ormed considerable resources. Yesterday they left us,
deeply impressed with the conviction, which I can hardly
blame, that the sun never shone in Scotland,--which that
noble luminary seems disposed to confirm, by making this the
first fair day we have seen this month--so that his beams
will greet them at Longtown, as if he were determined to put
Scotland to utter shame.

In you I expect a guest of a different calibre; and I think
(barring downright rain) I can promise you some sport of one
kind or other. We have a good deal of game about us; and
Walter, to whom I have resigned my gun and license, will be
an excellent attendant. He brought in six brace of moor-fowl
on the 12th, which had (_si fas est diceri_) its own effect
in softening the minds of our guests towards this unhappy
climate. In other respects things look melancholy enough
here. Corn is, however, rising, and the poor have plenty of
work, and wages which, though greatly inferior to what they
had when hands were scarce, assort perfectly well with the
present state of the markets. Most folks try to live as much
on their own produce as they can, by way of fighting off
distress; and though speculating {p.119} farmers and
landlords must suffer, I think the temporary ague-fit will,
on the whole, be advantageous to the country. It will check
that inordinate and unbecoming spirit of expense, or rather
extravagance, which was poisoning all classes, and bring us
back to the sober virtues of our ancestors. It will also
have the effect of teaching the landed interest, that their
connection with their farmers should be of a nature more
intimate than that of mere payment and receipt of rent, and
that the largest offerer for a lease is often the person
least entitled to be preferred as a tenant. Above all, it
will complete the destruction of those execrable quacks,
terming themselves land-doctors, who professed, from a two
days' scamper over your estate, to tell you its
constitution,--in other words its value,--acre by acre.
These men, paid according to the golden hopes they held out,
afforded by their reports one principal means of deceiving
both landlord and tenant, by setting an ideal and
extravagant value upon land, which seemed to entitle the one
to expect, and the other to