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oatmeal begins to fail, and for a supply they bleed their cattle, and boil the blood into cakes, which, together with a little milk and a short allowance of oatmeal, is their food.

"It is true, there are small trouts, or something like them, in some of the little rivers, which continue in holes among the rocks, which are always full of water when the stream is quite ceased for want of rain: these might be a help to them in this starving season; but I have had so little notion in all my journeys that they made those fish a part of their diet, that I never once thought of them, as such, till this very moment. It is likely they cannot catch them for want of proper tackle, but I am sure they cannot be without them for want of leisure. What may seem strange is, that they do not introduce roots among them (as potatoes) for the purpose; but the land they occupy is so very little, they think they cannot spare any part of it from their corn, and the landlord's demand of rent in kind is another objection. You will perceive I am speaking only of the poor people in the interior parts of the mountains; for near the coast, all round them, there are few confined to such diminutive farms, and the most necessitous of all may share, upon occasion, the benefit of various kinds of shell-fish, only for seeking and fetching.

"Their cattle are much weakened by want of sufficient food in the preceding winter, and this immoderate bleeding reduces them to so low a plight, that in a morning they cannot rise from the ground, and several of the inhabitants join together to help up each other's cows, &c.

"In summer the people remove to the hills, and dwell in much worse huts than those they leave below: these are near the spots of grazing, and are called shealings, scattered from one another as occasion requires. Every one has his particular space of pasture, for which, if it be not a part of his farm, he pays, as I shall mention hereafter.

"Here they make their butter and cheese. By the way, I have seen some of the former with blueish veins, made, as I thought, by the mixture of smoke, not much unlike to Castile soap; but some have said it was a mixture of sheep's milk, which gave a part of it that tincture of blue.

"When the grazing fails, the Highlanders return to their for mer habitations, and the cattle to pick up their sustenance among the heath, as before.

"At other times the children share the milk with the calves, lambs, and kids; for they milk the dams of them all, which keeps their young so lean, that when sold in the low country they are chiefly used, as they tell me, to make soups withal; and when a side of any one of these kinds hangs up in our market, the least dise agreeable part of the sight is the transparency of the ribs.

"About the latter end of August, or the beginning of September, the cattle are brought into good order by their summer feed, and the beef is extremely sweet and succulent; which I suppose is

owing, in good part, to their being reduced to such poverty in the spring, and made up again with new flesh.

"Now the drovers collect their herds, and drive them to fairs and markets on the borders of the Lowlands, and sometimes to the north of England; and in their passage they pay a certain tribute, proportionable to the number of cattle, to the owner of the territory they pass through, which is in lieu of all reckonings for grazing." Vol. II. p. 108.

It is scarcely possible for us, who live in a commercial country, to form even a notion of the trifling value attached to money, in a state of comparative rudeness and simplicity, and how little it is able to mitigate the severities of want in such a condition. The following affecting anecdote will convince the reader of the utter helplessness of a country, where money is scarcely known as possessing any value in itself, but as the immediate representative only of the necessaries of life.

"About the time of one great scarcity here, the garrison of Fort Willian, opposite to us on the west coast, was very low in oatmeal, and the little hovel town of Maryburgh, nearly adjoining to it, was almost destitute.

"Some affairs at that time called me to the fort; and being at the governor's house, one of the towns-women came to his lady, and besought her to use her interest that she might be spared out of the stores, for her money, or to repay it in kind, only one peck of oatmeal, to keep her children from starving; for that there was none to be sold in the town, or other food to be had whatever. The lady, who is one of the best and most agreeable of women, told her she feared her husband could not be prevailed on to part with any at that time. This she said, as knowing that kind of provision was almost exhausted, and a great number of mouths to be fed; that there was but a very precarious dependance upon the winds for a supply, and that other sea accidents might happen ;-but to show her good will, she gave her a shilling. The poor woman, holding up the money, first looked at that, in a musing manner, then at the lady, and bursting out into tears, cried-' Madam, what must I do with this? My children cannot eat it?' And laid the shilling down upon the table in the greatest sorrow and despair. It would be too trite to remark upon the uselessness of money, when it cannot be bartered for something absolutely necessary to life. But I do assure you I was hardly ever more affected with distress than upon this occasion, for I never saw such an example of it before.

I must not leave you in suspense. The governor, commiserating the poor woman's circumstance, spared her that small quantity; and then the passion of joy seemed more unruly in the creature's breast, than all her grief and fear had been before." Fol. I. P. 242.

A very

A very curious account is given in a preceding letter of the jurisdiction of the kirk, which at that time appears to have reached its utmost height. The stool of repentance appears to have been the principal agent of Presbyterian discipline. This stool was fashioned like an arm chair, and was raised nearly two feet higher than the rest of the seats, and directly fronted the pulpit. When the kirk bell rung, the culprit mounted the chair, and was arrayed by the bellman in the black sackcloth gown, and thus attired he underwent a long exteinporary reproof and admonition from the sour-faced minister of puritanical severity.

We can recommend this little work to our readers as a most entertaining history of the ancient days of Scotland, and as containing various anecdotes not to be met with in any other place. It has received indeed already a testimony far more valuable than our's, having been repeatedly quoted by Walter Scott, in his notes on the Lady of the Lake, as a curious depository of Scot tish manners, and as peculiarly valuable for the local descriptions which it contains.

