LETTER V. TO LADY JOHNES. DEAR AUNT, You ask me to speak more particularly concerning the external aspect and manners of the people among whom I am sojourning. I wish it were as easy for me to satisfy your curiosity on some other points mentioned in your last letter, as on this. The Scots are certainly rather a hard-favoured race than otherwise; but I think their looks are very far from meriting the sort of common-place sarcasms their southern neighbours are used to treat them with. Indeed, no one who has seen a Scots regiment, as I should suppose you must have done, can possibly be of opinion that they are at all an ugly nation; although it is very likely he may be inclined to prefer the general appearance of some other nation or nations to theirs. For my part, I am not without suspicion, that a little longer residence among them might teach me to become an absolute admirer of their physiognomies; at least, I am sensible, that the slight repugnance I felt for them at first, has already very considerably given way. What the Scottish physiognomists are used to talk of, with the highest satisfaction, is the air of superior intelligence stamped on the faces of their countrymen of the lower orders of society; and indeed there is no question, a Scottish peasant, with his long dry visage, his sharp prominent cheekbones, his grey twinkling eyes, and peaked chin, would seem a very Argus, if set up close beside the sleek and ponderous chubbiness of a Gloucestershire farmer-to say nothing of the smarter and ruddier oiliness of some of our own country folks. As to the matter of mere acuteness, however, I think I have seen faces in Yorkshire, at least a match for any thing to be found further to the north. But the mere shrewdness of the Scotch peasant's face, is only one part of its expression; it has other things, I should imagine, even more peculiarly characteristic. The best place to study their faces in is the kirk; it is there that the sharpness of their discernment is most vehemently expressed in every linefor they are all critics of the sermon, and even of the prayers; but it is there also that this sharpness of feature is most frequently seen to melt away before emotions of a nobler order, which are no less peculiarly, though far less perminently theirs. It is to me a very interesting thing to witness the struggle that seems to be perpetually going on between the sarcastic and reverential elements of their diposition-how bitterly they seem to rejoice in their own strength, when they espy, or think they espy, some chink in the armour of their preacher's reasoning; and then with what sudden humility they appear to bow themselves into the dust, before some single solitary gleam of warm affectionate eloquencethe only weapon they have no power to resist. If I mistake not, it is in this mixture of sheer speculative and active hard-headedness, with the capacity of so much lofty enthusiasm concerning things intangible, that we must seek for the true differential quality of the Scottish peasants. I shall have abundant occasion to return to this hereafter. The gentlemen of this part of the country have assuredly by no means the same advan tages over those of the south, which the Scotch peasants have over the English. I know not altogether to what these advantages enjoyed by the lower orders may be owing;-their better education is of course the first and most obvious source-their more sterile soil-and, consequently, their less luxurious life, may be others almost as efficient. Above all, the picturesque aspect of their ever various landscapes, cannot fail to exert a powerful influence on the opening mind of their youth. But in some of these things, at least, the peasantry of particular districts in England share abundantly, and I think there are some pretty extensive tracts on the continent where the whole of these circumstances, or very nearly so, are found acting together, without producing any such similarity of effect as might have been expected. I suspect that we must go further back if we would arrive at any satisfactory solution-Of this too hereafter. The gentry, however, have no pretensions to a more intelligent exterior than their neighbours of the south. The truth is, that certain indications of worldly quicksightedness, which please on the face, and in the air of a peasant, produce quite a different effect when exhibited in the case of a person of superior rank. One rather wishes to see these things kept under in the appearance of a person of education, than suspects their non-existence in the totality of his character. Without wanting their due proportion of the national enthusiasm, the Scottish gentry seem to shew much fewer symptoms of it than those below them; and this is a sufficiently natural result of their sense of their own comparative importance. It is a result, notwithstanding, which tends to make any thing but a favourable impression on the mind of a stranger. High and low, they are, for the most part, a race of tall, well-formed people; active of limb, and powerful of muscle; leaner by far than the English;-(for here a very fat man is stared at, and one of such bulk as is met with at every corner in London, must, it would seem, lay his account with a little quizzing from all his friends on the subject of his obesity.) In their gait and gestures, they have neither the vivacity of the Frenchman, nor the noble gravity of the Spaniard, nor the stable heavy vigour of the Englishman; but a certain grotesque mixture of elasticity and sedateness, which is sufficient to prove their descent from a hardy and warlike set of marauders, the effects of whose subathric exist |