 1727, subject their stock, or any share of it, to the trade of banking.’

There is, further, a great deal of angry controversial remark on the Old Bank; but the most material point is the allegation, that 540|1727.| that institution ‘divided 35, 40, 50 per cent.’ by the use of ‘other people’s money.’ The author adverts with bitterness to the harsh measures adopted by the Old Bank in prospect of rivalry. ‘It is a hard thing,’ says he, ‘to defend the conduct of the Old Bank upon the prospect of a rivalship. Lending is superseded; a tenth is called from the proprietors, and all their debtors threatened with diligence for a certain part or for the whole of their debts, which diligence has since been executed.... Why did they carry their revenge (as it is universally known they did) to every one who had the least relation, alliance, friendship, or connection with the proprietors of that bank [the Royal]?... Why were the first examples of their wrath made out of the most known friends of the present establishment, and why were the disaffected remarkably and visibly spared?’

Considering that the Bank of Scotland had never yet had more than thirty thousand pounds sterling of capital paid up, the fact of the larger stock of the Royal, and their having £30,000 of specie to trade with distinct from their stock,^[665] become features of importance, as shewing the increasing business of the country.

From a folio broadside^[666] containing the ‘Rules to be observed by such Persons as keep a Cash-accompt with the Royal Bank of Scotland,’ it appears that ‘no sum paid into the bank or drawn out of it, be less than 10l. sterling, nor have in it any fraction or part of a pound; and in case of fractions arising by the addition of interest at settling an accompt, such fractions are to be taken off by the first draught or payment thereafter made.’ Sums of five pounds and upwards are now taken in and given out at all the Scottish banks (1860).

June.

Witchcraft, now generally slighted by persons in authority in the south, was still a subject of judicial investigation in the far north. Wodrow, in his Renfrewshire manse, continued to receive accounts of any transactions in that way which might be going on in any quarter, and, under 1726, he is careful to note ‘some pretty odd accounts of witches’ which he had received from a couple of Ross-shire brethren. One of them, ‘at death,’ he says, and it is to be feared that her death was at the stake, ‘confessed that they had by sorcery taken away the sight of one of the eyes of an 541|1727.| Episcopal minister, who lost the sight of his eye upon a sudden, and could give no reason of it.’^[667]

Early in the ensuing year—if we may depend upon the authority quoted below^[668]—two poor Highland women, mother and daughter, natives of the parish of Loth, in Sutherlandshire, were accused of witchcraft before the sheriff-depute, Captain David Ross of Littledean, and condemned to death. The mother was charged with having ridden on the daughter, who had been transformed on the occasion into a pony, and shod by the devil. The girl made her escape, and was noted ever after, in confirmation of the charge, to be lame in both hands and feet. The mother suffered at Dornoch in June, being burned in a pitch-barrel. It has been handed down by tradition, that, ‘after being brought out to execution, the weather proving very severe, she sat composedly warming herself by the fire prepared to consume her, while the other instruments of death were making ready.’^[669] ‘It does not appear,’ says Sir Walter Scott in 1830, ‘that any punishment was inflicted for this cruel abuse of the law on the person of a creature so helpless; but the son of the lame daughter—himself distinguished by the same misfortune—was living so lately as to receive the charity of the present Marchioness of Stafford, Countess of Sutherland in her own right.’^[670]

For a generation, the linen manufacture had been passing through what might be called a prosperous infancy. A public paper in 1720 states that there was annually imported from Scotland into England the value of £100,000 in white linen, and as much in brown, the flax being of ‘a spunsie quality,’ which gave it a preference over the similar products of both Ireland and Germany.^[671] [The same document estimated the English woollen cloths exported to Scotland at £400,000 per annum.]

By an act of parliament passed this year, a Board of Trustees was established in Scotland for the administration of an annual sum set aside for the encouragement of manufactories and fisheries. The sum at first given was four thousand pounds, which might be considered as calculated to go a great way in so poor a country. The activity and serviceableness of the Board was, in its earlier years, chiefly shewn in the promotion of the linen manufacture, 542|1727.| which, under the stimulus afforded by premiums, rose from an export sale of 2,183,978 yards in 1727, to 4,666,011 in 1738, 7,358,098 in 1748, and 12,823,048 in 1764. It is curious, regarding an institution which has since occupied, as it still does, so conspicuous a place in the public eye, to trace the difficulties it had to contend with at starting, in consequence of the monetary vacuum produced by the conflict of the two banks. The Lord Advocate, Duncan Forbes, wrote on the 26th June 1728 to the Duke of Newcastle: ‘The trustees appointed by his majesty for taking care of the manufactures, proceed with great zeal and industry; but at present credit is run so low, by a struggle between the bank lately erected by his majesty and the old bank, that money can scarcely be found to go to market with.’^[672]

Oct.

Wodrow, who never failed to hear of and note any misfortune that happened to Glasgow—hopeful, always, that it would be ‘laid to heart’—makes us aware of an obscure sorrow which was now beginning to beset the thriving burghers. ‘The vermin called bugs,’ he says, ‘are at present extremely troublesome at Glasgow. They say they are come over with timber and other goods from Holland. They are in many houses there, and so extremely prolific, there is no getting rid of them, though many ways have been tried. It’s not twenty year since they were known, and such as had them kept them secret. These six or seven years, they are more openly compleened of, and now the half of the town are plagued with them. This is chiefly attributed to the frequent alterations of servants, who bring them from house to house.’^[673]

Soon after, having occasion to deplore the death of Provost Peady, a person of great firmness and piety, he speaks of the many ‘strokes’ which the industrious city had met with of late. Their losses during 1727 had been reckoned at not less than twenty-eight thousand pounds sterling! ‘It’s a wonder to me how they stand throo.’ The worthy pastor of Eastwood would evidently have not been greatly distressed had his Glasgow neighbours been subjected to a repetition of a few of the plagues of Egypt, so needful were they of something to check their growing fatness and pride. He might have been expected to hail the frogs with a fraternal feeling; and we can imagine him marking with hopefulness, not unmingled with sympathy, the spread of the 543|1727.| murrain among the burghers’ kine at the Cowcaddens. The present entomological corrective was evidently regarded by him with a satisfaction too deep to admit of many words.

1728. Feb. 8.

Mr John Boyd gives his friend Wodrow an account of a duelling affair which had befallen in Edinburgh. ‘Ane officer in the Dutch Guards, son to Mr Walter Stewart, late Solicitor, was ill wounded by are officer in the Canongate [Lieutenant Pilkington, of Grove’s Regiment]. The officer, when in custody of the constables, was rescued by the guard there, who carried him off; but at Musselburgh, the people there apprehended him, and made him and twenty-two guards prisoners, who were all brought to prison here.’ There were hopes of the wounded man’s recovery.^[674]

Mar. 1.

At four o’clock in the morning, a smart shock of an earthquake was experienced in Edinburgh and throughout the south of Scotland, if not in other quarters. At Selkirk, every house was shaken, and some people were tumbled out of bed, but no damage was done.^[675]

Mar.

Mr Wodrow was at this time informed ‘by very good hands,’ that there had been for some years in Edinburgh a little gambling fraternity, who made it their business to trace out and decoy young men of rank and fortune, and make plunder of them. ‘One of them will lose fifty pounds in a night till the young spark be engaged; and then another comes and soon gains the whole; and, it may be, a third comes, and stands at the back of the person they design to rifle, and by signs and words unknown to others, discovers his game to the other; so by one method or other they are sure to win all at last.’ It was alleged that the society would divide 25,000 merks [about £1400] a year by these vile practices—much calculated ‘to fill our cup of judgments.’

As a trait of the time—On the news reaching Glasgow that an attempt to unseat Campbell of Shawfield had failed, his friends went down to Govan, to celebrate the affair, and write a letter of congratulation to him. Mr William Wishart, a clergyman, deserted the synod then sitting, to go with them, and help in drawing up the letter. By and by, the minister left them; but they sat still till they became so befuddled, that it became necessary to bundle them into a boat, and so carry them back to the 544|1728.| city. That evening, some other gentlemen of the same way of thinking, went through the streets of Glasgow, with a fiddler playing before them, and singing: ‘Up with the Campbells, and down with the Grahams!’ and it was a wonder that a riot was avoided.

