grovelling calculators, whether in business or politics, consider refined and generous pursuits as romance and folly; and, without either a sense of honour, or regard to natu re, truth, and justice, study, in all things, not what is graceful, excellent, and right, but what, at the moment, seems advantageous or prudent. But the true and accomplished nobleman considers nothing as foreign to himself that is interesting to human nature, admires virtue for her own sake, loves his country, the centre of every association of moral ideas, prefers glory to riches, and, instead of bowing to present power and upstart authority, devotes his attentions to great and permanent objects. He promotes the happiness with the improvement of mankind, intellectual and moral.

I therefore hope, my lord, that you will extend your noble and generous patronage and protection to my book: which has much need of such patronage and protection, as a counterbalance to that odium which will arise from a free exposure of grievances and. abuses; and these too, in one instance, ex

isting to a flagrant degree, in a quarter where they were but little to be suspected.

The case, my lord, to which I allude has a particular claim to the consideration and care of a family, renowned for their love of the muses, and the love with which that is returned.

I have the honour to subscribe myself,

My Lord,

With the profoundest esteem,

Your Lordship's

Obedient and humble servant,

JAMES HALL.

LONDON,

June 4, 1806.

TRAVELS IN SCOTLAND.

FROM EDINBURGH TO STIRLING.

HAVING procured letters of recommendation to some of the best informed men in the places I meant to visit, I left Edinburgh, the 15th of April, 1803, on a Tour to the North.

As most of the travellers who have written their remarks, have chosen summer or harvest for their journey, I also wished to see the aspect of the country when the mountains were beginning to lay aside. their winter garb. Therefore, bidding adieu to my friends in the capital, I prepared for my jour

ney.

As there never was and never will be any thriving city or village at a distance from water carriage, and, as every large city or town always has been and always will be situated either on the sea-coast or the banks of some navigable river, I resolved to travel the whole of the sea-coast of Scotland, as also the banks of her most eminent rivers; and, while I thus amused myself, to compare the local improvements, the notions, customs, and follies of the people, with what they are represented to have been in former times; with those existing at present in a sister kingdom; and to

B

make, if I could, from the comparisons that might occur, some observations of a practical and useful

nature.

When I came to the Queen's Ferry, so called because Margaret, Malcolm III's Queen, used frequently to pass there in her way to and from Dumfermline, where she resided, I saw one of the passage boats labouring much, and with difficulty turned by the boatman. The ships of the antients, particularly large ones (and Diodorus Siculus tells us that some of them were so large as to contain from three to four thousand men) had always two helms, or rudders; one at the stem or prow, and another at the stern; and sometimes one at each side, as we see in large barges on the Thames at this day. Now as men in a boat with an oar at each end, acting in different directions, produce the same effect, and assist one another in turning her, might not a helm, or rudder at the stem as well as the stern of boats and other vessels, to be shipped and unshipped at pleasure, upon many occasions, be useful?

At Hopetoun House, the seat of the Earl of Hopetoun, I was much pleased with its beauty and elegance; its delightful situation, commanding an extensive view of the Frith of Forth, which once bounded the Roman Empire, and protected the Saxons from the incursions of the Scots; and the correctness and elegance of taste displayed in the extensive pleasure grounds around this splendid. mansion.

The charter to this extensive estate is, I understand, a small slip of parchment, not bigger than