'Tis now the 11th of July and we have come 8 Miles to Breakfast to Kirkoswald. I hope the next Kirk will be Kirk Alloway. I have nothing of consequence to say now concerning our journey--so I will speak as far as I can judge on the Irish and Scotch--I know nothing of the higher Classes--yet I have a persuasion that there the Irish are victorious. As to the profanum vulgus I must incline to the Scotch. They never laugh--but they are always comparatively neat and clean. Their constitutions are not so remote and puzzling as the Irish. The Scotchman will never give a decision on any point--he will never commit himself in a sentence which may be referred to as a meridian in his notion of things--so that you do not know him--and yet you may come in nigher neighbourhood to him than to the Irishman who commits himself in so many places that it dazes your head. A Scotchman's motive is more easily discovered than an Irishman's. A Scotchman will go wisely about to deceive you, an Irishman cunningly. An Irishman would bluster out of any discovery to his disadvantage. A Scotchman would retire perhaps without much desire for revenge. An Irishman likes to be thought a gallous fellow. A Scotchman is contented with himself. It seems to me they are both sensible of the Character they hold in England and act accordingly to Englishmen. Thus the Scotchman will become over grave and over decent and the Irishman over-impetuous. I like a Scotchman best because he is less of a bore--I like the Irishman best because he ought to be more comfortable.--The Scotchman has made up his Mind within himself in a sort of snail shell wisdom. The Irishman is full of strongheaded instinct. The Scotchman is farther in Humanity than the Irishman--there he will stick perhaps when the Irishman will be refined beyond him--for the former thinks he cannot be improved--the latter would grasp at it for ever, place but the good plain before him. Maybole, [same day, July 11]. Since breakfast we have come only four Miles to dinner, not merely, for we have examined in the way two Ruins, one of them very fine, called Crossraguel Abbey--there is a winding Staircase to the top of a little Watch Tower. Kingswells, July 13. I have been writing to Reynolds--therefore any particulars since Kirkoswald have escaped me--from said Kirk we went to Maybole to dinner--then we set forward to Burness' town Ayr--the approach to it is extremely fine--quite outwent my expectations--richly meadowed, wooded, heathed and rivuleted--with a grand Sea view terminated by the black Mountains of the isle of Arran. As soon as I saw them so nearly I said to myself "How is it they did not beckon Burns to some grand attempt at Epic?"