--The town carries the
appearance
of
rude, decayed grandeur--charmingly rural, retired situation.
rude, decayed grandeur--charmingly rural, retired situation.
Robert Forst
Luke's, Edinburgh by James Carmichael, Wm.
Grieve, Daniel Dow,
John Clay, Robert Grieve, &c. &c. Robert Ainslie paid one guinea
admission dues; but on account of R. Burns's remarkable poetical
genius, the encampment unanimously agreed to admit him gratis, and
considered themselves honoured by having a man of such shining
abilities for one of their companions. "
Extracted from the Minute Book of the Lodge by THOMAS
BOWBILL]
* * * * *
THE HIGHLAND TOUR.
25_th August_, 1787.
I leave Edinburgh for a northern tour, in company with my good friend
Mr. Nicol, whose originality of humour promises me much
entertainment. --Linlithgow--a fertile improved country--West Lothian.
The more elegance and luxury among the farmers, I always observe in
equal proportion, the rudeness and stupidity of the peasantry. This
remark I have made all over the Lothians, Merse, Roxburgh, &c. For
this, among other reasons, I think that a man of romantic taste, a
"Man of Feeling," will be better pleased with the poverty, but
intelligent minds of the peasantry in Ayrshire (peasantry they are all
below the justice of peace) than the opulence of a club of Merse
farmers, when at the same time, he considers the vandalism of their
plough-folks, &c. I carry this idea so far, that an unenclosed, half
improven country is to me actually more agreeable, and gives me more
pleasure as a prospect, than a country cultivated like a garden. --Soil
about Linlithgow light and thin.
--The town carries the appearance of
rude, decayed grandeur--charmingly rural, retired situation. The old
royal palace a tolerably fine, but melancholy ruin--sweetly situated
on a small elevation, by the brink of a loch. Shown the room where the
beautiful, injured Mary Queen of Scots was born--a pretty good old
Gothic church. The infamous stool of repentance standing, in the old
Romish way, on a lofty situation.
What a poor pimping business is a Presbyterian place of worship;
dirty, narrow, and squalid; stuck in a corner of old popish grandeur
such as Linlithgow, and much more, Melrose! Ceremony and show, if
judiciously thrown in, absolutely necessary for the bulk of mankind,
both in religious and civil matters. --Dine. --Go to my friend
Smith's at Avon printfield--find nobody but Mrs. Miller, an agreeable,
sensible, modest, good body; as useful, but not so ornamental as
Fielding's Miss Western--not rigidly polite _a la Francais_, but easy,
hospitable, and housewifely.
An old lady from Paisley, a Mrs. Lawson, whom I promised to call for
in Paisley--like old lady W----, and still more like Mrs. C----, her
conversation is pregnant with strong sense and just remark, but like
them, a certain air of self-importance and a _duresse_ in the eye,
seem to indicate, as the Ayrshire wife observed of her cow, that "she
had a mind o' her ain. "
Pleasant view of Dunfermline and the rest of the fertile coast of
Fife, as we go down to that dirty, ugly place, Borrowstones--see a
horse-race and call on a friend of Mr. Nicol's, a Bailie Cowan, of
whom I know too little to attempt his portrait--Come through the rich
carse of Falkirk to pass the night. Falkirk nothing remarkable except
the tomb of Sir John the Graham, over which, in the succession of
time, four stones have been placed. --Camelon, the ancient metropolis
of the Picts, now a small village in the neighbourhood of
Falkirk.
John Clay, Robert Grieve, &c. &c. Robert Ainslie paid one guinea
admission dues; but on account of R. Burns's remarkable poetical
genius, the encampment unanimously agreed to admit him gratis, and
considered themselves honoured by having a man of such shining
abilities for one of their companions. "
Extracted from the Minute Book of the Lodge by THOMAS
BOWBILL]
* * * * *
THE HIGHLAND TOUR.
25_th August_, 1787.
I leave Edinburgh for a northern tour, in company with my good friend
Mr. Nicol, whose originality of humour promises me much
entertainment. --Linlithgow--a fertile improved country--West Lothian.
The more elegance and luxury among the farmers, I always observe in
equal proportion, the rudeness and stupidity of the peasantry. This
remark I have made all over the Lothians, Merse, Roxburgh, &c. For
this, among other reasons, I think that a man of romantic taste, a
"Man of Feeling," will be better pleased with the poverty, but
intelligent minds of the peasantry in Ayrshire (peasantry they are all
below the justice of peace) than the opulence of a club of Merse
farmers, when at the same time, he considers the vandalism of their
plough-folks, &c. I carry this idea so far, that an unenclosed, half
improven country is to me actually more agreeable, and gives me more
pleasure as a prospect, than a country cultivated like a garden. --Soil
about Linlithgow light and thin.
--The town carries the appearance of
rude, decayed grandeur--charmingly rural, retired situation. The old
royal palace a tolerably fine, but melancholy ruin--sweetly situated
on a small elevation, by the brink of a loch. Shown the room where the
beautiful, injured Mary Queen of Scots was born--a pretty good old
Gothic church. The infamous stool of repentance standing, in the old
Romish way, on a lofty situation.
What a poor pimping business is a Presbyterian place of worship;
dirty, narrow, and squalid; stuck in a corner of old popish grandeur
such as Linlithgow, and much more, Melrose! Ceremony and show, if
judiciously thrown in, absolutely necessary for the bulk of mankind,
both in religious and civil matters. --Dine. --Go to my friend
Smith's at Avon printfield--find nobody but Mrs. Miller, an agreeable,
sensible, modest, good body; as useful, but not so ornamental as
Fielding's Miss Western--not rigidly polite _a la Francais_, but easy,
hospitable, and housewifely.
An old lady from Paisley, a Mrs. Lawson, whom I promised to call for
in Paisley--like old lady W----, and still more like Mrs. C----, her
conversation is pregnant with strong sense and just remark, but like
them, a certain air of self-importance and a _duresse_ in the eye,
seem to indicate, as the Ayrshire wife observed of her cow, that "she
had a mind o' her ain. "
Pleasant view of Dunfermline and the rest of the fertile coast of
Fife, as we go down to that dirty, ugly place, Borrowstones--see a
horse-race and call on a friend of Mr. Nicol's, a Bailie Cowan, of
whom I know too little to attempt his portrait--Come through the rich
carse of Falkirk to pass the night. Falkirk nothing remarkable except
the tomb of Sir John the Graham, over which, in the succession of
time, four stones have been placed. --Camelon, the ancient metropolis
of the Picts, now a small village in the neighbourhood of
Falkirk.
