-- He assured us, however, as we design
to return by the west road, that he will watch our motions, and
endeavour to pay his respects to us at Dumfries. -- Accordingly he
took his leave of us at a place half way betwixt Morpeth and
Alnwick, and pranced away in great state, mounted on a tall,
meagre, raw-boned, shambling grey gelding, without e'er a tooth
in his head, the very counter-part of the rider; and, indeed, the
appearance of the two was so picturesque, that I would give
twenty guineas to have them tolerably presented on canvas.
Northumberland is a fine county, extending to the Tweed, which is
a pleasant pastoral stream; but you will be surprised when I tell
you that the English side of that river is neither so well
cultivated nor so populous as the other. -- The farms are thinly
scattered, the lands uninclosed, and scarce a gentleman's seat
is to be seen in some miles from the Tweed; whereas the Scots are
advanced in crowds to the very brink of the river, so that you
may reckon above thirty good houses, in the compass of a few
miles, belonging to proprietors whose ancestors had fortified
castles in the same situations, a circumstance that shews what
dangerous neighbours the Scots must have formerly been to the
northern counties of England.
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