lay
the lists of the new circulating library--the first in Scotland--Miss
Lydia Languish with her maid, or my lady's gentlewoman from some fine
house in the Canongate, had come in to ask for the last new novel from
London, the Scotch capital having not yet begun to produce that article
for itself.

One may be sure that Allan, rotund and smiling, was always ready for a
crack with the ladies, and to recommend the brand new _Pamela_, the
support of virtue, or some contemporary work of lesser genius. Though
the general costume was like that worn in the other parts of the island,
perhaps a little behind London fashions, the fair visitors would still
be veiled with the plaid, the fine woven screen of varied tartan which
covered the head like a hood, and could on occasion conceal the face
more effectually than Spanish lace or Indian muslin--a singular
peculiarity not ancient and scarcely to be called national, since the
tartan came from the still-despised Highlands, and these were Lowland
ladies who wore the plaid. This fashion would seem to have begun to be
shaken by Ramsay's time, for he pleads its cause with all the fervour of
a poetical advocate. There is something grotesque in the arguments, and
still more grotesque in the names by which he distinguishes the wearers
of the plaid.

"Light as the pinions of the airy fry
Of larks and linnets who traverse the sky,
Is the Tartana, spun so very fine
Its weight can never make the fair repine;
Nor does it move beyond its proper sphere,
But lets the gown in all its shape appear;
Nor is the straightness of her waist denied
To be by every ravished eye surveyed;
For this the hoop may stand at largest bend,
It comes not nigh, nor can its weight offend.

* * * * *

"If shining red Campbella's cheeks adorn,
Our fancies straight conceive the blushing morn,
Beneath whose dawn the sun of beauty lies,
Nor need we light but from Campbella's eyes.
If lined with green Stuarta's plaid we view,
Or thine, Ramseia, edged around with blue,
One shews the spring when nature is most kind,
The other heaven whose spangles lift the mind."

The description of the manner in which this engaging garment is worn has
all the more reason to be quoted that it was not only a new piece by
Allan Ramsay, but affords a glimpse of the feminine figures that were to
be seen in the High Street of Edinburg