The men here have generally high cheek-bones, and are lean and swarthy, fond of action, dancing in particular.  Though now I mention dancing, let me say something of their balls, which are very frequent here.  When a stranger enters the dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room taken up with the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by themselves; on the other end stand their pensive partners that are to be; but no more intercourse between the sexes than there is between two countries at war.  The ladies indeed may ogle, and the gentlemen sigh; but an embargo is laid on any closer commerce.  At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady directress, or intendant, or what you will, pitches on a gentleman and lady to walk a minuet; which they perform with a formality that approaches to despondence.  After five or six couple have thus walked the gauntlet, all stand up to country dances; each gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid lady directress; so they dance much and say nothing, and thus concludes our assembly.  I told a Scotch gentleman that such profound silence resembled the ancient procession of the Roman matrons in honour of Ceres; and the Scotch gentleman told me (and, faith, I believe he was right) that I was a very great pedant for my pains.

Now I am come to the ladies; and to show that I love Scotland, and everything that belongs to so charming a country, I insist on it, and will give him leave to break my head that denies it—­that the Scotch ladies are ten thousand times handsomer and finer than the Irish.  To be sure, now, I see your sisters Betty and Peggy vastly surprised at my partiality, but tell them flatly, I don’t value them, or their fine skins, or eyes, or good sense, or—­, a potato; for I say it, and will maintain it, and as a convincing proof (I’m in a very great passion) of what I assert, the Scotch ladies say it themselves.  But to be less serious; where will you find a language so pretty become a pretty mouth as the broad Scotch? and the women here speak it in its highest purity; for instance, teach one of their young ladies to pronounce ‘Whoar wull I gong?’ with a becoming wideness of mouth, and I’ll lay my life they will wound every hearer.

We have no such character here as a coquet, but alas! how many envious prudes!  Some days ago I walked into my Lord Kilcoubry’s (don’t be surprised, my lord is but a glover), when the Duchess of Hamilton (that fair who sacrificed her beauty to ambition, and her inward peace to a title and gilt equipage) passed by in her chariot; her battered husband, or more properly the guardian of her charms, sat by her side.  Straight envy began, in the shape of no less than three ladies who sat with me, to find faults in her faultless form.—­’For my part,’ says the first, ’I think what I always thought, that the Duchess has too much red in her complexion.’  ‘Madam, I’m of your opinion,’ says the second; ’I think her face has a palish cast too much on the delicate order.’  ‘And let me tell you,’ adds the third lady, whose mouth was puckered up to the size of an issue, ’that the Duchess has fine lips, but she wants a mouth.’—­At this every lady drew up her lips as if going to pronounce the letter P.