About the same date, Mr Wodrow adverts to the fact, that Anthony Aston’s playhouse in Edinburgh was ‘much frequented;’ and amongst ‘persons of substance and leisure,’ there was consequently a great tendency to laxity of morals. There was even a talk of building a playhouse in Edinburgh. The manager, however, was not without his troubles. One Ross, ‘master of the Beau’s Coffee-house’—a son of Bishop Ross, and a great encourager of the playhouse—had sold a quantity of tickets, on which he was to be allowed a penny each; but he ultimately refused to take this commission, though amounting to about ten pounds—‘a vast sum,’ says Wodrow, ‘for tickets at a penny apiece in one coffee-house.’ Aston having reserved this money to himself, instead of accounting for it to his company, according to agreement, a terrible squabble arose among them, and a process was threatened before the magistrates, or some other court. How the matter ended, we do not hear.

To complete his general picture of the profaneness of the age, Mr Wodrow tells us that Allan Ramsay, the poet, got down books of plays from London, and lent them out at an easy rate—the beginning of Circulating Libraries in Scotland. Boys, servantwomen, and gentlemen, all alike took advantage of this arrangement, whereby ‘vice and obscenity were dreadfully propagated.’ Lord Grange complained of the practice to the magistrates, and induced them to make inspection of Ramsay’s book containing the names of the borrowers of the plays. ‘They were alarmed at it, and sent some of their number to his shop to look through some of his books; but he had notice an hour before, and had withdrawn some of the worst, and nothing was done to purpose.’^[676]

Mar. 27.

The conflict between the Bank of Scotland and its young and pretentious Whig rival, the Royal Bank, led to a temporary stoppage of payments at the former establishment, the last that ever took place. The Royal Bank ‘having all the public money given in to them, has at present worsted [the Bank of Scotland], 545|1728.| and run them out of cash.’^[677] In their own advertisement on the occasion, they attribute the calamity to ‘the great embarrassment that has been upon credit and circulation of money in payments for some months bygone, arising from causes and by means well known both in city and country.’ In this very crisis, the Bank announced its dividend of four per cent, on its capital stock, but appropriating it as part of ten per cent, now called up from the shareholders, ‘the other sixty pounds Scots on each share to be paid in before the 15th of June.’ The directors at the same time ordered their notes to bear interest during the time that payment should be suspended.

It must have been a draught of very bitter gall to the Old Bank, when their young rival came ostentatiously forward with an announcement that, for the ‘relief of such people as wanted to go to market,’ they would give specie for the twenty-shilling notes of the Bank of Scotland till further notice.

The Bank of Scotland resumed paying its twenty-shilling notes on the 27th of June.

May 9.

The convivialities indulged in at funerals were productive to-day of a tragedy long remembered in Scotland. Mr Carnegie of Lour, residing in the burgh of Forfar, had a daughter to be buried, and before the funeral, he entertained the Earl of Strathmore, his own brother James Carnegie of Finhaven, Mr Lyon of Bridgeton, and some others of the company, at dinner in his house. After the ceremony, these gentlemen adjourned to a tavern, and drank a good deal. Carnegie of Finhaven got extremely drunk. Lyon of Bridgeton was not so much intoxicated; but the drink made him rude and unmannerly towards Finhaven. Afterwards, the Earl of Strathmore went to call at the house of Mr Carnegie’s sister, Lady Auchterhouse, and the other gentlemen followed. Here it may be remarked that the whole of this group of persons were, like a large proportion of the Forfarshire gentry, of Jacobite prepossessions. The earl’s late brother and predecessor in the title had fallen at Sheriffmuir, on the Chevalier’s side; so had Patrick Lyon of Auchterhouse, husband of the lady now introduced to notice, and brother of Bridgeton. The presence of a lady, and that lady a widowed sister-in-law, failed to make Bridgeton conduct himself discreetly. He continued his boisterous rudeness towards Finhaven; rallied him coarsely about his not 546|1728.| being willing to marry one of his daughters to Lord Rosehill, about his having no sons, about his debts; took him offensively by the breast; and even used some rudeness towards the lady herself. In the dusk of the evening, the party sallied out to the street, and here Bridgeton went so far in his violence towards Finhaven as to push him into a deep and dirty kennel, which nearly covered him from head to foot with mire. Finhaven, now fully incensed, rose, and drawing his sword, ran up to Bridgeton, with deadly design; but the earl, seeing him advance, pushed Bridgeton aside, and unhappily received the lunge full in the middle of his own body. He died forty-nine hours after the incident.

Carnegie of Finhaven was tried on the ensuing 2d of August for premeditated murder; an absurd charge absurdly supported by long arguments and quotations of authority, in the style of that day. In his ‘information,’ the accused man called God to witness that he had borne no malice to the earl; on the contrary, he had the greatest kindness and respect for him. ‘If it shall appear,’ said he, ‘that I was the unlucky person who wounded the earl, I protest before God I would much rather that a sword had been sheathed in my own bowels.’ All that he admitted was: ‘I had the misfortune that day to be mortally drunk, for which I beg God’s pardon.’ He declared that, being in this state at the time, he did not so much as remember that he had seen the earl when he came out of the kennel. The defence proposed for him by his counsel was, that, the circumstances of the case considered, he was not guilty of murder, but of manslaughter. Strange to say, the court, sacrificing rationality to form and statute, overruled the defence: they found the fact that the prisoner having really given the wound whereof the Earl of Strathmore died, to be relevant to infer the pains of law against him. The killing being indisputable, Carnegie would have been condemned if the jury should merely give a verdict on the point of fact. In these circumstances, his counsel, Robert Dundas of Arniston, stood forth to tell the jury that they were entitled to judge on the point of law as well as the point of fact. He asserted that the only object for their deliberation, was whether they could conscientiously say that Carnegie had committed murder, or whether his guilt was not diminished or annihilated by the circumstances of the case. The jury, almost beyond expectation, gave a verdict of ‘Not Guilty,’ thus establishing a great constitutional principle.^[678]

1728. Aug. 15.

547The noted fierté of the Scottish nobility and gentry was beginning at this time to give way somewhat, under the general desire to promote the arts of industry, and partly because of the hopelessness of public employments for young scions of aristocracy in all but favoured Whig circles. We must not, therefore, be surprised when a tragical tale of this date brings before us the fact that Patrick Lindsay, described as heir-male of the grand old House of Lindsay of the Byres, and who, a few years afterwards, married a daughter of the sixteenth Earl of Crawford, was now an upholsterer in the Parliament Close of Edinburgh, and dean of guild for the city. Neither ought it to appear as incredible that one of his apprentices was a youth named Cairns, younger son of a gentleman of good estate residing at Cupar-Fife.

The tale was simply this—that, on the evening noted, between eight and nine o’clock, Cairns was found in the shop expiring from the effects of a violent blow on the head, apparently inflicted by a hammer, while the box containing the guildry treasure was missing. It was believed that some vile people who then haunted the city, knowing of the box being kept in Lindsay’s shop, had formed a design to possess themselves of it, and had effected their end at the expense of murder, at the moment when the place was about to be closed for the night. A number of vagrants were taken up on suspicion, and the box was soon after found, empty.^[679]

Aug. 18.

Aaron Hill, a well-born English gentleman, who had been manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and wrote many well-received plays and poems—who, moreover, had travelled over Europe and some parts of Asia and Africa—is at this date found writing to his wife from what he calls ‘the Golden Groves of Abernethy,’ meaning the great natural forest of that name on Speyside, in the county of Elgin. It is a strange association of persons and things for a period when even of civilised Scotsmen scarcely ever one made his way north of the Grampians. It had come about, however, in a very natural way.

