usible, and as easily invented, since they might be attended with
a slight inconvenience of being known to be lies. Let me then speak
truth. An hereditary indolence (I have it from the mother's side) has
hitherto prevented my writing to you, and still prevents my writing
at least twenty-five letters more, due to my friends in Ireland. No
turnspit dog gets up into his wheel with more reluctance than I sit
down to write; yet no dog ever loved the roast meat he turns better
than I do him I now address. Yet what shall I say now I'm entered?
Shall I tire you with a description of this unfruitful country;
where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their
valleys scarce able to feed a rabbit? Man alone seems to be the only
creature who has arrived to the natural size in this poor soil. Every
part of the country presents the same dismal landscape. No grove, nor
brook, lend their music to cheer the stranger, or make the inhabitants
forget their poverty. Yet with all these disadvantages, enough to
call him down to humility, the Scotchman is one of the proudest things
alive. The poor have pride ever ready to relieve them. If mankind
should happen to despise them, they are masters of their own
admiration; and _that_ they can plentifully bestow upon themselves.

From their pride and poverty, as I take it, results one advantage this
country enjoys; namely, the gentlemen here are much better bred than
amongst us. No such characters here as our fox-hunters; and they have
expressed great surprise when I informed them that some men in Ireland
of one thousand pounds a-year spend their whole lives in running after
a hare, and drinking to be drunk; and truly, if such a being, equipped
in his hunting dress, came among a circle of Scotch gentry, they would
behold him with the same astonishment that a countryman would King
George on horseback.

The men here have generally high cheek-bones, and are lean and
swarthy, fond of action, dancing in particular. Though now I mention
dancing, let me say something of their balls, which are very frequent
here. When a stranger enters the dancing-hall, he sees one end of
the room taken up with the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by
themselves; on the other end stand their pensive partners that are to
be; but no more intercourse between the sexes than there is between
two countries at war. The ladies indeed may ogle, and the gentlemen
sigh; but an embargo is laid on any closer commer