one hundred years earlier where Claverhouse was beaten by the Covenanters. Scott in Old Mortality has told how in the fight John Balfour of Burley struck down Sergeant Bothwell. Fifty years or so after our travellers crossed the Moor, Thomas Carlyle and Edward Irving passed over it on foot. "It was here," says Carlyle, "as the sun was sinking, Irving drew from me by degrees, in the softest manner, the confession that I did not think as he of
NEW HAILES.
the Christian religion, and that it was vain for me to expect I ever could or should."[1] Boswell's record of this day's journey is of the briefest. "We came at night to a good inn at Hamilton. I recollect no more." A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine gives us a humorous description of the innkeeper. "Hamilton Arms, kept by Burns, tolerable. The landlord from pure insipidity will laugh at you if you come in wet through; yet he can tell a good deal about the Duke's family."[2] Smollett gives the little town the highest praise in his vocabulary, by calling it "one of the neatest he had seen in any country."[3] Whatever nature could do, the force of art could no farther go last century than make a place neat. Boswell, before they left next morning, in vain tried to move