The York-Buildings Company, which had already formed connections with Scotland by the purchase of several of the forfeited estates, was induced to take a lease from Sir James Grant of Grant, of the magnificent but hitherto useless pine-forest 548|1728.| of Abernethy, thinking they should be able to apply the timber for the use of the navy. Had the wood been only removable by land-carriage, it would have been useless, as before; but they had been led to understand that there was no difficulty in floating it down the Spey to the sea, where it might be shipped off for the south. Aaron Hill, who was a very speculative genius, having before this time headed a scheme for making olive-oil out of beech-nuts, and concocted a plan for settling a part of Carolina, made a journey to the Spey in 1726, and easily convinced himself of the practicability of the project. The Company, accordingly, commenced operations in 1728, with Mr Hill as their clerk. They sent a hundred and twenty-five work-horses, with a competent number of wagons, and apparatus of all the kinds required; they erected substantial wooden-houses, saw-mills, and an iron-foundry, all of them novelties regarded with wonder by the simple natives.^[680] They had also a salaried commissary to furnish provisions and forage. Tracks being formed through the forest, and men trained to the work, trees were felled to the number of forty or fifty in a day, and brought down to the bank of the river. There, under the direction of Mr Hill, they were bound in rafts of sixty or eighty, with deals laid upon the surface to form a platform; and for each such raft two men were held as sufficient to navigate it to the sea, one sitting with a guiding-oar at one end, and another at the other. Before this time, the natives had been accustomed to float down rafts of three or four trees tied together with a rope, the attendant sitting in a curragh, or boat of hide, from which he was ready to plunge into the stream when any impediment called for his interference.^[681] What a Drury Lane manager would think on witnessing a mode of navigation coeval with the first state of savagery, we cannot tell; but he had no little difficulty in inducing the people to adopt a more civilised mode of conducting his grand timber-rafts. Till he first went in one himself, to shew that there was no danger, not one of the Abernethy foresters would venture in so prodigious a craft. There was, in reality, something problematical in the undertaking, for the river was in some places partially blocked by sunken rocks; but the genius of Hill was 549|1728.| equal to all emergencies. Taking advantage of a dry season, when these shoals were exposed, he kindled immense wood-fires upon them, and when the rock was thus heated, he caused water to be thrown upon it, thus making it splinter, and so enable his men to break it up and clear the passage.

It was in high spirits that our poet wrote to his wife from the Golden Groves of Abernethy, for they were really productive of gold, no less than £7000 worth of timber being realised by his Company. ‘The shore of the Spey,’ says he, ‘is all covered with masts from 50 to 70 feet long, which they are daily bringing out of the wood, with ten carriages, and above a hundred horses.... In the middle of the river lies a little fleet of our rafts, which are just putting off for Findhorn harbour; and it is one of the pleasantest sights possible to observe the little armies of men, women, and children who pour down from the Highlands to stare at what we have been doing.’ What seems chiefly to have impressed the natives, was the liberality with which the business of wood-cutting was conducted. It seemed to them a wasteful extravagance, and if it be true that barrels of tar would be burned in bonfires, and barrels of brandy broached on joyful occasions among the people, five of whom died in one night in consequence, the imputation was not unjust. Nevertheless, the work was highly successful, and might have been carried on longer than it was, if the Company had not called away their people to work at their lead-mines.^[682]

During the time which Mr Hill spent in Scotland, he was received with great civilities by the Duke of Gordon and other eminent persons, and was complimented with the freedom of Aberdeen, Inverness, and other burghs. In his collected poems are found a number of short epigrammatic pieces which he wrote during his residence in Scotland; among the rest, his oft-printed epigram, beginning: ‘Tender-handed stroke a nettle.’ But Burt adds another, which he found scribbled on a window ‘at the first stage on this side Berwick:’

‘Scotland, thy weather’s like a modish wife,

Thy winds and rains for ever are at strife;

So Termagant awhile her bluster tries,

And when she can no longer scold—she cries!’

The engineer could not but wonder at Hill taking leave of the country in this strain, ‘after he had been so exceedingly 550|1728.| complaisant to it, when here, as to compare its subterranean riches with those of Mexico and Peru.’

Aug.

We must again return to Mr Wodrow for an account of the continued progress of gaiety in Scotland. It appears that part of Anthony Aston’s company of comedians migrated from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and were there favoured by Bailie Murdoch, ‘who is too easy,’ with permission to perform the Beggars’ Opera in the Weigh-house. They had a good audience the first night, but on the few other nights of performance ‘got not so much as to pay their music.’ On the magistrates being blamed for the permission they had given, they recriminated on the ministers, who should have interfered in time. Mr Wodrow considered the ministers as here in fault; yet he could not exonerate the magistrates. ‘Considering the noise made at Edinburgh by these strollers, and the brisk opposition made by the magistrates of Edinburgh, they [the magistrates of Glasgow] should have considered better before they allowed them.’

‘Sabbath after, the ministers preached against going to these interludes and plays.... Mr Rob, of Kilsyth, went through all that was agoing about meeting-houses, plays, errors, and profaneness; and spared none, as I hear.’

This classing of the Episcopal meeting-houses with the ungodly theatre, reminds us of the ranging of popery and adultery together by the reformers. It would appear that in the summer of 1728 there was another histrionic company in Scotland, under a Mr Phipps, who announced that on the 29th October he would, ‘at the desire of severals of the nobility and gentry of East Lothian,’ act the Beggars’ Opera at Haddington.

In March 1729, the Edinburgh Courant informs us that ‘the Scots Company of Comedians, as they call themselves, have all of a sudden eloped, without counting with their creditors.’

Wodrow reports with much bitterness, in 1731, the rumours going about as to the success of the English comedians in Edinburgh. He says: ‘It is incredible what numbers of chairs, with men, are carried to these places;’ ‘men’ not choosing to walk to such amusements. ‘For some weeks, they made fifty pound sterling every night, and that for six nights a week.’ ‘It’s a dreadful corruption of our youth, and an eyelet to prodigality and vanity.’^[683]

1728. Oct. 1.

551A valuable Dutch East Indiaman having been lost in March, near the island of Lewis, an effort, involving some ingenuity, was made to recover the treasure on board, which was understood to amount to about £16,000 sterling. The Edinburgh newspapers remark to-day, the arrival of a Dutchman with ‘a curious machine’ designed for this purpose. Mr Mackenzie, younger of Delvin, a principal clerk of Session, and depute-admiral of those shores, was joined with Mr Alexander Tait, a merchant, in furnishing the expenses of this undertaking, in the hope of profit for themselves. The business was proceeded with during October, and with success. On the 19th, the populace of Edinburgh were regaled with the sight of several cart-loads of the recovered money, passing through their streets. The Dutch East India Company presently gave in a petition to the Court of Admiralty for an account of the treasure; which was accordingly furnished by Mr Mackenzie, and shewed that he had fished up £14,620, at an expense of £9000.

Mr Mackenzie was allowed to retain twenty thousand crowns and some doubloons, and ordered to deposit the rest in a box, subject to the future orders of the court.

‘The divers fishing for the spoils of the Dutch ship, found in and about her the dead bodies of two hundred and forty men, which they brought to land and buried.’^[684]

A few years ago, a coronation gold medal of Augustus II. of Poland was exhumed in the garden of the minister of Barra. At first, there was a difficulty of comprehending how such an object could have come there; at length the shipwreck of the Dutch vessel was called to recollection, as an explanation of the mystery.

About the close of 1728, the Edinburgh newspapers speak of a gentleman named Captain Row, who had come to Scotland invested with a privilege for raising treasure and other articles out of shipwrecked vessels, to last for ten years. For the next twelvemonth, we hear of him as exercising his ingenuity upon the remains of one of the Spanish Armada, which was sunk off Barra. Two brass cannon are first spoken of as recovered, and afterwards we hear of ‘several things of value.’

Nov.

That extraordinary person, Simon Lord Lovat, who had resisted the troops of King William, and been outlawed by the Edinburgh Justiciary Lords, was now in the enjoyment of his title and 552|1728.| estate, an active friend and partisan of the Whig-Hanoverian government, and captain of one of the six companies of its Highland militia In the early part of this month, he led sixty of these local soldiers on an expedition against the thieves of the north-west districts, and captured no fewer than twenty-six in the course of a week. He searched for arms at the same time, but reported that these had been now pretty well gathered in; so he found none.

Although few Scotsmen have been the subjects of so much biography as Lord Lovat, there is one aspect in which he remains to be now for the first time viewed; and that is, as a newspaper paragraphist. During the dozen prosperous years which followed this date, the Courant and Mercury are every now and then presenting extracts of private letters from Inverness regarding the grand doings of ‘Simon Lord Lovat, chief of the clan Fraser,’ all of them in such a puffing style as would leave little doubt of their having been his own composition, even if we were not possessed of facts which betray it but too clearly.

On one occasion (May 1728) he is described as riding out from Inverness, with eighty well-mounted gentlemen of his clan, to meet and escort the Lords of the Circuit Court of Justiciary, as they were approaching the town. At another (September 1729), we find him parading his company of ‘a hundred men, besides officers, sergeants, and drums,’ before General Wade, when ‘they made a very fine appearance, both as to the body of men and their new clothings, and they performed their exercises and firings so well, that the general seemed very well satisfied. And he told my Lord Lovat that he was much pleased at the performance and good appearance of his company.’ We of course hear nothing of what the general’s engineer, Mr Burt, has been so ill-natured as record, that Lovat had stripped private clansmen of any good plaids they had, in order to enable his company to make the better show.

