ET, 28.] JOURNAL. 95 
to the old year, I must also bid good-by to you for 
the present, wishing you, not as the mere compliment 
of the season, but with all my heart and soul, —a 
happy New Year. The last New Year I well remem- 
ber; several of its predecessors also I have had the 
pleasure of spending with you. I pray God we may 
be preserved and have a happy meeting before another 
new year comes. 
JOURNAL. 
Kinross, Wednesday Evening, January 2, 1839. 
I left Glasgow at seven o’clock A. M. on the morn- 
ing of the 26th December, on the top of a stage-coach 
bound for Stirling, so famous in song and story, — 
distant about thirty miles from Glasgow. I arrived 
about half past ten, in the midst of a heavy rain. 
On leaving Stirling for Perth, I took an inside 
place, as the storm still continued, but it shortly 
cleared up, and I rode on the outside nearly the whole 
journey. The only place worth noticing, or rather 
which I have time to notice, through which we passed 
was Dumblane, which is just one of those dirty Scotch 
villages which defy description. If “Jessie the flower 
of Dumblane” lived in one of these comfortless and 
wretched hovels Ill warrant her charms are much 
overpraised in the song. Here I saw for the first 
time a genuine ruin; that of the large and once im- 
portant Cathedral, founded in 1142. During the 
short-lived establishment of Episcopacy in Scotland I 
think that the good Leighton was for a time rector 
of Dumblane. Just beyond Dumblane we passed the 
field of Sheriff-muir, and beyond this, at the little 
village of Ardoch, I passed, without being aware at 
the time, the finest and most entire Roman camp in 
