We came this morning from Bollitree to _Ross-Market_, and, thence, to this place. Ross is an old-fashioned town; but it is very beautifully situated, and if there is little of _finery_ in the appearance of the inhabitants, there is also little of _misery_. It is a good, plain country town, or settlement of tradesmen, whose business is that of supplying the wants of the cultivators of the soil. It presents to us nothing of rascality and roguishness of look which you see on almost every visage in the _borough-towns_, not excepting the visages of the women. I can tell a borough-town from another upon my entrance into it by the nasty, cunning, leering, designing look of the people; a look between that of a bad (for _some_ are good) Methodist Parson and that of a pickpocket. I remember, and I never shall forget, the horrid looks of the villains in Devonshire and Cornwall. Some people say, "O, _poor fellows_! It is not _their_ fault." No? Whose fault is it, then? The miscreants who bribe them? True, that these deserve the halter (and some of them may have it yet); but are not the takers of the bribes _equally_ guilty? If we be so very lenient here, pray let us ascribe to the _Devil_ all the acts of thieves and robbers: so we do; but we _hang_ the thieves and robbers, nevertheless. It is no very unprovoking reflection, that from these sinks of atrocious villany come a very considerable part of the men to fill places of emolument and trust. What a clog upon a Minister to have people, bred in such scenes, forced upon him! And why does this curse continue? However, its natural consequences are before us; and are coming on pretty fast upon each other's heels. There are the landlords and farmers in a state of absolute ruin: there is the Debt, pulling the nation down like as a stone pulls a dog under water. The system seems to have fairly wound itself up; to have tied itself hand and foot with cords of its own spinning!--This is the town to which POPE has given an interest in our minds by his eulogium on the "_Man of Ross_," a portrait of whom is hanging up in a house in which I now am.--The market at Ross was very _dull_. No wheat in demand. No buyers. It must _come down_. Lord Liverpool's _remedy_, a bad harvest, has assuredly failed. Fowls 2_s._ a couple; a goose from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 3_s._; a turkey from 3_s._ to 3_s._ 6_d._ Let a turkey come down to _a shilling_, as in France, and then we shall soon be to rights. _Friday, 16 Nov._