In June 1733, we are informed through the Mercury, that a commission appointing Lord Lovat to be sheriff of the county, having come to Inverness, it was read in court, where Alexander Fraser of Fairfield sat to administer justice as his lordship’s deputy. ‘The gentlemen of the name of Fraser, who are very numerous in this town, together with the several relations and friends of the family of Lovat, expressed an uncommon satisfaction on seeing this commission renewed in his lordship’s person, whose ancestors, above three hundred years ago, were 553|1728.| sheriffs-principal of the shires of Inverness and Moray. And we learn that the rejoicings made all over the country, by the Frasers and their friends, were in nothing short of those we had in town.’ So says a letter from Inverness, marked in the office-copy of the paper as ‘paid (2s. 6d.).’

Ten days afterwards appeared another paragraph: ‘Last week, the Right Honourable Simon Fraser of Lovat was married at Roseneath, in Dumbartonshire, to the Honourable Miss Primrose Campbell, daughter to the late John Campbell of Mamore, Esq.; sister to John Campbell, Esq., one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber to his Majesty, and first-cousin to his Grace the Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. A young lady of great beauty and merit.’ This was also ‘paid (2s. 6d.).’

The reader will perhaps relish another specimen: ‘Inverness, July 18, 1735.—Last post brought us the agreeable news of the Hon. John Campbell of Mamore his being appointed Lieutenant-colonel of the Inniskillen Regiment of Foot, a part whereof is now quartered here. This news gave great joy to all the Frasers, and well-wishers of the family of Lovat in this town, the Lord Lovat being married to a sister of the said Colonel Campbell; and there being for many ages a great friendship between the Campbells and the Frasers, last night all the gentlemen of the Frasers in this place, and the Grants, Monroes, and Cuthberts, relations and allies of the family of Lovat, met, and invited all the officers of the corps, garrison, and custom-house, with many other gentlemen of the first rank, to the Lord Lovat’s lodgings, where Baillie William Fraser, his lordship’s landlord and merchant, had prepared an elegant entertainment. There was great plenty of wine, when the healths of his Majesty, the Queen, Prince, Duke, and all the royal family were drunk, with those of the ministry, his Majesty’s forces by sea and land, Duke of Argyle, Earl of Ilay, General Wade, Colonel John Campbell, Lord Lovat, Colonel Hamilton and the corps; the healths of the Frasers, Grants, Monroes, &c., and all the fast friends of the family of Argyle, with many other loyal toasts. There were large bonfires, not only at my Lord Lovat’s lodgings, but on every hill in his lordship’s extensive country round this town. During the solemnity, the music-bells played, drums beat, and the private men of the company here were handsomely entertained, agreeable to their own taste, with barrels of beer, which they drank to the health of their new commander. After the gentlemen had stayed several hours at his lordship’s lodgings, they, with the music playing 554|1728.| before them, proceeded to the market-cross, where was a table covered, with the foresaid toasts repeated, with huzzas and acclamations of joy.’ Marginally marked in the office-copy, ‘Paid 4s.’

Nov.

The influenza, in a very virulent form, after passing over the continent, came to England, and a fortnight after had made its way into Scotland. A cold and cough, with fever, laid hold of nearly every person, sometimes in a moment as they stood on their feet, and in some instances attended with raving. Wodrow of course entertained hopes that Glasgow would receive a good share of the calamity; but it proved less severe there than in some other places. He adverts, however, to the fact, that, owing to the ailment, ‘there was no hearing sermon for some time.’^[685]

Nov. 28.

The death of Alexander, second duke of Gordon, proved, through connected circumstances, a domestic event of great importance. We have seen the adherence of this powerful family to the Catholic faith a source of frequent trouble ever since the Reformation. Latterly, under the protection of the second duke, the ancient religion had been receiving fresh encouragement in the north. For this family to be at variance in so important a respect with the country at large, was unfortunate both for themselves and the country. It was an evil now at length to be brought to an end.

The Duchess—Henrietta Mordaunt, daughter of the Earl of Peterborough^[686]—finding herself left with the charge of a large family in tender years—the young duke only eight years old—took it upon her to have them educated in her own Protestant principles, and with a respect for the reigning family. It was such an opportunity as might not have occurred again for a century. We can see from her history as an introducer of improvements in agriculture, that she must have been a woman of considerable intellectual vigour; and hence it is the less surprising that she fully accomplished her object. She of course got great credit in all loyal quarters for what she did with her children. The General Assembly, in 1730, sent her a cordial letter of thanks. The government, in 1735, settled upon her a pension of £1000 a year. She survived her husband upwards of thirty years, living 555|1729.| for the most part at Prestonhall, in the county of Edinburgh—a forfeited estate which she had bought at a moderate price.

After all, there were some drawbacks to her Grace’s soundness in Protestant loyalty. While one of her sons, Lord Lewis—the ‘Lewie Gordon’ of Jacobite minstrelsy—‘went out’ for the House of Stuart in 1745, she herself shewed a certain tendency that way, by laying out a breakfast for the Young Chevalier on the roadside at her park-gate, as he marched past, target on shoulder, on his way to England, for which single act of misapplied hospitality her Grace was deprived of her pension.

1729. Feb.

The Edinburgh Courant of February 24th gravely records that, ‘some days ago, died a young man in the parish of Glencorse, who since Hallarday last hath been grievously tormented by wicked spirits, who haunted his bed almost every night. There was no formed disease upon him; yet he had extraordinary paroxysms, which could not proceed from natural causes. He vomited vast quantities of blood, which was like roasted livers, and at last, with violent cries, his lungs.’

Mar. 20.

Alexander, ninth Earl of Eglintoun, having died on the 18th of February, was this day buried in the family tomb in the west country, with the parade proper to his rank, according to the ideas of the age. One feature of the ceremonial was considered as so peculiar, that the Caledonian Mercury makes a paragraph of it alone. ‘There were between nine hundred and a thousand beggars assembled, many of whom came over from Ireland, who had £50 of that nobleman’s charity distribute among them.’

July.

William Ged, ‘of the family of Balfarg,’ a goldsmith in Edinburgh, and noted for the improvements he effected in his own business, chanced to be brought into connection with the art of typography by having to pay the workpeople of a printer to whom he was related. Possessing an ingenious and inventive mind, he conceived a plan for economising means in printing, by subjecting to the press, not ‘forms of types,’ as usual, but plates made by casting from those forms, thus at once saving the types from wear, and obtaining a means of printing successive editions of any amount without the necessity of setting up the types anew. He talked of this invention to a friend so early as 1725; but it was not till now that any active steps were taken towards realising it. With one Fenner, a bookseller of London, who happened to 556|1729.| visit Edinburgh, he entered at this date into a contract, by virtue of which the project was to be prosecuted by Ged in England, with pecuniary means furnished by Fenner, the profits to be divided betwixt the parties. It was in a manner necessary to go to England for this purpose, as peculiar types were required, and there was not now any letter-founder in Scotland.

Ged was a simple, pure-hearted man, perhaps a good deal carried away from prudential considerations by the interest he felt in his invention. Fenner, and others with whom Ged came in contact in the south, were sharp and selfish people, not over-disposed to use their associate justly. The unfortunate projector had also to encounter positive treacheries, arising from the fear that his plan would injure interests already invested in the trade of printing. He spent several years between London and the university of Cambridge, and never got beyond some abortive experiments, which, however, might have been sufficient to convince any skilful printer of the entire practicability, as well as advantageousness of the scheme. With a deep sense of injury from Fenner and others, Ged returned to Edinburgh in 1733, a poorer, if not a wiser man than he had been eight years before.

It was impossible, however, that so magnificent an addition to the invention of Scheffer and Guttenberg as stereotyping should be suppressed. A few kind neighbours entered into a subscription to enable Ged to make a new effort in Scotland. Having a son named James, about twelve years old, he put him apprentice to a printer, that the boy might supply that technical skill which was wanting in himself. Before this child had been a year at his business, being allowed by his master to return to the office by himself at night for his father’s work, he had begun to set up the types for an edition of Sallust in an 18mo size; and plates from the forms were finished by Ged in 1736. The impression from these constituted the first stereotyped book.

