that tradition said so; and that there was a ruin remaining of their church, which had been burnt:  but I confess Dr. Johnson has weakened my belief in remote tradition.  In the dispute about Anaitis, Mr. M’Queen said, Asia Minor was peopled by Scythians, and, as they were the ancestors of the Celts, the same religion might be in Asia Minor and Sky.  JOHNSON.  ’Alas!  Sir, what can a nation that has not letters tell of its original.  I have always difficulty to be patient when I hear authours gravely quoted, as giving accounts of savage nations, which accounts they had from the savages themselves.  What can the M’Craas[619] tell about themselves a thousand years ago?  There is no tracing the connection of ancient nations, but by language; and therefore I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations[620].  If you find the same language in distant countries, you may be sure that the inhabitants of each have been the same people; that is to say, if you find the languages a good deal the same; for a word here and there being the same, will not do.  Thus Butler, in his Hudibras, remembering that Penguin, in the Straits of Magellan, signifies a bird with a white head, and that the same word has, in Wales, the signification of a white-headed wench, (pen head, and guin white,) by way of ridicule, concludes that the people of those Straits are Welsh[621].’

A young gentleman of the name of M’Lean, nephew to the Laird of the isle of Muck, came this morning; and, just as we sat down to dinner, came the Laird of the isle, of Muck himself, his lady, sister to Talisker, two other ladies their relations, and a daughter of the late M’Leod of Hamer, who wrote a treatise on the second sight, under the designation of THEOPHILUS INSULANUS[622].  It was somewhat droll to hear this Laird called by his title. Muck would have sounded ill; so he was called Isle of Muck, which went off with great readiness.  The name, as now written, is unseemly, but it is not so bad in the original Erse, which is Mouach, signifying the Sows’ Island.  Buchanan calls it INSULA PORCORUM.  It is so called from its form.  Some call it Isle of Monk.  The Laird insists that this is the proper name.  It was formerly church-land belonging to Icolmkill, and a hermit lived in it.  It is two miles long, and about three quarters of a mile broad.  The Laird said, he had seven score of souls upon it.  Last year he had eighty persons inoculated, mostly children, but some of them eighteen years of age.  He agreed with the surgeon to come and do it, at half a crown a head.  It is very fertile in corn, of which they export some; and its coasts abound in fish.  A taylor comes there six times in a year.  They get a good blacksmith from the isle of Egg.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19.