Over Against
It, On Another Hill, Was A Fort Built By Cromwell, Now Totally
Demolished; For No Faction Of Scotland Loved The Name Of Cromwell,
Or Had Any Desire To Continue His Memory.
Yet what the Romans did to other nations, was in a great degree
done by Cromwell to the Scots; he civilized them by conquest, and
introduced by useful violence the arts of peace.
I was told at
Aberdeen that the people learned from Cromwell's soldiers to make
shoes and to plant kail.
How they lived without kail, it is not easy to guess: They
cultivate hardly any other plant for common tables, and when they
had not kail they probably had nothing. The numbers that go
barefoot are still sufficient to shew that shoes may be spared:
They are not yet considered as necessaries of life; for tall boys,
not otherwise meanly dressed, run without them in the streets; and
in the islands the sons of gentlemen pass several of their first
years with naked feet.
I know not whether it be not peculiar to the Scots to have attained
the liberal, without the manual arts, to have excelled in
ornamental knowledge, and to have wanted not only the elegancies,
but the conveniences of common life. Literature soon after its
revival found its way to Scotland, and from the middle of the
sixteenth century, almost to the middle of the seventeenth, the
politer studies were very diligently pursued. The Latin poetry of
Deliciae Poetarum Scotorum would have done honour to any nation, at
least till the publication of May's Supplement the English had very
little to oppose.
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