NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 403 



said of a brother-in-law of mine, who began the world with ten thousand 

 a year, and ended it with two — *'just the right sort of man for the 

 country." What Rosaline says of Biron, in Love's Labour Lost, I may 

 say of the owner of Abercairney-abbey : 



" A merrier man, 



Within the limits of becoming mirth, 

 I never spent an hour's talk with ;" 



and it will be neither his fault or mine, if we do not meet again within 



the walls of his splendid abbey. 



My place having been secured at Perth, in — as I thought — a coach 

 for Glasgow, on my road to visit Viscount Kelburne, I quitted the 

 abbey in the same gig that brought me thither, to meet the said coach at 

 the lodge gates, which open into the high road ; and being ten minutes, 

 or so, ** before time," had that much talk with Jemmy Reid. He very 

 much surprised me, I confess, by a contrast he exhibited in the habits, 

 manners, and conduct of the middling and lower classes of the population 

 of the vale of Strathearn, as well as of the neighbouring Highlands at 

 that present period, and within his recollection, much in favour of the 

 latter — the improvement being effected, as he emphatically observed, 

 *'by the example set them by their betters; by the exertions of local 

 associations, by the aid of turnpike roads, and by the spread of the gospel 

 in places where it was before scarcely known, at any rate very Httle 

 understood." In fact, he gave me to understand — and I am using his 

 own words — that the people had been changed from ignorance, strife, 

 and poverty, to intelligence, peace, and comforts, within the last fifty 

 years, to an extent scarcely to be credited but by those who have not 

 been amongst them to witness the pleasing change. 



Having been an inside passenger by the Perth and Glasgow drag, 1 



3 F 2 