Several persons beyond the limits of the book-producing trades had a sense of Ged’s merits. In 1740, when he sent a plate of nine pages of Sallust, and a copy of the book, to the Faculty of Advocates, as an explanation of his invention, they passed a resolution to appoint him some suitable gratification ‘when their stock should be in good condition.’^[687] Mr Robert Smith, chancellor of the university of Cambridge, and the bishop of St Asaph’s, were 557|1729.| so favourably disposed to him, that in 1742 they made a movement for getting him established as printer to the university, that he might there introduce his plan; but it came to nothing. William Ged, the author of an invention which has unspeakably extended the utility of the printing-press, died a poor man in 1749. The boy James, who had set the types of the Sallust, joined Prince Charles—for the family was of Jacobite inclinations—and, being apprehended in Carlisle in December 1745, he was condemned to death along with Colonel Townley. The only benefit ever derived by the Geds from their father’s invention, was that the aforesaid Mr Robert Smith, by his interest with the Duke of Newcastle, saved the young stereotypist from the gallows.^[688]

The subsequent history of James Ged was unfortunate. ‘After he had obtained his pardon, he followed his business for some time as a journeyman with Mr Bettenham: afterwards, he commenced master for himself in Denmark Court, in the Strand. Unsuccessful there, he privately shipped off himself and his materials for the other side of the Atlantic.’ ‘He went to Jamaica, where his younger brother was settled as a reputable printer, and died soon after his arrival in that island.’^[689]

Aug. 6.

The ancient church was honourably distinguished by its charity towards the poor, and more especially towards the diseased poor; and it was a dreary interval of nearly two centuries which intervened between the extinction of its lazar-houses and leper-houses, and the time when merely a civilised humanity dictated the establishment of a regulated means of succour for the sickness-stricken of the humbler classes. The date here affixed is an interesting one, as that when a hospital of the modern type was first opened in Scotland for the reception of poor patients.

The idea of establishing such an institution in Edinburgh was first agitated in a pamphlet in 1721, and there is reason to believe that the requirements of the rising medical school were largely concerned in dictating it. The matter fell asleep, but was revived in 1725, with a proposal to raise a fund of at least two thousand pounds sterling to carry it out. Chiefly by the activity of the 558|1729.| medical profession, this fund was realised; and now the first step of practical beneficence was taken by the opening of a house, and the taking in of a small number of patients, for whom six physicians and surgeons undertook to give attendance and medicine. The total number here received during the first year was the modest one of thirty-five, of whom nineteen were dismissed as cured.

Such was the origin of the Edinburgh Infirmary, which, small as it was at first, was designed from its very origin as a benefit to the whole kingdom, no one then dreaming that a time would come when every considerable county town would have a similar hospital. In 1735, the contributors were incorporated, and three years later, they began to rear a building for their purpose, calculated to accommodate seventeen hundred patients per annum, allowing six weeks’ residence for each at an average. It is remarkable how cordially the upper classes and the heads of the medical profession concurred in raising and managing this noble institution, and how readily the industrious orders all over the country responded to the appeals made to their charity for its support. While many contributed money, ‘others gave stones, lime, wood, slate, and glass, which were carried by the neighbouring farmers gratis. Not only many master masons, wrights, slaters, and glaziers gave their attendance, but many journeymen and labourers frequently gave their labour gratis; and many joiners gave sashes for the windows.’ A Newcastle glass-making company generously glazed the whole house. By correspondence and personal intervention, money was drawn for the work, not only throughout England and Ireland, but in other parts of Europe, and even in America.^[690]

It has always been admitted that the prime moving spirit in the whole undertaking was George Drummond, one of the Commissioners of Customs, and on three several occasions Lord Provost of Edinburgh; a man of princely aspect and character, further memorable as the projector of the New Town. His merits in regard to the Infirmary have, indeed, been substantially acknowledged by the setting up of a portrait of him in the council-room, and a bust by Nollekins in the hall, the latter having this inscription, dictated by Principal Robertson: ‘George Drummond, to whom this country is indebted for all the benefit which it derives from the Royal Infirmary.’^[691]

1729.

559It is not unworthy of being kept in mind that, in the business of levying means from a distance, Drummond was largely assisted by an eccentric sister, named May, who had adopted the tenets of Quakerism, and occasionally made tours through various parts of Great Britain for the purpose of preaching to the people, of whom vast multitudes used to flock to hear her. She was a gentle enthusiast, of interesting appearance, and so noted did her addresses become, that Queen Caroline at length condescended to listen to one. We get some idea of her movements in the summer of 1735, from a paragraph regarding her then inserted in a London newspaper: ‘We hear that the famous preaching maiden Quaker (Mrs Drummond, who preached before the queen), lately arrived from Scotland, intends to challenge the champion of England, Orator Henley, to dispute with him at the Bull and Mouth, upon the doctrines and tenets of Quakerism, at such time as he shall appoint.’

In the pages, moreover, of Sylvanus Urban, ‘a Lady’ soon after poured forth strains of the highest admiration regarding this

‘——happy virgin of celestial race,

Adorned with wisdom, and replete with grace;’

proclaiming that she outshone Theresa of Spain, and was sufficient in herself to extinguish the malignant ridicule with which men sometimes assail the capacities of women.^[692]

Human nature, however, is a ravelled hasp of rather mixed yarn, and it will be heard with pity that this amiable missionary of piety and charity was one of those anomalous beings who, without necessity or temptation, are unable to restrain themselves from picking up and carrying away articles belonging to their neighbours. The propensity, though as veritable a disease as any ever treated within the walls of her brother’s infirmary, threw a shade, deepening that of poverty, over the latter years of May Drummond. Only the enlightened and generous few could rightly apprehend such a case. Amongst some memoranda on old-world local matters, kindly communicated to me many years ago by Sir Walter Scott, I find one touching gently on the memory of this unfortunate lady, and directing my attention to ‘a copy of tolerably good elegiac verses,’ written on a picture in which she was represented in the character of Winter. Of these he quoted 560|1729.| from memory, with some slight inaccuracies, the first and third of the following three:

‘Full justly hath the artist planned

In Winter’s guise thy furrowed brow,

And rightly raised thy feeble hand

Above the elemental glow.

I gaze upon that well-known face;

But ah, beneath December’s frost,

Lies buried all its vernal grace,

And every trait of May is lost.

Nor merely on thy trembling frame,

Thy wrinkled cheek, and deafened ear,

But on thy fortunes and thy fame,

Relentless Winter frowns severe.’^[693]

Sep.

Sir Robert Monro of Foulis, in Ross-shire, ‘a very ancient gentleman,’ and chief of a considerable clan, died in the enjoyment of general esteem. Four counties turned out to shew their respect at his funeral. There were above six hundred horsemen, tolerably mounted and apparelled. ‘The corpse was carried on a bier betwixt two horses, fully harnessed in deepest mourning. A gentleman rode in deep mourning before the corpse, uncovered, attended by two grooms and four running-footmen, all in deep mourning. The 561|1729.| friends followed immediately behind the corpse, and the gentlemen [strangers] in the rear. The scutcheons,’ says the reporter, ‘were the handsomest I ever saw; the entertainment magnificent and full.’^[694]

Sep.

General Wade was now dating from ‘my hutt at Dalnacardoch,’ having been obliged for some time to station himself in the wilderness of Drumnachter, in order to get the road from Dunkeld to Inverness finished, and a shorter one planned as a branch to Crieff. The Lord Advocate Forbes wrote to him sympathisingly, acknowledging that ‘never was penitent banished into a more barren desert for his sins.’ Both gentlemen had their eyes open regarding a plotting among the Jacobites, of which the government had got some inkling, but of which nothing came.

In the latter part of the month, the general advanced to Ruthven, in Badenoch, and there the people for the first time beheld that modern luxury—a coach. Everybody turned out to see it, for it was next to a prodigy among that simple people. Here Forbes met General Wade, and some sort of court of judicature was held by them; after which they parted, the advocate to return to Inverness, and Wade to Dalnacardoch.

