The yeomanry and peasantry are, in general, a handsome, athletic, and industrious set of people, correct in their morals, frugal in their habits, and zealously attached to the civil and ecclesiastical con stitution of the country. The manufacturing towns are inhabited by persons of a more miscellaneous de scription. The patrician families, many of whom claim alliance with the most illustrious names in Scot tish history, evince a strong partiality to the county with which they are connected, and are said to be tenacious of aristocratical ideas, to a greater degree than almost any of the other nobility in the lowlands. Hitherto the middle and lower ranks have rarely been betrayed into the sectarian spirit which pervades some other counties. Of late years, indeed, the num ber of dissenters has increased considerably in the populous towns and villages ; but their separation from the church is attended by no violent symptoms of disaffection. Their pastors, so far as we have an opportunity of knowing, are men of liberal and ra tional views, untainted with bigotry, and, in promo ting every pious and benevolent purpose, cordially disposed to co-operate with their brethren of the es tablished church ; whose respectability and diligence are such, that the great mass of the population ad here to their from affection as well as from principle.
In former times there was much smuggling on this coast ; and those who engaged in it carried on their operations in such formidable bodies, that a military force durst scarcely venture to attack them with an equality of numbers. The dissolution of morals, fos tered by this illicit traffic, was here confined within a limited range ; but it is happy for the country that these adventurers are now almost extinct.
The above account has been necessarily abridged. We have received several interesting communications on the subject, of which our limits do not permit us to avail ourselves. No agricultural survey of the county has 'hitherto been printed, except one by Colonel Fullarton in 1793. It is understood, that Mr Aiton, writer in Strathaven, is employed in pre paring a report on this and some other counties. Some information, though none of a later date than 1800, may also be expected from the third volume of Chalmers' Caledonia, (not yet published.) See CATRINE, IRVINE, KILMARNOCK, MLA RKIRK, SALT COATS, and TROON. (M. E.)