acquainted with, your Mother will give you) I applied to Augusta
for the same information respecting herself, Sir Edward and Lady
Dorothea.

She told me that having a considerable taste for the Beauties
of Nature, her curiosity to behold the delightful scenes it
exhibited in that part of the World had been so much raised by
Gilpin's Tour to the Highlands, that she had prevailed on her
Father to undertake a Tour to Scotland and had persuaded Lady
Dorothea to accompany them. That they had arrived at Edinburgh a
few Days before and from thence had made daily Excursions into the
Country around in the Stage Coach they were then in, from one of
which Excursions they were at that time returning. My next
enquiries were concerning Philippa and her Husband, the latter of
whom I learned having spent all her fortune, had recourse for
subsistence to the talent in which, he had always most excelled,
namely, Driving, and that having sold every thing which belonged
to them except their Coach, had converted it into a Stage and in
order to be removed from any of his former Acquaintance, had
driven it to Edinburgh from whence he went to Sterling every other
Day. That Philippa still retaining her affection for her
ungratefull Husband, had followed him to Scotland and generally
accompanied him in his little Excursions to Sterling. "It has only
been to throw a little money into their Pockets (continued
Augusta) that my Father has always travelled in their Coach to
veiw the beauties of the Country since our arrival in Scotland
--for it would certainly have been much more agreable to us, to
visit the Highlands in a Postchaise than merely to travel from
Edinburgh to Sterling and from Sterling to Edinburgh every other
Day in a crowded and uncomfortable Stage." I perfectly agreed with