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.
The conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to
the English; their peculiarities wear fast away; their dialect is
likely to become in half a century provincial and rustick, even to
themselves. The great, the learned, the ambitious, and the vain,
all cultivate the English phrase, and the English pronunciation,
and in splendid companies Scotch is not much heard, except now and
then from an old Lady.
There is one subject of philosophical curiosity to be found in
Edinburgh, which no other city has to shew; a college of the deaf
and dumb, who are taught to speak, to read, to write, and to
practice arithmetick, by a gentleman, whose name is Braidwood.
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