tely to many persons is either
dismal or insipid. This moor, however, was more than commonly
interesting; we could see a long way, and on every side of us were larger
or smaller tracts of cultivated land. Some were extensive farms, yet in
so large a waste they did but look small, with farm-houses, barns, etc.,
others like little cottages, with enough to feed a cow, and supply the
family with vegetables. In looking at these farms we had always one
feeling. Why did the plough stop there? Why might not they as well have
carried it twice as far? There were no hedgerows near the farms, and
very few trees. As we were passing along, we saw an old man, the first
we had seen in a Highland bonnet, walking with a staff at a very slow
pace by the edge of one of the moorland cornfields; he wore a grey plaid,
and a dog was by his side. There was a scriptural solemnity in this
man's figure, a sober simplicity which was most impressive. Scotland is
the country above all others that I have seen, in which a man of
imagination may carve out his own pleasures. There are so many
_inhabited_ solitudes, and the employments of the people are so
immediately connected with the places where you find them, and their
dresses so simple, so much alike, yet, from their being folding garments,
admitting of an endless variety, and falling often so gracefully.

After some time we descended towards a broad vale, passed one farm-house,
sheltered by fir trees, with a burn close to it; children playing, linen
bleaching. The vale was open pastures and corn-fields unfenced, the land
poor. The village of Crawfordjohn on the slope of a hill a long way
before us to the left. Asked about our road of a man who was driving a
cart; he told us to go through the village, then along some fields, and
we should come to a 'herd's house by the burn side.' The highway was
right through the vale, unfenced on either side; the people of the
village, who were making hay, all stared at us and our carriage. We
inquired the road of a middle-aged man, dressed in a shabby black coat,
at work in one of the hay fields; he looked like the minister of the
place, and when he spoke we felt assured that he was so, for he was not
sparing of hard words, which, however, he used with great propriety, and
he spoke like one who had been accustomed to dictate. Our car wanted
mending in the wheel, and we asked him if there was a blacksmith in the
village. 'Yes,' he replied, but when