i854 LIFE AT DUNBAR 221 



incoherent that it is everywhere traversed by the most 

 remarkable ravines, deep, steep, and often without 

 water in them. These have been made by successions 

 of winter floods, and sometimes in the course of ages, 

 the drainage having taken a new direction, they have 

 become permanently dry. 



* Surely this place is &quot; Cranford.&quot; I by no means 

 understand the constitution of its society. Yesterday 



the only person besides myself at dinner with the 



was a Mr. Combes. He was a stout little gray-haired 

 man in black, who from his appearance might be a 

 clergyman with a black neckerchief, a schoolmaster, a 

 professor in a Scotch college, a physician, a surgeon, 

 a country gentleman, a retired merchant, a first-class 

 skipper, or anything you like, not great or noble. 

 Well, the conversation got animated, and our host made 

 an occasional mal a propos remark and thoroughly 

 enjoyed the talking. The little man discussed history, 

 English, Scotch, and Roman, the styles and merits of 

 Hume, Smollet, Robertson, Gibbon, and Scott, of the 

 Pictorial History, of Mackintosh, Fox, and Macaulay, 

 of the novel-writers, including Fielding, Smollet, Miss 

 Burney, Misses Porter, and all the moderns, the history 

 of poetry as shown in the writings of Dryden, Pope, 

 Burns, Ramsay, Tannahill, Fergusson, etc. And, 

 besides, he had been in India, and had voyaged about, 

 that was clear. Well, he and I walked home ; we 

 shook hands, and he turned into a house in the street, 

 and I looked above the door, and saw thereon COMBES, 

 CANDLEMAKER ! 1 



With a large section of society intellect is not to 



1 This story ought to end here ; but Ramsay afterwards found out that his 

 enigmatical companion had been a surgeon in the old navy of the East India 

 Company. 