ART. XVIII. A Tale for Gentle and Simple. 12mo. 456 pp. 78. Hunter. 1815.

THE first part of this Tale induced us to think that it was written for the amusement of the young, but about the middle it assumes a higher character, and may be recommended as a very entertaining volume to all those who are likely to receive pleasure from the perusal of " a Tale." The story is well told, the incidents sufficiently amusing, and the moral and sentiments unquestionably good. The character of Sir Thomas Upland, a goodnatured, shatter-brained country gentleman, is drawn with much spirit and originality, and without the least caricature. Our readers, whether " Gentle or Simple," cannot fail to derive much amusement from the volume before us.

ART. XIX. Memoirs of an Old Wig. 12mo. 164 pp. 7s. Longman. 1815.

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IN the adventures of the Wig, which is the subject of these memoirs, we meet with a very lively tale and a very entertaing string of historical anecdotes. This aforesaid wig is supposed to have

covered

covered the head of the bloody Judge Jeffries, of whose repeiitance and death a very interesting account is introduced. The wig becomes the property afterwards of William the third; the Duke of Marlborough, of Dean Swift, of Orator Henly, and other worthies. Of the history of Wigs our author gives a very amusing account in his preface, part of which we shall extract for the information of our readers.

"Even among savage nations, you find a disposition not to be content with the covering which nature had given to the head. The Myuntes carry on their heads a board about 15 inches square, with which they cover their hair, and fasten it with wax, and it being a woody country, they are often entangled by their headdress, and when they comb their hair, which is only once a year, they are a full hour melting the wax.

1

The inhabitants of Natal, as we are told by Duhalde, wear wigs made of the fat of oxen from six to ten inches high, then anoint the head with purer grease, which mixing with the hair, fasten these bonnets for life.

But though the ancients used coverings of artificial hair, yet they partook very little of the character of our Periwig, and the composition which first entitled them to that name was hardly known so early as 1500. Budæus describes one in 1534. first on record in England is said to have been worn by Saxon, Henry the VIIIth's fool.

The

"The first that were made were so heavy that they weighed two pounds, being fastened on a kind of cushion, such as they knit lace on the cawl, by the introduction of which they were much lightened, being a subsequent improvement.

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Though Wigs were contrived to conceal natural or accidental baldness, they soon became so ridiculously fashionable, as to be worn by such had no defects to hide, in preference to the most beautiful locks, the gift of all bounteous nature, which were sacrificed to make way for them.

"The clergy were long before they adopted them, and the French clergy used them first. Cardinal Grimaldi forbade their use to priests without dispensation or necessity. Monsieur Thyer wrote a treatise on the subject, who esteems a priest's head under a Peruke, a monster in the church, nor can he conceive any thing so scandalous as an abbot with a florid countenance and well curled Wig; loss of hair being thought to arise from disease.

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"The players, from knowing what diversity of character is produced by the Wig, generally wore them on the stage in Shakespeare's time, which occasions that great Dramatist to say, "It offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters."

"The bar assumed the Wig about 1660, and as Alexander Stephens, in his Lecture on Heads, humourously analyzes it→→→ "there are special pleadings in the fore-top, pleas, rejoinders, re

plications,

plications, and demurrers in turn of the curls, knotty points in the twist of the tail, the length of a chancery suit in the depth of a full bottom; and a Serjeant's black coif, as much as tells us that the law is a sort of blister plaster, and never to be used but in desperate cases."

About the close of the 17th Century, Perukes were made to represent natural curls of hair, but in such a stream, that ten heads would not have furnished an equal quantity, as it flowed down the back, and hung over the shoulders half way down the

arms.

"Louis the XIVth's Wig was so enormous, that he was said to rob the heads of all his subjects to cover his own; and such was the use of hair in England for such compositions, that in 1700, a young country girl got sixty pounds for her head of hair, and the grey locks of an old woman," after death, sold for fifty pounds, as did Wigs in common for forty pounds.

"In 1720, or thereabouts, it became fashionable to tie one half of it on the left side into a club, as is represented in the Vig nette of the Title page, which professes to give the real model of Linnæus's Wig.

"Between 1730 and 1740 Bag Wigs came into fashion, and such as were plaited into a Queue, though till 1750 the long flow. ing Perukes maintained their ascendancy.

"In 1763 the use of Wigs in general began to decline, in so much that there was a petition from the master Peruke makers, of London and Westminster, to the King, in which they complain of the influx of French hair dressers. P. viii,

MONTHLY LIST OF PUBLICATIONS.

DIVINITY.

An Inquiry to learn the Right Reason of Faith and the Economy of Revela tion: involving an Inquiry concerning the Reasons and Consequences of the essential Difference between the ancient and the modern Kinds and Sources of religious Evidence, By a Layman.. 8vo. 7s.

The New Conspiracy against the Jesuits detected and briefly exposed: with short Account of their hustitute, and Observations on the Danger of Systems of Education, Independent of Religion. By R. C. Dallas, Esq. 9s.

A Sermon preached in Lambeth Chapel, at the Consecration of the Honorable and Right Reverend Henry Ryder, D.D. Lord Bishop of Gloucester, on Sunday, July 30, 1815. By Christopher Wordsworth, D.D. Dean of Bocking. Published by the Command of his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. 2s. 6d.

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Ecclesiastical History of the Britons and Saxous. By the Rev. John Daniet, S.A. D.A, and Præs, 75, 64

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