“In the first place, look from the road on each hand, and you see very few houses; towns there are, but at the distance of eight or ten miles. Then, who is it that lives in them? There are no manufactories carried on in them; they live by the travellers and the country about; that is, there are tradesmen of all kinds, perhaps two or three of each--smiths, wrights, shoemakers, &c.; and here is a squire of a small estate in the country near by; and here are Mrs. This, or That, old maids, and so many widow ladies with a parsonage house, a flourishing house. All the houses, built of brick, and very slight, and even some of timber, and two stories high, make them have a greater appearance than there is reality for; for I shall suppose you took out the squire and set him in his country house, and the old maids and widow ladies and place them with their relations, if they have any, in the country, or in a greater town, and take a stone house with a thatch roof of one storey instead of a brick one of two, and there are few country villages in Scotland where I will not muster out as many inhabitants as are in any of these post towns. Then I observed there were few folks to be met with on the road, and many times we could post an hour, which is seven miles, and not see as many houses and people put together on the road! Then on Sunday, we travelled from eight o’clock till we came to Newcastle, where the church was just going in; so that I may say we travelled fifteen miles to Newcastle; and the few people we met going to church upon the road surprised me much. The same as we went all day long; it had no appearance of the swarms of people we always see in Scotland going about on Sunday, even far from any considerable town. Then,” adds the Scotch lady, “the high price of labour is an evidence of the scarcity of people. I went into what we call a cottage, and there was a young woman with her child, sitting; it was very clean, and laid with coarse flags on the floor, but built with timber stoops, and what we call cat and clay walls. She took me into what she called her parlour, for the magnificent names they give things makes very fine till we see them; this parlour was just like to the other. I asked her what her husband was. She said, a labouring man, and got his shilling a day; that she did nothing but took care of her children, and now and then wrought a little plain work. So I found that, except it was in the manufacturing counties, the women do nothing; and if there were as many men in the country as one might suppose there would be, a man could be got for less wages than a shilling per day. Then the high wages at London shows the country cannot provide it with servants. It drains the country, and none return again who ever goes as chairmen, porters, hackney coachmen, or footmen; if they come to old age, seldom spend it in the country, but often in an almshouse, and often leave no posterity. Then the export they make of their victual is a presumption