Genre:

Short Fiction, Letter, Travelogue, Serial

Subjects:

Reading, Amusement, Zoology, Illustration

    The narrator of this epistolatory travelogue relates to her friend, Harriet, a journey in Scotland. Staying with a friend's family at the fictional castle of Norland, she endeavoured to overcome her shyness by 'looking at the thousand useless toys with which fashionable aparments are furnished', including 'folios, quartos, and octavos, filled with splendid engravings of the canine race [...]; of horses [...]; of bipeds, from man to monkey; of quadrupeds, from the elephant to the mole; and of birds, from the eagle to the wren; besides the costumes of all the world, and ruins and antiquities without end' (328). Later she 'turned up a book with engravings of the polar regions' and entertained herself 'with viewing whales, porpoises, and ice bergs' (329).