Before leaving the Highlands, Young visited Gordon Castle, where he
stayed two days; and appears to have distinguished himself by the
powers of endurance he exhibited in dancing reels. On leaving he
writes: "I could almost have wished to break or dislocate a limb by
chance, that I might be detained against my will; I do not recollect
that I have ever passed my time more agreeably, or with a party that I
thought more congenial to my own dispositions: and what would hardly
be credited by many grave reasoners on life and manners, that a person
who had spent the whole of his earlier years a recluse from the gay
world, and a total stranger to all that was passing in the higher
ranks of society, should feel himself more at home and more at ease in
the most magnificent palace in the country than in the humblest
dwelling with those whose birth was most similar to his own. Without
enlarging on the duke's good sense and sincerity, the duchess's spirit
and powers of conversation, Lady Madeline's liveliness and affability,
Louisa's beauty and sweetness, Georgiana's _naivete_ and quickness of
parts, young Sandy's good nature, I may say that I was truly sorry to
part with every one of them."
Young seems not to have known at this time that it is an essential
feature of true gentlefolk to dissipate all sense of constraint or
uneasiness from those with whom they are brought into contact and
that in this they can be readily distinguished from those who have
wealth without breeding. The Duchess of Gordon gave Young an
introduction to the Duke of Argyll, so, while travelling through the
Western Highlands, he paid a visit to Inverary Castle, and "galloped
over" the country with the duke's daughters. Speaking of these ladies,
he says, "Lady Charlotte ... is to Lady Augusta what Venus is to
Minerva; I suppose she wishes for no more. Both are goddesses."
On his return to the West of England, he visited the Coalbrook Dale
Iron Works, when Mr. Reynolds told him "that before the war he had
agreed with a man to make a flute a hundred and fifty feet long, and
two and a half in diameter, to be blown by a steam-engine and played
on by barrels."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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