316 ([return])
[ Dalrymple says, in a letter of the 5th of June, "All the malignant, for fear, are come into the Club; and they all vote alike.">[
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[ Balcarras.]
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[ Captain Burt's Letters from Scotland.]
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[ "Shall I tire you with a description of this unfruitful country, where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their valleys scarce able to feed a rabbit..., Every part of the country presents the same dismal landscape. No grove or brook lend their music to cheer the stranger,"—Goldsmith to Bryanton, Edinburgh, Sept. 26. 1753. In a letter written soon after from Leyden to the Reverend Thomas Contarine, Goldsmith says, "I was wholly taken up in observing the face of the country, Nothing can equal its beauty. Wherever I turned my eye, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas presented themselves, Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast: there, hills and rocks intercept every prospect; here it is all a continued plain." See Appendix C, to the First Volume of Mr. Forster's Life of Goldsmith,]
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[ Northern Memoirs, by R. Franck Philanthropus, 1690. The author had caught a few glimpses of Highland scenery, and speaks of it much as Burt spoke in the following generation: "It is a part of the creation left undressed; rubbish thrown aside when the magnificent fabric of the world was created; as void of form as the natives are indigent of morals and good manners.">[