26 Transactions. 



our late accommodation. There is also a mai'ket-place, such an 

 one as it is, and a kind of a thing they call a tolbooth, which at 

 first sight mig'ht be suspected a prison, because it's so like one, 

 whose decays, by the law of antiquity, are such that eveiy 

 prisoner is threatened with death before his trial, and every case- 

 ment, because bound about with iron bars, discovers the entertain- 

 ment destined only to felons. Now, the market-place is less 

 worthy of a description than the tolbooth, for no man would know 

 it to be such were he not told so. There is also a kirk, or some- 

 thing like it, but I mig-ht as reverently call it a barn, because there 

 is so little to distinguish betwixt them, and the whole town reads 

 daily lectures of decay, so do her ports, her avenues, and en- 

 trances. It's true I was not murdered, nor was I killed outright, 

 yet I narrowly escaped as eminent a danger when almost worried 

 to death with lice. Kilmarnock is an antient corporation, crowded 

 with mechanicks and brew -houses. Should I step into her dirty 

 streets, that are seldom clean but on a sun-shiny day, or at other 

 times when great rains melt all the muck and forcibly drive it 

 down their cadaverous channels into the river Marr, whose streams 

 are so sullied then that the river loses its natural brightness till 

 the stains are washed out or become invisible. The inhabitants 

 dwell in such ugly houses as, in my opinion, are but little better 

 than huts, and generally of a size, all built so low that their eves 

 hang dangling to touch the earth ; nor are they unifoi-m, nor hold 

 they correspondency one with another ; and that which is worse 

 than all the rest is their unproportionate ill contrivance, because 

 when to consider a dwarf of a house so covered over with a 

 gigantick rocf. Their manufacture is knitting of bonnets and 

 spinning of Scottish cloth, which turns to very good account. 

 Then, for their temper of metals, they are without compeer ; Scot- 

 land has not better. Glasgow is a city girded about with a strong- 

 stone wall, within whose fiourishing arms the industrious inhabi- 

 tant cultivates art to the utmost. There is also a cathedral (but 

 it's very antient) that stands in the east angle, supervising the 

 bulk of the city, and her ornamental posts. Moreover, there are 

 two parish churches, but no more, to the best of my observation. 

 Then there is a college, which they call an uni""ersity ; but I'm at 

 a stand what to call it, where one single colleg^e compleats a uni- 

 versity. (Frauek was thinking of Cambridge with its eighteen 

 colleg-es.) You may observe four large, fair streets, modelled, as 



