New Aberdeen has all the bustle of prosperous trade, and all the shew of
increasing opulence. It is built by the water-side. The houses are
large and lofty, and the streets spacious and clean. They build almost
wholly with the granite used in the new pavement of the streets of
London, which is well known not to want hardness, yet they shape it
easily. It is beautiful and must be very lasting.

What particular parts of commerce are chiefly exercised by the merchants
of Aberdeen, I have not inquired. The manufacture which forces itself
upon a stranger's eye is that of knit-stockings, on which the women of
the lower class are visibly employed.

In each of these towns there is a college, or in stricter language, an
university; for in both there are professors of the same parts of
learning, and the colleges hold their sessions and confer degrees
separately, with total independence of one on the other.

In old Aberdeen stands the King's College, of which the first president
was Hector Boece, or Boethius, who may be justly reverenced as one of the
revivers of elegant learning. When he studied at Paris, he was
acquainted with Erasmus, who afterwards gave him a public testimony of
his esteem, by inscribing to him a catalogue of his works. The stile of
Boethius, though, perhaps, not always rigorously pure, is formed with
great diligence upon ancient models, and wholly uninfected with monastic
barbarity. His history is written with elegance and vigour, but his
fabulousness and credulity are justly blamed. His fabulousness, if he
was the author of the fictions, is a fault for which no apology can be
made; but his credulity may be excused in an age, when all men were
credulous. Learning was then rising on the world; but ages so long