Part 18 (2/2)

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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 s.e.xes 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 commerce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady directress, or intendant, or what you will, pitches on a gentleman and lady to walk a minuet; which they perform with a formality that approaches to despondence. After five or six couple have thus walked the gauntlet, all stand up to country dances; each gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid lady directress; so they dance much and say nothing, and thus concludes our a.s.sembly. I told a Scotch gentleman that such profound silence resembled the ancient procession of the Roman matrons in honour of Ceres; and the Scotch gentleman told me (and, faith, I believe he was right) that I was a very great pedant for my pains.

Now I am come to the ladies; and to show that I love Scotland, and everything that belongs to so charming a country, I insist on it, and will give him leave to break my head that denies it--that the Scotch ladies are ten thousand times handsomer and finer than the Irish. To be sure, now, I see your sisters Betty and Peggy vastly surprised at my partiality, but tell them flatly, I don't value them, or their fine skins, or eyes, or good sense, or--, a potato; for I say it, and will maintain it, and as a convincing proof (I'm in a very great pa.s.sion) of what I a.s.sert, the Scotch ladies say it themselves. But to be less serious; where will you find a language so pretty become a pretty mouth as the broad Scotch? and the women here speak it in its highest purity; for instance, teach one of their young ladies to p.r.o.nounce 'Wh.o.a.r wull I gong?' with a becoming wideness of mouth, and I'll lay my life they will wound every hearer.

We have no such character here as a coquet, but alas! how many envious prudes! Some days ago I walked into my Lord Kilcoubry's (don't be surprised, my lord is but a glover), when the d.u.c.h.ess of Hamilton (that fair who sacrificed her beauty to ambition, and her inward peace to a t.i.tle and gilt equipage) pa.s.sed by in her chariot; her battered husband, or more properly the guardian of her charms, sat by her side.

Straight envy began, in the shape of no less than three ladies who sat with me, to find faults in her faultless form.--'For my part,' says the first, 'I think what I always thought, that the d.u.c.h.ess has too much red in her complexion.' 'Madam, I'm of your opinion,' says the second; 'I think her face has a palish cast too much on the delicate order.' 'And let me tell you,' adds the third lady, whose mouth was puckered up to the size of an issue, 'that the d.u.c.h.ess has fine lips, but she wants a mouth.'--At this every lady drew up her lips as if going to p.r.o.nounce the letter P.

But how ill, my Bob, does it become me to ridicule women with whom I have scarce any correspondence! There are, 'tis certain, handsome women here; and 'tis as certain there are handsome men to keep them company. An ugly and a poor man is society for himself; and such society the world lets me enjoy in great abundance. Fortune has given you circ.u.mstances, and nature a person to look charming in the eyes of the fair world. Nor do I envy my dear Bob such blessings, while I may sit down and laugh at the world and at myself, the most ridiculous object in it. But I begin to grow splenetic, and perhaps the fit may continue till I receive an answer to this. I know you can't send news from Ballymahon, but such as it is, send it all; everything you write will be agreeable and entertaining to me.

Has George Conway put up a sign yet; or John Finecly left off drinking drams; or Tom Allen got a new wig? But I leave to your own choice what to write. While Oliver Goldsmith lives, know you have a friend.

PS.--Give my sincere respects (not compliments, do you mind) to your agreeable family, and give my service to my mother, if you see her; for, as you express it in Ireland, I have a sneaking kindness for her still.

Direct to me,--Student in Physic, in Edinburgh.

TO HIS UNCLE CONTARINE

_In Holland_,

Leyden, _April_ or _May, 1754_.

DEAR SIR,

I suppose by this time I am accused of either neglect or ingrat.i.tude, and my silence imputed to my usual slowness of writing. But believe me, Sir, when I say, that till now I had not an opportunity of sitting down with that ease of mind which writing required. You may see by the top of the letter that I am at Leyden; but of my journey hither you must be informed. Some time after the receipt of your last, I embarked for Bordeaux, on board a Scotch s.h.i.+p called the _St. Andrews_, Capt.

