Bridge he may turn south by Foulford and Monzie to Crieff. This cheerful little border town ranks as favourite sommerfrische of Scots folk, apart from those places that are more sought by tourists. Well situated, looking south from the lowest slope of the hills, almost in the centre of the country, it is unusually dry as well as airy and genial, not pent in like Callander, nor too bracing for cold-blooded folk like Braemar. So Crieff has now two railways and everything handsome about it. Its spacious market-place proclaims it an old borough, with tolbooth, cross, and iron “jougs” for the terror of offenders; and here once the “kind gallows of Crieff” gave Lowlanders’ answer to that high-flown boast—
Aye, by my soul, while on yon plain
The Saxon rears one shock of grain;
While of ten thousand herds there strays,
But one along yon river’s maze,
The Gael, of plain and river heir,
Shall with strong hand redeem his share!
Why the kind gallows? not even Scott can say, but he suggests the idea of this seeming a kindred or natural doom to the Highlanders, who, it is said, used to doff their bonnets on passing a shrine fatal to so many of their blood. The gallows have now been well replaced by an endowed public school on the Scottish pattern; and perhaps the most important institution of modern Crieff is the Hydropathic, which, under the shelter of the Knock Woods, gathers Saxon and Celt together in sober amity. There are other such hostelries about the Highland line; but that of Crieff, one of the earliest, is still one of the most popular.
“Hydropathics” in Scotland—nobody thinks of calling them Establishments—do not much depend on hydropathy, which, in summer at least, falls to the background of their sociable life. They are more concerned with the administration of water internally. Where whisky is devoutly worshipped, there arises a strong nonconformist party leagued against the devil’s sacrament, hence the vogue of these big temperance hotels, in which unhappy moral weaklings will be sometimes kept by their families, while others, conscious of feeble will, are glad to be out of the way of temptation. In the holiday season, the better class of townsfolk much affect the wholesome amusements of such pensions, most of them palatial and some expensive. And if strong drink be necessary for human happiness, it is whispered how that can be enjoyed, sub rosa, even within the walls of a hydropathic, with all the added zest of a “fearful joy.” As the rigour of Maine laws does not always hinder an American hotel guest from “seeing the striped pig” or “giving ten cents to the baby,” so here there has been observed such a demand for “shaving water” at various hours of the day, that one conscientious manager made a practice of putting a piece of soap into each jug so required. Several hydropathics, indeed, have so far relaxed their original rules as to connive at the appearance of bottles upon the well-spread table. Certain large ones tend to become too gay and worldly, patronised by young swells from Glasgow and Dundee, who take every opportunity of putting on company manners and evening dress. But those haunts of ephemeral gaiety find their business slack off with the holiday season; and their prosperity