le better. 'On
Sunday morning,' he relates, 'I was sixty-four miles from London,
and had only one shilling in my pocket. I was hungry, but durst not
eat; thirsty, and I durst not drink, for fear of being obliged to
lie all night at the side of a hedge in a cold night in December.
After dark, I travelled over to Bagshot; was denied admittance into
some of the public-houses, ill used in others.' He sought in vain
permission even to lie in a barn; but a labourer he fortunately fell
in with conducted him to a house, where, at the sacrifice of his
last shilling, he secured at length a bed. The next day--foot-sore,
penniless, and starving--he entered London. After remaining there a
brief space--January 1784--in spite of the inclement season, he set
off, again on foot, to Perth--a journey that occupied him three
weeks, as he was detained on the way by some friends whom he
visited. At Perth, where his old regiment then lay previous to its
disbandment, he amused himself by studying Gaelic, and the
controversy respecting Ossian and his poems. Quitting Perth, he
travelled, still on foot, through the Highlands, the inhabitants of
which he was, in the first instance, disposed to class with savages;
but when he had observed the originality of conception, the breadth
of humour, and the elevated sentiments which mark the Celt, his
opinions underwent a total revolution. He was especially delighted
with a ragged old reiver or cattle-lifter whom he encountered, and
who had given shelter to the Young Chevalier in the braes of
Glenmoriston after the battle of Culloden.

On his return to Edinburgh, Jackson married a lady of fortune, the
daughter of Dr Stephenson, and niece of his old friend Colonel
Francis Shelley, of the 71st regiment; and was enabled by this
accession to his means once again to visit Paris, where he not only
resumed his medical studies, but acquired the mastery of several
languages, Arabic amongst the rest. Having graduated M.D. at Leyden,
he came back again to England, and commenced practice at
Stockton-upon-Tees, in Durham. Although his reputation speedily
became considerable, especially in cases of fever, he seems scarcely
to have liked his new avocation. He found solace, however, in his
favourite study of languages, which he pursued with unremitting
ardour--constantly reading through the Greek and Latin classics, and
not only rendering himself familiar with the best works of the
modern continental authors, but also w