200 KEMINI8CENCES OF THE LEWS. 



nasty place, redolent of anything but the sweets 

 of Araby, badly lighted, wretchedly paved and 

 roaded, with such mud and such holes ! But 

 now it is very much improved. There is a nice 

 pavement in many of the chief streets. It is 

 lighted to a certain extent with gas. It is 

 made now a Scotch burgh, and there is, I think, 

 a corporation. The inhabitants and the pro- 

 prietor fell out about the foreshores and the 

 quays. Who was right or who was wrong I 

 never could make out, but they settled it, I 

 presume, to their mutual satisfaction ; and the 

 town certainly progresses, and is assuming 

 every year a neater and cleaner appearance. I 

 believe the inhabitants are very much indebted 

 to that very excellent and systematically im- 

 proving lady, Mrs. Percival, who is there, as 

 she ever has been wherever her lot has been 

 cast, as active as she is judicious and benevolent 

 in all she. does. There is a Freemasons' Hall, 

 a good room, in which many is the reel I have 

 seen danced, and awful the quantity of toddy 

 imbibed. Underneath the said hall is, or was, 

 a billiard-table, at which the Stornowegians 

 played their matches. So curious a specimen 

 of what a table can be I never saw. It was 

 not large ; for, had it been, no human arm, 

 with the strongest cue, could ever have pocketed 