John Wall, master. The s.h.i.+p made a tolerable appearance, and as another inducement, I was let to know that six agreeable pa.s.sengers were to be my company. Well, we were but two days at sea when a storm drove us into a city of England called Newcastle-upon-Tyne. We all went ash.o.r.e to refresh us after the fatigue of our voyage. Seven men and I were one day on sh.o.r.e, and on the following evening as we were all very merry, the room door bursts open, enters a sergeant and twelve grenadiers with their bayonets screwed, and puts us all under the King's arrest. It seems my company were Scotchmen in the French service, and had been in Scotland to enlist soldiers for the French army. I endeavoured all I could to prove my innocence; however, I remained in prison with the rest a fortnight, and with difficulty got off even then. Dear Sir, keep this all a secret, or at least say it was for debt; for if it were once known at the University, I should hardly get a degree. But hear how Providence interposed in my favour; the s.h.i.+p was gone on to Bordeaux before I got from prison, and was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and every one of the crew were drowned. It happened the last great storm. There was a s.h.i.+p at that time ready for Holland. I embarked, and in nine days, thank my G.o.d, I arrived safe at Rotterdam; whence I travelled by land to Leyden; and whence I now write.

You may expect some account of this country, and though I am not well qualified for such an undertaking, yet shall I endeavour to satisfy some part of your expectations. Nothing surprised me more than the books every day published, descriptive of the manners of this country.

Any young man who takes it into his head to publish his travels, visits the countries he intends to describe; pa.s.ses through them with as much inattention as his _valet de chambre_; and consequently not having a fund himself to fill a volume, he applies to those who wrote before him, and gives us the manners of a country, not as he must have seen them, but such as they might have been fifty years before. The modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from him of former times; he in everything imitates a Frenchman but in his easy disengaged air, which is the result of keeping polite company.

The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps exactly what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the better-bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature. Upon a head of lank hair he wears a half-c.o.c.ked narrow hat laced with black ribbon: no coat, but seven waistcoats, and nine pairs of breeches; so that his hips reach almost up to his armpits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or make love. But what a pleasing creature is the object of his appet.i.te? Why, she wears a large fur cap with a deal of Flanders lace: for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two petticoats.

A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but his tobacco. You must know, Sir, every woman carries in her hand a stove with coals in it, which, when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats; and at this chimney dozing Strephon lights his pipe. I take it that this continual smoking is what gives the man the ruddy healthful complexion he generally wears, by draining his superfluous moisture, while the woman, deprived of this amus.e.m.e.nt, overflows with such viscidities as tint the complexion, and give that paleness of visage which low fenny grounds and moist air conspire to cause. A Dutch woman and Scotch will well bear an opposition.

The one is pale and fat, the other lean and ruddy: the one walks as if she were straddling after a go-cart, and the other takes too masculine a stride. I shall not endeavour to deprive either country of its share of beauty; but must say, that of all objects on this earth, an English farmer's daughter is most charming. Every woman there is a complete beauty, while the higher cla.s.s of women want many of the requisites to make them even tolerable. Their pleasures here are very dull, though very various. You may smoke, you may doze; you may go to the Italian comedy, as good an amus.e.m.e.nt as either of the former. This entertainment always brings in Harlequin, who is generally a magician, and in consequence of his diabolical art performs a thousand tricks on the rest of the persons of the drama, who are all fools. I have seen the pit in a roar of laughter at this humour, when with his sword he touches the gla.s.s from which another was drinking. 'Twas not his face they laughed at, for that was masked. They must have seen something vastly queer in the wooden sword, that neither I, nor you, Sir, were you there, could see.

In winter, when their ca.n.a.ls are frozen, every house is forsaken, and all people are on the ice; sleds, drawn by horses, and skating, are at that time the reigning amus.e.m.e.nts. They have boats here that slide on the ice, and are driven by the winds. When they spread all their sails, they go more than a mile and a half a minute, and their motion is so rapid the eye can scarcely accompany them. Their ordinary manner of travelling is very cheap and very convenient: they sail in covered boats drawn by horses; and in these you are sure to meet people of all nations. Here the Dutch slumber, the French chatter, and the English play at cards. Any man who likes company may have them to his taste.

For my part I generally detached myself from all society, and was wholly taken up in observing the face of the country. Nothing can equal its beauty; wherever I turn my eye, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas, presented themselves; but when you enter their towns you are charmed beyond description. No misery is to be seen here; every one is usefully employed.

Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast. There hills and rocks intercept every prospect; here 'tis all a continued plain. There you might see a well-dressed d.u.c.h.ess issuing from a dirty close; and here a dirty Dutchman inhabiting a palace. The Scotch may be compared to a tulip planted in dung; but I never see a Dutchman in his own house, but I think of a magnificent Egyptian temple dedicated to an ox. Physic is by no means here taught so well as in Edinburgh; and in all Leyden there are but four British students, owing to all necessaries being so extremely dear, and the professors so very lazy (the chemical professor excepted), that we don't much care to come hither. I am not certain how long my stay here may be; however, I expect to have the happiness of seeing you at Kilmore, if I can, next March.

<script>