Men Bred In The Universities Of Scotland Cannot Be Expected To Be
Often Decorated With The Splendours Of Ornamental Erudition,
But
they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and
ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which
Is,
I believe, very widely diffused among them, and which countenanced
in general by a national combination so invidious, that their
friends cannot defend it, and actuated in particulars by a spirit
of enterprise, so vigorous, that their enemies are constrained to
praise it, enables them to find, or to make their way to
employment, riches, and distinction.
From Glasgow we directed our course to Auchinleck, an estate
devolved, through a long series of ancestors, to Mr. Boswell's
father, the present possessor. In our way we found several places
remarkable enough in themselves, but already described by those who
viewed them at more leisure, or with much more skill; and stopped
two days at Mr. Campbell's, a gentleman married to Mr. Boswell's
sister.
Auchinleck, which signifies a stony field, seems not now to have
any particular claim to its denomination. It is a district
generally level, and sufficiently fertile, but like all the Western
side of Scotland, incommoded by very frequent rain. It was, with
the rest of the country, generally naked, till the present
possessor finding, by the growth of some stately trees near his old
castle, that the ground was favourable enough to timber, adorned it
very diligently with annual plantations.
Lord Auchinleck, who is one of the Judges of Scotland, and
therefore not wholly at leisure for domestick business or pleasure,
has yet found time to make improvements in his patrimony. He has
built a house of hewn stone, very stately, and durable, and has
advanced the value of his lands with great tenderness to his
tenants.
I was, however, less delighted with the elegance of the modern
mansion, than with the sullen dignity of the old castle. I
clambered with Mr. Boswell among the ruins, which afford striking
images of ancient life. It is, like other castles, built upon a
point of rock, and was, I believe, anciently surrounded with a
moat. There is another rock near it, to which the drawbridge, when
it was let down, is said to have reached. Here, in the ages of
tumult and rapine, the Laird was surprised and killed by the
neighbouring Chief, who perhaps might have extinguished the family,
had he not in a few days been seized and hanged, together with his
sons, by Douglas, who came with his forces to the relief of
Auchinleck.
At no great distance from the house runs a pleasing brook, by a red
rock, out of which has been hewn a very agreeable and commodious
summer-house, at less expence, as Lord Auchinleck told me, than
would have been required to build a room of the same dimensions.
The rock seems to have no more dampness than any other wall. Such
opportunities of variety it is judicious not to neglect.
We now returned to Edinburgh, where I passed some days with men of
learning, whose names want no advancement from my commemoration, or
with women of elegance, which perhaps disclaims a pedant's praise.
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