Indeed, the nobility have of late run into parking, planting, and gardening, which are great improvements of their estates; but what is this to the bulk of a nation, which (if encouraged) hath as many natural commodities for exportation as any whatsoever, and more than South-Britain? But a finer education than what is necessary for trade, hath been, in imitation of the French, the misfortune of this kingdom; but perhaps the union with England may open their eyes to their own interest. The language of the Low-Countries of Scotland is the same with that which is spoken all over England; only an Englishman will understand a Scotchman better by his writing than speaking; for the difference in the pronunciation of the vowels, which are the same in writing, makes a great alteration in speaking. The Scots pronounce the five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, just as the French, Germans, and Italians do; and the English, according to that pronunciation, make them œ, i, y, o, u. This difference of sound in the vowels, makes a great one in the pronunciation. The Highlanders have a language of their own, which the Irish own to be the purest of that Irish which they spake in the province of Ulster in Ireland; which is also spoken in the greatest purity in the Western Islands that lie between Scotland and Ireland: They being an unmixed people, have preserved that language and the dress better than the Irish have done, who have been over-run with Danes, English, etc. FOOTNOTES: [77] About. [78] The Lyon King-at-Arms. THE MALT TAX (1725). +Source.+--_The Lockhart Papers: containing Memoirs and Commentaries upon the Affairs of Scotland from 1702 to 1715, by George Lockhart, Esq., of Carnwath. His Secret Correspondence with the Son of King James the Second from 1718 to 1728, and his other Political Writings_, vol. ii., p. 134. (London: 1817.)