We got in soon after one, and I have spent my time in eating, drinking, sleeping, and other recreations, down to the present hour." On going north from Edinburgh, on the same tour apparently, Jeffrey had previous experience of the difficulties of travel, as described in a letter from Montrose, date 26th August 1799. "We stopped," says he, "for two days at Perth, hoping for places in the mail, and then set forward on foot in despair. We have trudged it now for fifty miles, and came here this morning very weary, sweaty, and filthy. Our baggage, which was to have left Perth the same day that we did, has not yet made its appearance, and we have received the comfortable information that it is often a week before there is room in the mail to bring such a parcel forward." Writing from Kendal, in 1841, Jeffrey refers to a journey he made fifty years before--that is, about 1791--when he slept a night in the town. His description of the circumstances is as follows:-- "And an admirable dinner we have had in the Ancient King's Arms, with great oaken staircases, uneven floors, and very thin oak panels, plaster-filled outer walls, but capital new furniture, and the brightest glass, linen, spoons, and china you ever saw. It is the same house in which I once slept about fifty years ago, with the whole company of an ancient stage-coach, which bedded its passengers on the way from Edinburgh to London, and called them up by the waiter at six o'clock in the morning to go five slow stages, and then have an hour to breakfast and wash. It is the only vestige I remember of those old ways, and I have not slept in the house since." C. The discomfort of a long voyage in a vessel of this class is well set forth in the correspondence of Jeffrey. In 1813 he crossed to New York in search of a wife; and in describing the miseries of the situation on board, he gives a long list of his woes, the last being followed by this declaration: "I think I shall make a covenant with myself, that if I get back safe to my own place from this expedition, I shall never willingly go out of sight of land again in my life." D.