lping of a score of idle useless curs, which followed, snarling,
barking, howling, and snapping at the horses' heels; a nuisance at that
time so common in Scotland, that a French tourist, who, like other
travellers, longed to find a good and rational reason for everything he
saw, has recorded, as one of the memorabilia of Caledonia, that the state
maintained, in each village a relay of curs, called collies, whose duty
it was to chase the chevaux de poste (too starved and exhausted to move
without such a stimulus) from one hamlet to another, till their annoying
convoy drove them to the end of their stage. The evil and remedy (such as
it is) still exist.--But this is remote from our present purpose, and is
only thrown out for consideration of the collectors under Mr. Dent's Dog
Bill.

As Waverley moved on, here and there an old man, bent as much by toil as
years, his eyes bleared with age and smoke, tottered to the door of his
hut, to gaze on the dress of the stranger and the form and motions of the
horses, and then assembled, with his neighbours, in a little group at the
smithy, to discuss the probabilities of whence the stranger came and
where he might be going. Three or four village girls, returning from the
well or brook with pitchers and pails upon their heads, formed more
pleasing objects, and, with their thin short-gowns and single petticoats,
bare arms, legs, and feet, uncovered heads and braided hair, somewhat
resembled Italian forms of landscape. Nor could a lover of the
picturesque have challenged either the elegance of their costume or the
symmetry of their shape; although, to say the truth, a mere Englishman in
search of the COMFORTABLE, a word peculiar to his native tongue, might
have wished the clothes less scanty, the feet and legs somewhat protected
from the weather, the head and complexion shrouded from the sun, or
perhaps might even have thought the whole person and dress considerably
improved by a plentiful application of spring water, with a quantum
sufficit of soap. The whole scene was depressing; for it argued, at the
first glance, at least a stagnation of industry, and perhaps of
intellect. Even curiosity, the busiest passion of the idle, seemed of a
listless cast in the village of Tully-Veolan: the curs aforesaid alone
showed any part of its activity; with the villagers it was passive. They
stood, and gazed at the handsome young officer and his attendant, but
without any of those quick motions and