Indeed, I believe I could not live anywhere out of Scotland. All my
recollections are Scottish, and consequently all my imaginations; and
though I thank God that I have as few fixed opinions as any man of my
standing, yet all the elements out of which they are made have a
certain national cast also. In short, I will not live anywhere else if
I can help it; nor die either; and all old Esky's[3] eloquence would
have been thrown away in an attempt to persuade me that _banishment
furth the kingdom_ might be patiently endured. I take more to Roscoe,
however: he is thoroughly good-hearted, and has a sincere, though
foolish concern for the country. I have also found out a Highland
woman with much of the mountain accent, and sometimes get a little
girl to talk to. But with all these resources, and the aid of the
Botanical Garden, the time passes rather heavily; and I am in some
danger of dying of ennui, with the apparent symptoms of extreme
vivacity. Did you ever hear that most of the Quakers die of
stupidity--actually and literally? I was assured of the fact the other
day by a very intelligent physician, who practised twenty years among
them, and informs me that few of the richer sort live to be fifty, but
die of a sort of atrophy, their cold blood just stagnating by degrees
among their flabby fat. They eat too much, he says; take little
exercise; and, above all, have no nervous excitement. The affection is
known in this part of the country by the name of _the Quaker's
disease_, and more than one-half of them go out so. I think this
curious, though not worth coming to Liverpool to hear, or writing from
Liverpool, &c.'

He was at this time about to sail for America, in order to marry a
lady of that country. In a letter to Morehead, he recalls his
old-fashioned country residence of Hatton, in West Lothian, and Mr
Morehead's family now resident there. Tuckey was a nickname for one of