DEAR AUNT,

YOU ask me to speak more particularly concerning the external aspect and manners of the people among whom I am sojourning. I wish it were as easy for me to satisfy your curiosity on some other points mentioned in your last letter, as on this.

The Scots are certainly rather a hard-favoured race than otherwise; but I think their looks are very far from meriting the sort of commonplace sarcasms their southern neighbours are used to treat them with. Indeed, no one who has seen a Scots regiment, as I should suppose you must have done, can possibly be of opinion that they are at all an ugly nation; although it is very likely he may be inclined to prefer the general appearance of some other nation or nations to theirs. For my part, I am not without suspicion, that a little longer residence among them might teach me to become an absolute admirer of their physiognomies; at least, I am sensible, that the slight repugnance I felt for them at first, has already very considerably given way.

What the Scottish physiognomists are used to talk of, with the highest satisfaction, is the air of superior intelligence stamped on the faces of their countrymen of the lower orders of society; and indeed there is no question, a Scottish peasant, with his long dry visage, his sharp prominent cheekbones, his grey twinkling eyes, and peaked chin, would seem a very Argus, if set up close beside the sleek and ponderous chubbiness of a Gloucestershire farmer—to say nothing of the smarter and ruddier oiliness of some of our own country folks. As to the matter of mere acuteness, however, I think I have seen faces in Yorkshire, at least a match for any thing to be found further to the north. But the mere shrewdness of the Scotch peasant's face, is only one part of its expression; it has other things, I should imagine, even more peculiarly characteristic.