-- For my part, I
was as much pleased with the modesty as with the filial virtue of
this honest soldier, who assumed no merit from his success, and
said very little of his own transactions, though the answers he
made to our inquiries were equally sensible and laconic, Mrs
Tabitha behaved very graciously to him until she understood that
he was going to make a tender of his hand to a person of low
estate, who had been his sweet-heart while he worked as a
journeyman weaver. -- Our aunt was no sooner made acquainted with
this design, than she starched up her behaviour with a double
proportion of reserve; and when the company broke up, she
observed with a toss of her nose, that Brown was a civil fellow
enough, considering the lowness of his original; but that
Fortune, though she had mended his circumstances, was incapable
to raise his ideas, which were still humble and plebeian.
On the day that succeeded this adventure, we went some miles out
of our road to see Drumlanrig, a seat belonging to the duke of
Queensberry, which appears like a magnificent palace erected by
magic, in the midst of a wilderness. -- It is indeed a princely
mansion, with suitable parks and plantations, rendered still more
striking by the nakedness of the surrounding country, which is
one of the wildest tracts in all Scotland.
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