framework of mountains; cities, rocks, and fields and wavy landscapes on all hands of us; and reaching right under foot, as I remember, came a broad pillar as of gold from the just sinking sun; burning axle, as it were, going down to the centre of the world."[1]
The weather was fine, so that our travellers had a pleasant crossing over "that great gulf" which Hume "regarded with horror and a kind of hydrophobia that kept him," he said, from visiting Adam Smith at Kirkaldy.[2] In Humphry Clinker Matthew Bramble had had so rough a passage, that when he was told that he had been saved "by the particular care of Providence," he replied, "Yes, but I am much of the honest Highlander's mind, after he had made such a passage as this. His friend told him he was much indebted to Providence. 'Certainly,' said Donald, 'but by my saul, mon, I'se ne'er trouble Providence again so long as the Brig of Stirling stands."[3]
The drive to St. Andrews (August 18).
At Kinghorn, "a mean town," which was said to consist chiefly of "horse-hirers and boatmen noted all Scotland over for their impudence and impositions,"[4] our travellers took a post-chaise for St. Andrews. A few years earlier Johnson would not have found there his favourite mode of conveyance. By the year 1758 post-chaises had only penetrated as far north as Durham.[5] He found the roads good, "neither rough nor dirty." The absence of toll-gates, "afforded a southern stranger a new kind of pleasure." He would not have rejoiced over this absence had he known that their want was supplied by the forced labour of the cottars. On these poor men was laid "an annual tax of six days' labour for repairing the roads."[6] Used as he was to the rapid succession of carriages and riders, and to the beautiful and varied scenery in the neighbourhood of London, he complained that in Scotland there was "little diversion for the traveller, who seldom sees himself either encountered or overtaken, and who has nothing to contemplate but grounds that have no visible boundaries, or are separated by walls of loose stone." There were few of the heavy waggons