The good-natured general had arranged for a fête to be held by those whom he jocularly called his highwaymen; and it must have been a somewhat picturesque affair. On a spot near Dalnaspidal, and opposite to the opening of Loch Garry, the working-parties met under their officers, and formed a square surrounding a tent. Four oxen were roasted whole, ‘in great order and solemnity,’ and four ankers of brandy were broached. The men dined al fresco; the general and his friend Sir Robert Clifton, with Sir Duncan Campbell, Colonel Guest, Major Duroure, and a number of other gentlemen, were regaled in the tent. The beef, according to the general’s own acknowledgment, was ‘excellent,’ and after it was partaken of, a series of loyal toasts was drunk amidst demonstrations of general satisfaction, the names of the Lord Advocate and his brother, John Forbes of Culloden, being not forgotten. There is something interesting in these simple jocosities, considering the grand engine of civilisation they were connected with.^[695]

1729.

562The road from Ruthven to Fort Augustus, involving the steep and difficult mountain of Corryarrick, and the most difficult part of the whole undertaking, was in the course of being completed in October 1731, when a gentleman signing himself ‘N. M‘Leod,’ being probably no other than the Laird of Dunvegan, chanced to pass that way on his road to Skye, and gave in the newspapers an account of what he saw. ‘Upon entering,’ he says, ‘into a little glen among the hills, lately called Laggan a Vannah, but now by the soldiers Snugburgh, I heard the noise of many people, and saw six great fires, about each of which a number of soldiers were very busy. During my wonder at the cause of this, an officer invited me to drink their majesties’ healths. I attended him to each fire, and found that these were the six working-parties of Tatton’s, Montague’s, Mark Ker’s, Harrison’s, and Handyside’s regiments, and the party from the Highland Companies, making in all about five hundred men, who had this summer, with indefatigable pains, completed the great road for wheel-carriages between Fort Augustus and Ruthven. It being the 30th of October, his majesty’s birthday, General Wade had given to each detachment an ox-feast, and liquor; six oxen were roasted whole, one at the head of each party. The joy was great, both upon the occasion of the day, and the work’s being completed, which is really a wonderful undertaking.’

Before dismissing General Wade, it may be mentioned that a permanent record of his engineering skill and courage in building Tay Bridge, in the form of a Latin inscription, was put upon that structure itself, being the composition of Dr Friend, master of Westminster School. But this, if the most classic, was not destined to be the most memorable memorial of the worthy general’s labours. ‘To perpetuate the memory of the marshal’s chief exploit, in making the road from Inverness to Inverary, an obelisk is erected near Fort William, on which the traveller is reminded of his merits by the following naïf couplet:

“Had you seen these roads before they were made,

You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade.”’^[696]

‘Long before the improvements of the Highlands were seriously 563|1729.| thought of, Lord Kames, being, in 1773, at Inverness on the circuit, gave, as a toast after dinner, “Roads and Bridges.” Captain Savage, of the 37th regiment, then at Fort George, sat near his lordship, and, being next asked for a toast, gave “Chaises and Horses,” to the annoyance of the entertainers, who thought it done in ridicule, though doubtless the captain only meant to follow out the spirit of Lord Kames’s sentiment.’—Letter of the late H. R. Duff of Muirton to the author, 31st March 1827.

Oct. 18.

In Scotland, oil-painting had had a morning-star in the person of George Jameson. Two ages of darkness had followed. About the beginning of the eighteenth century, a foreign artist, John Medina, found for a few years a fair encouragement for his pencil in the painting of portraits; and the Duke of Queensberry, as royal commissioner, conferred upon him the honour of knighthood.^[697] Then arose two native portrait-painters of some merit—John Alexander, who, moreover, was able to decorate a staircase in Gordon Castle with a tolerable picture of the Rape of Proserpine; and John Scougal, who has handed down to us not a few of the lords and gentlemen of the reign of Queen Anne.^[698] William Aikman, a disciple of Medina, followed, and was in vogue as a painter of portraits in Edinburgh about 1721. Such was the meagre history of oil-painting in Scotland till the end of the reign of the first George.

At that time, when wealth was following industry, and religious gloom beginning to give way to a taste for elegant amusements, the decorative arts were becoming comparatively prominent. Roderick Chalmers and James Norie, while ostensibly house-painters, aspired to a graceful use of the pencil, seldom failing, when they painted a set of panelled rooms, to leave a tolerable landscape from their own hands over the fireplaces; and in some of the houses in the Old Town of Edinburgh, these pieces are still seen to be far from contemptible. William Adam, father of the celebrated brothers, William and Robert, was the principal architect of the day. There was even a 564|1729.| respectable line-engraver in Richard Cooper, the person from whom Strange, some years after, derived his first lessons. While these men had a professional interest in art, there were others who viewed it with favour on general grounds, and, from motives of public spirit, were willing to see it encouraged in the Scottish capital.

There was, accordingly, a design formed at this date for the erection of a sort of academy in Edinburgh, under the name of the School of St Luke, ‘for the encouragement of painting, sculpture, architecture, &c.’ A scheme of it, drawn up on parchment, described the principal practical object to be, to have a properly lighted and furnished room, where the members could meet periodically to practise drawing, &c., from the figure, or from draughts; lots to be drawn for the choice of seats. Private gentlemen who chose to contribute were invited to join in the design, though they might not be disposed to use the pencil. We find a surprisingly liberal list of subscribers to this document, including Lord Linton, Lord Garlies, and Gilbert Elliot; James M‘Ewen, James Balfour, and Allan Ramsay, booksellers; the artists above mentioned, and about fifteen other persons. Amongst the rest was the name of Allan Ramsay, junior, now a mere stripling, but who came to be portrait-painter to George III.^[699]

The above is all that we know about this proposed School of St Luke. Very pleasant it is to know so much, to be assured that, in 1729, there was even a handful of men in the Scottish capital so far advanced in taste for one of the elegant arts, as to make a movement for its cultivation. As to the preparedness of the general mind of the country for the appreciation of high art, the following little narrative will enable the modern reader to form some judgment.

In December 1734, there was shewn in Edinburgh, ‘at Mr Yaxley Davidson’s, without the Cowgate Port,’ a collection of curiosities, amongst which was included a said-to-be-valuable picture of Raphael, probably representing the Saviour on the Cross; also a view of the interior of St Peter’s at Rome, as illuminated for the jubilee of 1700, ‘the like never seen in Great Britain.’ The exhibition lingered for a few weeks in the city with tolerable success, and was then removed to the tavern of one Murray at the Bridge-end, opposite to Perth.

1729.

565Here, in consequence of ‘a pathetic sermon’ preached by one of the ministers, and certain printed letters industriously circulated on the subject of these works of art, a crowd of the meaner sort of people rose tumultuously on the 10th of July, and, crossing the Tay by the ferry-boat, proceeded to Murray’s house, crying out: ‘Idolatry! molten and graven images! popery!’ and so forth. Then, surrounding the door, they attempted to enter for the purpose of dragging forth the pictures, and were only with difficulty withstood by the landlord, who, backed by his hostler, planted himself with a drawn cutlass in the doorway. Time was thus given for some gentlemen of Perth to come to the rescue, and also to allow of the Earl of Kinnoull’s bailie of regality to come forward in behalf of the peace; ‘whereupon the men concerned in the mob withdrew, the women still standing at the doors of the house, crying out: “Idolatry, idolatry, and popery!” and threatening still to burn the house, or have the pictures and graven images destroyed, till some dozens of the female ringleaders were carried over the river to Perth, the rest dispersing gradually of their own accord. Immediately after, the poor stranger was glad to make the best of his way, and went straight in a boat to Dundee, which the mobbers no sooner perceived, but they sent an express by land to that place to prompt some of the zealous there to mob him at landing.’

Apparently this message had taken effect, for we learn, a few days after, that the collection of curiosities, ‘having made a fine retreat from the late attack at the Bridge-end of Perth,’ are again on view in Edinburgh.^[700]

Amongst the ‘signs and causes of the Lord’s departure,’ adduced by the Seceders in a testimony published by them soon after this time, is the fact that ‘an idolatrous picture of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was well received in some remarkable places of the land.’

Nov.

