imagination, as the old taciturn secretary of Facardin of
Trebizond. Nevertheless, we must each perform our separate
destinies. I am doomed to see, act, and tell; thou, like a
Dutchman enclosed in the same diligence with a Gascon, to hear,
and shrug thy shoulders.

Of Dumfries, the capital town of this county, I have but little
to say, and will not abuse your patience by reminding you that it
is built on the gallant river Nith, and that its churchyard, the
highest place of the old town, commands an extensive and fine
prospect. Neither will I take the traveller's privilege of
inflicting upon you the whole history of Bruce poniarding the Red
Comyn in the Church of the Dominicans at this place, and becoming
a king and patriot because he had been a church-breaker and a
murderer. The present Dumfriezers remember and justify the deed,
observing it was only a papist church--in evidence whereof, its
walls have been so completely demolished that no vestiges of them
remain. They are a sturdy set of true-blue Presbyterians, these
burghers of Dumfries; men after your father's own heart, zealous
for the Protestant succession--the rather that many of the great
families around are suspected to be of a different way of
thinking, and shared, a great many of them, in the insurrection
of the Fifteen, and some in the more recent business of the
Forty-five. The town itself suffered in the latter era; for Lord
Elcho, with a large party of the rebels, levied a severe
contribution upon Dumfries, on account of the citizens having
annoyed the rear of the Chevalier during his march into England.

Many of these particulars I learned from Provost C--, who,
happening to see me in the market-place, remembered that I was an