Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1883 — Scotch Beauties. [ARTICLE]

Scotch Beauties.

They are a wiry and hard-enduring rather than a muscular massive race, though here and there the Scandinavian physique is found to prevail. In the island of Lewis it is odd to note how in the north, where the names of the villages and mountains have Norse terminations (Lost and bhal), the population is of the stalwart, tall, fairhaired, Scandinavian type, while the smaller black-haired or red-haired Celt occupies the southern half of the island, in which the names.of the streams and mountains and lakes are exclusively Celtic. The handsomest man I have ever seen was a boatman on the west of Skye, the calm and serious dignity of whose face seemed more suggestive of Leonardo da Vinci than of herringfishing; and the handsomest woman I have ever seen was a young married lady who, some years ago, happened to be* traveling in the Clansman and whose gently modulated English indicated an Iverness origin. When a Highland girl, even of the peasant class, is pretty (and the phenomenon is not of a very ftire occurrence), the Jirettiness is of a refined and intelectual type: the forehead high, the eyes clear, full and contemplative, the mouth fine, and the expression of the face gentle and yet firm. Wadsworth never forgot the beauty of. the Highland girl he saw at Inversnaid. Indeed, it is said he had to recur to that fount w hen he wished to pay a poetical complaint to his wife. For the rest, the way in which an educated Highland young lady speaks English is one of the most delightful things in the world, though no doubt she would be very much surpised, and even indignant, if she was told that she had any accent at all. —Um. Elack, in Harper’s Magazine.