Mr Wodrow was regaled at this time with a few additional chastisements for the city of Glasgow. Mrs Glen, who dealt largely in silks and Hollands, had broken down under a bill for three hundred pounds, with debt to tradesmen in the city for weaving cloth to the amount of five hundred! In the ensuing June, the town sustained ‘a very great loss’ by the breaking of a Scottish factor in Holland; no less than two 566|1729.| thousand pounds sterling: only—and here was the great pity in the case—it was diffused over too many parties to be very sensibly felt.^[701]

About fifteen months after this date, the worthy pastor of Eastwood adverted to the ‘great losses, hardships, and impositions’ which the trade of Glasgow had recently undergone, and to the ‘several hundreds of working poor’ which hung as a burden upon the city. Notwithstanding all that—and we can imagine his perplexity in recording the fact—the citizens were getting up a house of refuge for distressed people. ‘In a week or two, twelve hundred pounds was signed for, besides two hundred Mr Orr gives,’ and certain sums to be contributed by public bodies. What would he have thought if he could have been assured that, in little more than a century, Glasgow would, in a few weeks, and without difficulty, raise forty-five thousand pounds as its quota towards a national fund for the succour of the sufferers in the British army by a single campaign!

Dec. 24.

Lord Balmerino, son of the lord who had been the subject of a notable prosecution under the tyrannical government of Charles I.,^[702] was now residing in advanced age at his house in Coatfield Lane, in Leith. One of his younger sons, named Alexander (the immediate younger brother of Arthur, who made so gallant a death on Tower Hill in 1746), was leading a life of idleness and pleasure at the same place. As this young gentleman was now to be involved in a bloody affair which took place in Leith Links, it may be worth while to recall that, five years back, he was engaged on the same ground in an affair of gaiety and sport, which yet had some ominous associations about it. It was what a newspaper of the day calls ‘a solemn match at golf’ played by him for twenty guineas with Captain Porteous of the Edinburgh Town-guard; an affair so remarkable on account of the stake, that it was attended by the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Morton, and a vast mob of the great and little besides, Alexander Elphinstone ending as the winner.^[703] No one could well have imagined, as that cheerful game was going on, that both the players were, not many years after, to have blood upon their hands, one of them to take on the murderer’s mark upon this very field.

On the 23d of December 1729, the Honourable Alexander 567|1729.| Elphinstone met a Lieutenant Swift of Cadogan’s regiment at the house of Mr Michael Watson, merchant in Leith. Some hot words having risen between them, Elphinstone rose to depart, but before he went, he touched Swift on the shoulder with his sword, and dropped a hint that he would expect to receive satisfaction next morning on the Links. Next day, accordingly, the two gentlemen met at eleven in the forenoon in that comparatively public place (as it now appears), and fought a single combat with swords, which ended in Swift receiving a mortal wound in the breast.

Elphinstone was indicted for this act before the High Court of Justiciary; but the case was never brought forward, and the young man died without molestation at Leith three years after.

1730.

The merit of the invention of that noble instrument, the Reflecting Telescope, is allowed to rest with David Gregory, a native of Scotland, although that of first completing one (in 1671) is due to the illustrious Newton. It was thought very desirable by Sir Isaac to substitute glass for metallic reflectors; but fifty years elapsed without the idea being realised, when at length, about this date, a very young Edinburgh artist, named James Short, ‘executed no fewer than six reflecting telescopes with glass specula, three of which were fifteen inches, and three nine inches in focal length,’ to which Professor Maclaurin gave his approbation, though ultimately their light was found fainter than was deemed necessary.

Two years afterwards, when Short had only attained the age of twenty-two, he began to enter into competition with the English makers of reflecting telescopes, but without attempting to make specula of glass. ‘To such perfection did he carry the art of grinding and polishing metallic specula, and of giving them the true parabolic figure, that, with a telescope of fifteen inches in focal length, he and Mr Bayne, Professor of Law in the University of Edinburgh, read the Philosophical Transactions at the distance of five hundred feet, and several times, particularly on the 24th of November and the 7th of December 1734, they saw the five satellites of Saturn together, an achievement beyond the reach of Hadley’s six-feet telescope.’

This ingenious man, attaining some celebrity for the making of reflecting telescopes, was induced, in 1742, to settle in London, where for a number of years he continued to use his remarkable 568|1730.| talents in this way, occasionally furnishing instruments at high prices to royal personages throughout Europe.^[704]

Oct. 26.

One William Muir, brother of two men who had recently been hanged at Ayr for theft, was this day tried before a jury, for housebreaking, by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, acting as ‘High Sheriff within burgh.’ The man was condemned to death, and the sentence was duly executed on the ensuing 2d of December, he dying penitent.^[705]

It seems strange to us, but about this time the condemnation of criminals to capital punishment by sheriffs of counties, and by the chief-magistrate of Edinburgh, was by no means infrequent, being entirely in accordance with the statutory arrangements of the country. Nay more, great territorial lords, especially in the Highlands, still acted upon their ancient privileges of pit and gallows. It is related that the Duke of Athole one day received at Blair an application from his baron-bailie for pardon to a man whom he had condemned to be hanged for theft, but who was a person of such merits otherwise that it seemed a pity to put justice in force against him. The Lord President Forbes, who had stopped to dine with his Grace in the course of a journey to Edinburgh, expressed his surprise that the power of pardoning a condemned criminal should be attributed to any person but the king. ‘Since I have the power of punishing,’ said the duke, ‘it is but right that I should have the power of pardoning.’ Then, calling a servant, he quietly added: ‘Send an express to Logierait, and order Donald Stewart, presently under sentence, to be set at liberty.’^[706]

We are now arrived at a time which seems to mark very decidedly a transition in Scotland from poverty to growing wealth, from the puritanic manners of the seventeenth century to the semi-licence and ease of the eighteenth, from narrow to liberal education, and consequently from restricted to expanded views. It may, therefore, be proper here to introduce a few general observations.

Although, only a few years back, we find Wodrow speaking of the general poverty, it is remarkable that, after this time, complaints on that point are not heard in almost any quarter. The 569|1730.| influx of commercial prosperity at Glasgow had now fairly set in, and the linen manufacture and other branches of industry begin to be a good deal spoken of. Agricultural improvements and the decoration of the country by wood had now been commenced. There was great chafing under the taxation introduced after the Union, and smuggling was popular, and the revenue-officers were detested; yet the people had become able to endure the deductions made from their income. Thus did matters go on during the time between 1725 and 1745, making a slow but sensible advance—nothing like what took place after the question of the dynasty had been settled at Culloden, but yet such as to very considerably affect the condition of the people. Much of this was owing to the pacific policy of Sir Robert Walpole, to whom, with all his faults, the British people certainly owe more than to any minister before Sir Robert Peel.

If we wish to realise the manners before this period, we must think of the Scotch as a people living in a part of Britain remote from the centre—peninsulated and off at a side—enjoying little intercourse with strangers; but, above all, as a people on whom the theology of the Puritans, with all their peculiar views regarding the forms of religion and the arrangements of a church, had taken a powerful hold. Down to 1730, all respectable persons in Scotland, with but the slightest exceptions, maintained a strictly evangelical creed, went regularly to church, and kept up daily family-worship. Nay, it had become a custom that every house should contain a small closet built on purpose, to which the head of the family could retire at stated times for his personal or private devotions, which were usually of a protracted kind, and often accompanied by great motions and groanings, expressive of an intense sense of human worthlessness without the divine favour. On Sunday, the whole family, having first gathered for prayers in the parlour, proceeded at ten to church. At half-past twelve, they came home for a light dinner of cold viands (none being cooked on this sacred day), to return at two for an afternoon service of about two hours. The remainder of the day was devoted to private devotions, catechising of children, and the reading of pious books, excepting a space of time set aside for supper, which in many families was a comfortable meal, and an occasion, the only one during the day, when a little cheerful conversation was indulged in. Invariably, the day was closed with a repetition of family prayers.

It was customary for serious people to draw up a written paper, 570|1730.| in which they formally devoted themselves to the service of God—a sort of personal covenant with their Maker—and to renew this each year at the time of the celebration of the communion by a fresh signature with the date. The subscriber expressed his entire satisfaction with the scheme of Christian salvation, avowed his willingness to take the Lord to be his all-sufficient portion, and to be resigned to his will and providence in all things. He also expressed his resolution to be mortified to the world, and to engage heartily and steadfastly persevere in the performance of all religious duties. An earnest prayer for the divine help usually closed this document.

