You are, perhaps, imagining that I am withdrawing from the gay and the busy world, into regions of peace and pastoral felicity, and am enjoying the relicks of the golden age; that I am surveying nature’s magnificence from a mountain, or remarking her minuter beauties on the flowery bank of a winding rivulet; that I am invigorating myself in the sunshine, or delighting my imagination with being hidden from the invasion of human evils and human passions, in the darkness of a thicket; that I am busy in gathering shells and pebbles on the shore, or contemplative on a rock, from which I look upon the water, and consider how many waves are rolling between me and Streatham.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and, instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.  Here are mountains which I should once have climbed; but to climb steeps is now very laborious, and to descend them, dangerous; and I am now content with knowing, that, by scrambling up a rock, I shall only see other rocks, and a wider circuit of barren desolation.  Of streams, we have here a sufficient number; but they murmur not upon pebbles, but upon rocks.  Of flowers, if Chloris herself were here, I could present her only with the bloom of heath.  Of lawns and thickets, he must read that would know them, for here is little sun, and no shade.  On the sea I look from my window, but am not much tempted to the shore; for since I came to this island, almost every breath of air has been a storm, and, what is worse, a storm with all its severity, but without its magnificence, for the sea is here so broken into channels, that there is not a sufficient volume of water either for lofty surges, or a loud roar.

On Sept. 6th, we left—­to visit Raarsa, the island which I have already mentioned.  We were to cross part of Skie on horseback; a mode of travelling very uncomfortable, for the road is so narrow, where any road can be found, that only one can go, and so craggy, that the attention can never be remitted; it allows, therefore, neither the gaiety of conversation, nor the laxity of solitude; nor has it, in itself, the amusement of much variety, as it affords only all the possible transpositions of bog, rock, and rivulet.  Twelve miles, by computation, make a reasonable journey for a day.

At night we came to a tenant’s house, of the first rank of tenants, where we were entertained better than at the landlord’s.  There were books, both English and Latin.  Company gathered about us, and we heard some talk of the second sight, and some talk of the events of forty-five; a year which will not soon be forgotten among the islanders.  The next day we were confined by a storm.  The company, I think, increased, and our entertainment was not only hospitable, but elegant.  At night, a minister’s sister, in very fine brocade, sung Erse songs; I wished to know the meaning; but the highlanders are not much used to scholastick questions, and no translations could be obtained.