tages over those of the south, which the Scotch peasants have over the English. I know not altogether to what these advantages enjoyed by the lower orders may be owing;-their better edu cation is of course the first and most obvious source their more sterile soil-and, consequently, their less luxurious life, may be others almost as efficient. Above all, the picturesque aspect of their ever various landscapes, cannot fail to exert a powerful influence on the opening mind of their youth. But in some of these things, at least, the peasantry of particular districts in England share abundantly, and I think there are some pretty extensive tracts on the continent where the whole of these circumstances, or very nearly so, are found acting together, without producing any such similarity of effect as might have been expected. I suspect that we must go further back if we would arrive at any satisfactory solution-Of this too hereafter.

The gentry, however, have no pretensions to a more intelligent exterior than their neighbours of the south. The truth is, that certain indications of worldly quicksightedness, which please on the face, and in the air of a peasant, produce quite a different effect when exhibited in the

case of a person of superior rank. One rather wishes to see these things kept under in the appearance of a person of education, than suspects their non-existence in the totality of his character. Without wanting their due proportion of the national enthusiasm, the Scottish gentry seem to shew much fewer symptoms of it than those below them; and this is a sufficiently natural result of their sense of their own comparative importance. It is a result, notwithstanding, which tends to make any thing but a favourable impression on the mind of a stranger.

High and low, they are, for the most part, a race of tall, well-formed people; active of limb, and powerful of muscle; leaner by far than the English;-(for here a very fat man is stared at, and one of such bulk as is met with at every corner in London, must, it would seem, lay his account with a little quizzing from all his friends on the subject of his obesity.) In their gait and gestures, they have neither the vivacity of the Frenchman, nor the noble gravity of the Spaniard, nor the stable heavy vigour of the Englishman; but a certain grotesque mixture of elasticity and sedateness, which is sufficient to prove their descent from a hardy and warlike set of marauders, the effects of whose subathric exist

ence have not yet been washed out by any great influx of idleness or luxury; and, at the same time, under favour, to remind one with what zeal these progenitors exerted all their energies, in behalf of the most taciturn species of fanaticism that was ever made subservient to the purposes of ghostly ambition. When a man visits France, whether he be a believer or a despiser of the doctrine of the Spurzheims, he must look long around him before he can find any face which he could imagine to be the property of one lineally sprung from the loins of the Bayards and the Duguesclins, or, if you will, of the Harlays, and the Du Thous. But here the deterioration of the species, if such there be, has scarcely begun to tell upon their physiognomies; and you meet, at every step, persons who have that about them which would prevent you from being at all astonished, if you should be told immediately afterwards, that they could trace themselves, without difficulty, to the Burleighs and the Claverhouses,-I had almost said, the Bellthe-Cats, and the Kirkpatricks.

I have not, as yet, seen a great deal of the women. Those, even of the peasantry, seem, when young, to be comely and well-complexioned; but it is a great mistake to suppose that they

are fairer than with us. And yet the testimony of travellers cannot be entirely despised; and if their report is in any degree a correct one, light hair, and light eyes, were almost universal at no very remote period. This is a circumstance that has often appeared to me to be very inadequately accounted for,—I mean the great and remarkable change that has taken place in the complexions not only of the Scotch, but of the English, and indeed of all the Gothic nations of Europe. When the Romans first became acquainted with the Germans and the Britons, there can be no question that both the gentlemen and the ladies of those nations had yellow locks and blue eyes; and you have heard, no doubt, that the Roman belles, stimulated, it is to be suspected, by the stories of their campaigning husbands and lovers, endeavoured, by a thousand tricks of the toilette, to muster charms as nearly as they could in the same taste. You well know, that the Messalinas and Poppæas used to cut off the finest black curls in the world, to make room for false tetes manufactured from the hair of the poor girls of the Sicambri and the Batavi, while others strove to produce the same sort of effect by means of hair-powder made of gold-dust, and washes, of more cunning chemis

try than I would undertake to describe. Even in far later times, so late as Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, Erasmus and Paul Henztner represent the ladies of England as being, with very few exceptions, blondes; and such, if voyagers of less illustrious reputation may be in aught believed,” not much above a hundred years ago, were the far greater portion of the beaux and belles of Scotland.

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Sandy-haired" is still one of the standing epithets applied to the ideal Scot, by all inexperienced persons, who introduce any description of him into novels or satires-witness Churchill, and a thousand of less note; and I confess, that I was myself prepared to find the case much more as they have represented it, than I really have done. By looking around me at home, and remembering what the old writers had said of ourselves, I might have learned to be more suspicious of their accuracy; but the truth is, I had never taken the pains to think much about the matter. In fact, they are now as far from being a light-haired people as we are. I amused myself (God forgive me) with counting the number of fair heads last Sunday in a very crowded church, and, I assure you, they did not amount to one in fifty. There are