As all were trained to look up to the Deity with awe and terror, so, with the same feelings, were children accustomed to look up to their parents, and servants to their masters. Amongst the upper classes, the head of the family was for the most part an awful personage, who sat in a special chair by the fireside, and at the head of the table, with his hat on, often served at meals with special dishes, which no one else, not even guests, partook of. In all the arrangements of the house, his convenience and tastes were primarily studied. His children approached him with fear, and never spoke with any freedom before him. At meals, the lady of the house helped every one as she herself might choose. The dishes were at once ill-cooked and ill-served. It was thought unmeet for man that he should be nice about food. Nicety and love of rich feeding were understood to be hateful peculiarities of the English, and unworthy of the people who had been so much more favoured by God in a knowledge of matters of higher concern.

There was, nevertheless, a great amount of hospitality. And here it is to be observed, that the poverty of those old times had less effect on the entertainments of the higher classes than might have been expected. What helped the gentlefolks in this respect, was the custom of receiving considerable payments from their tenants in kind. This enabled them to indulge in a rude abundance at home, while their means of living in a town-house, or in an inn while travelling, was probably very limited. We must further remember the abundance of game in Scotland, how every moor teemed with grouse and black-cock, and every lake and river with fish. These furnished large supplies for the table of the laird, both in Lowlands and Highlands; and I feel convinced that the miserable picture drawn by a modern historian of the way of living among the northern chiefs is untrue to a 571|1730.| large extent, mainly by his failure to take such resources into account.

A lady, born in 1714, who has left a valuable set of reminiscences of her early days, lays great stress on the home-staying life of the Scottish gentry. She says that this result of their narrow circumstances kept their minds in a contracted state, and caused them to regard all manners and habits different from their own with prejudice. The adult had few intelligent books to read; neither did journals then exist to give them a knowledge of public affairs. The children, kept at a distance by their parents, lived much amongst themselves or with underlings, and grew up with little of either knowledge or refinement. Restrained within a narrow social circle, they often contracted improper marriages. It was not thought necessary in those days that young ladies should acquire a sound knowledge of even their own language, much less of French, German, or Italian; nor were many of them taught music or any other refined accomplishment. ‘The chief thing required was to hear them psalms and long catechisms, in which they were employed an hour or more every day, and almost the whole day on Sunday. They were allowed to run about and amuse themselves in the way they choosed, even to the age of woman, at which time they were generally sent to Edinburgh for a winter or two, to learn to dress themselves, and to dance, and see a little of the world. The world was only to be seen at church, at marriages, burials, and baptisms.... When in the country, their employment was in coloured work, beds, tapestry, and other pieces of furniture; imitations of fruits and flowers, with very little taste. If they read any, it was either books of devotion or long romances, and sometimes both.’

Previous to this time, the universal dress of the middle classes was of plain country cloth, much of it what was called hodden gray—that is, cloth spun at home from the undyed wool. Gentlemen of figure wore English or foreign cloth, and their clothes were costly in comparison with other articles. We find, for instance, a gentleman at his marriage, in 1711, paying £340 Scots for two suits, a night-gown, and a suit to his servant. Linen being everywhere made at home—the spinning executed by the servants during the long winter evenings, and the weaving by the village webster—there was a general abundance of napery and of under-clothing. Holland, being about six shillings an ell, was worn only by men of refinement. ‘I remember,’ says the lady aforesaid, ‘in the ‘30 or ‘31, of a ball where it was agreed 572|1730.| that the company should be dressed in nothing but what was manufactured in the country. My sisters were as well dressed as any, and their gowns were striped linen at 2s. 6d. per yard. Their heads and ruffles were of Paisley muslins, at 4s. 6d., with fourpenny edging from Hamilton; all of them the finest that could be had.... At the time I mention, hoops were constantly worn four and a half yards wide, which required much silk to cover them; and gold and silver were much used for trimming, never less than three rows round the petticoat; so that, though the silk was slight, the price was increased by the trimming. Then the heads were all dressed in laces from Flanders; no blondes or course-edging used: the price of these was high, but two suits would serve for life; they were not renewed but at marriage, or some great event. Who could not afford these wore fringes of thread.’ In those days, the ladies went to church, and appeared on other public occasions, in full dress. A row of them so rigged out, taking a place in the procession at the opening of the General Assembly, used to be spoken of by old people as a fine show. When a lady appeared in undress on the streets of Edinburgh, she generally wore a mask, which, however, seems to have been regarded as simply an equivalent for the veil of modern times.

One marked peculiarity of old times, was the union of fine parade and elegant dressing with vulgarity of thought, speech, and act. The seemliness and delicacy observed now-a-days regarding both marriages and births were unknown long ago. We have seen how a bridal in high life was conducted in the reign of Queen Anne.^[707] Let us now observe the ceremonials connected with a birth at the same period. ‘On the fourth week after the lady’s delivery, she is set on her bed on a low footstool; the bed covered with some neat piece of sewed work or white sattin, with three pillows at her back covered with the same; she in full dress with a lappet head-dress and a fan in her hand. Having informed her acquaintance what day she is to see company, they all come and pay their respects to her, standing, or walking a little through the room (for there’s no chairs). They drink a glass of wine and eat a bit of cake, and then give place to others. Towards the end of the week, all the friends are asked to what was called the Cummers’ Feast.^[708] This was a supper where every gentleman brought a pint of wine to be drunk by 573|1730.| him and his wife. The supper was a ham at the head, and a pyramid of fowl at the bottom. This dish consisted of four or five ducks at bottom, hens above, and partridges at top. There was an eating posset in the middle of the table, with dried fruits and sweetmeats at the sides. When they had finished their supper, the meat was removed, and in a moment everybody flies to the sweetmeats to pocket them. Upon which a scramble ensued; chairs overturned, and everything on the table; wrestling and pulling at one another with the utmost noise. When all was quiet, they went to the stoups (for there were no bottles), of which the women had a good share; for though it was a disgrace to be seen drunk, yet it was none to be a little intoxicat in good company.’

Any one who has observed the conduct of stiff people, when on special occasions they break out from their reserve, will have no difficulty in reconciling such childish frolics with the general sombreness of old Scottish life.

It is to be observed that, while puritanic rigour was characteristic of the great bulk of society, there had been from the Restoration a minority of a more indulgent complexion. These were generally persons of rank, and adherents of Episcopacy and the House of Stuart. Such tendency as there was in the country to music, to theatricals, to elegant literature, resided with this party almost exclusively. After the long dark interval which ensued upon the death of Drummond, Sir George Mackenzie, the ‘persecutor,’ was the first to attempt the cultivation of the belles-lettres in Scotland. Dr Pitcairn was the centre of a small circle of wits who, a little later, devoted themselves to the Muses, but who composed exclusively in Latin. When Addison, Steele, Pope, and Swift were conferring Augustine glories on the reign of Anne in England, there was scarcely a single writer of polite English in Scotland; but under George I., we find Ramsay tuning his rustic reed, and making himself known even in the south, notwithstanding the peculiarity of his language. These men were all of them unsympathetic with the old church Calvinism of their native country—as, indeed, have been nearly all the eminent cultivators of letters in Scotland down to the present time. We learn that copies of the Tatler and Spectator found their way into Scotland; and we hear not only of gentlemen, but of clergymen reading them. Allan Ramsay lent out the plays of Congreve and Farquhar at his shop in Edinburgh. Periodical amateur concerts were commenced, as we have seen, as early as 1717. The Easy Club—to 574|1730.| which Ramsay belonged—and other social fraternities of the same kind, were at the same time enjoying their occasional convivialities in Edinburgh. A small miscellany of verse, published in Edinburgh in 1720, makes us aware that there were then residing there several young aspirants to the laurel, including two who have since obtained places in the roll of the British poets—namely, Thomson and Mallet—and also Mr Henry Home of Kames, and Mr Joseph Mitchell: moreover, we gather from this little volume, that there was in Edinburgh a ‘Fair Intellectual Club,’ an association, we must presume, of young ladies who were disposed to cultivate a taste for the belles-lettres. About this time, the tea-table began to be a point of reunion for the upper classes. At four in the afternoon, the gentlemen and ladies would assemble round a multitude of small china cups, each recognisable by the number of the little silver spoon connected with it, and from these the lady of the house would dispense an almost endless series of libations, while lively chat and gossip went briskly on, but it is to be feared, in most circles, little conversation of what would now be called an intellectual cast. On these occasions, the singing of a Scottish song to an accompaniment on the spinet was considered a graceful accomplishment; and certainly no superior treat was to be had.

Lady playing on Spinet, with Violoncello Accompaniment.—From a volume entitled Music for Tea-table Miscellany, published by Allan Ramsay.