Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

nuphong - Samuel Johnson

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A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, by Samuel Johnson
The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, by Samuel Johnson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland Author: Samuel Johnson Release Date: April 20, 2005 [eBook #2064] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLES OF SCOTLAND***
Transcribed from the 1775 edition with the corrections noted in the 1785 errata by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND
INCH KEITH
I had desired to visit the Hebrides, or Western Islands of Scotland, so long, that I scarcely remember how the wish was originally excited; and was in the Autumn of the year 1773 induced to undertake the journey, by finding in Mr. Boswell a companion, whose acuteness would help my inquiry, and whose gaiety of conversation and civility of manners are sufficient to counteract the inconveniences of travel, in countries less hospitable than we have passed. On the eighteenth of August we left Edinburgh, a city too well known to admit description, and directed our course northward, along the eastern coast of Scotland, accompanied the first day ...

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Publié par	nuphong
Publié le	08 décembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	30
Langue	English

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A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, by
Samuel Johnson

The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland,
by Samuel Johnson

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland

Author: Samuel Johnson
Release Date: April 20, 2005 [eBook #2064]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLES OF
SCOTLAND***
Transcribed from the 1775 edition with the corrections noted in the 1785 errata
by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

A JIOSULRANNEDYS TOOF TSHCEO TWLEASNTDERN

INCH KEITH

I had desired to visit the Hebrides, or Western Islands of Scotland, so long, that
I scarcely remember how the wish was originally excited; and was in the
Autumn of the year 1773 induced to undertake the journey, by finding in Mr.
Boswell a companion, whose acuteness would help my inquiry, and whose
gaiety of conversation and civility of manners are sufficient to counteract the
inconveniences of travel, in countries less hospitable than we have passed.
On the eighteenth of August we left Edinburgh, a city too well known to admit

description, and directed our course northward, along the eastern coast of
Scotland, accompanied the first day by another gentleman, who could stay with
us only long enough to shew us how much we lost at separation.
As we crossed the Frith of Forth, our curiosity was attracted by Inch Keith, a
small island, which neither of my companions had ever visited, though, lying
within their view, it had all their lives solicited their notice. Here, by climbing
with some difficulty over shattered crags, we made the first experiment of
unfrequented coasts. Inch Keith is nothing more than a rock covered with a thin
layer of earth, not wholly bare of grass, and very fertile of thistles. A small herd
of cows grazes annually upon it in the summer. It seems never to have afforded
to man or beast a permanent habitation.
We found only the ruins of a small fort, not so injured by time but that it might be
easily restored to its former state. It seems never to have been intended as a
place of strength, nor was built to endure a siege, but merely to afford cover to a
few soldiers, who perhaps had the charge of a battery, or were stationed to give
signals of approaching danger. There is therefore no provision of water within
the walls, though the spring is so near, that it might have been easily enclosed.
One of the stones had this inscription: ‘Maria Reg. 1564.’ It has probably been
neglected from the time that the whole island had the same king.
We left this little island with our thoughts employed awhile on the different
appearance that it would have made, if it had been placed at the same distance
from London, with the same facility of approach; with what emulation of price a
few rocky acres would have been purchased, and with what expensive industry
they would have been cultivated and adorned.
When we landed, we found our chaise ready, and passed through Kinghorn,
Kirkaldy, and Cowpar, places not unlike the small or straggling market-towns in
those parts of England where commerce and manufactures have not yet
produced opulence.
Though we were yet in the most populous part of Scotland, and at so small a
distance from the capital, we met few passengers.
The roads are neither rough nor dirty; and it affords a southern stranger a new
kind of pleasure to travel so commodiously without the interruption of toll-gates.
Where the bottom is rocky, as it seems commonly to be in Scotland, a smooth
way is made indeed with great labour, but it never wants repairs; and in those
parts where adventitious materials are necessary, the ground once
consolidated is rarely broken; for the inland commerce is not great, nor are
heavy commodities often transported otherwise than by water. The carriages in
common use are small carts, drawn each by one little horse; and a man seems
to derive some degree of dignity and importance from the reputation of
possessing a two-horse cart.

ST. ANDREWS

At an hour somewhat late we came to St. Andrews, a city once archiepiscopal;
where that university still subsists in which philosophy was formerly taught by
Buchanan, whose name has as fair a claim to immortality as can be conferred
by modern latinity, and perhaps a fairer than the instability of vernacular
languages admits.

We found, that by the interposition of some invisible friend, lodgings had been
provided for us at the house of one of the professors, whose easy civility quickly
made us forget that we were strangers; and in the whole time of our stay we
were gratified by every mode of kindness, and entertained with all the elegance
of lettered hospitality.
In the morning we rose to perambulate a city, which only history shews to have
once flourished, and surveyed the ruins of ancient magnificence, of which even
the ruins cannot long be visible, unless some care be taken to preserve them;
and where is the pleasure of preserving such mournful memorials? They have
been till very lately so much neglected, that every man carried away the stones
who fancied that he wanted them.
The cathedral, of which the foundations may be still traced, and a small part of
the wall is standing, appears to have been a spacious and majestick building,
not unsuitable to the primacy of the kingdom. Of the architecture, the poor
remains can hardly exhibit, even to an artist, a sufficient specimen. It was
demolished, as is well known, in the tumult and violence of Knox’s reformation.
Not far from the cathedral, on the margin of the water, stands a fragment of the
castle, in which the archbishop anciently resided. It was never very large, and
was built with more attention to security than pleasure. Cardinal Beatoun is
said to have had workmen employed in improving its fortifications at the time
when he was murdered by the ruffians of reformation, in the manner of which
Knox has given what he himself calls a merry narrative.
The change of religion in Scotland, eager and vehement as it was, raised an
epidemical enthusiasm, compounded of sullen scrupulousness and warlike
ferocity, which, in a people whom idleness resigned to their own thoughts, and
who, conversing only with each other, suffered no dilution of their zeal from the
gradual influx of new opinions, was long transmitted in its full strength from the
old to the young, but by trade and intercourse with England, is now visibly
abating, and giving way too fast to that laxity of practice and indifference of
opinion, in which men, not sufficiently instructed to find the middle point, too
easily shelter themselves from rigour and constraint.
The city of St. Andrews, when it had lost its archiepiscopal pre-eminence,
gradually decayed: One of its streets is now lost; and in those that remain, there
is silence and solitude of inactive indigence and gloomy depopulation.
The university, within a few years, consisted of three colleges, but is now
reduced to two; the college of St. Leonard being lately dissolved by the sale of
its buildings and the appropriation of its revenues to the professors of the two
others. The chapel of the alienated college is yet standing, a fabrick not
inelegant of external structure; but I was always, by some civil excuse, hindred
from entering it. A decent attempt, as I was since told, has been made to
convert it into a kind of green-house, by planting its area with shrubs. This new
method of gardening is unsuccessful; the plants do not hitherto prosper. To
what use it will next be put I have no pleasure in conjecturing. It is something
that its present state is at least not ostentatiously displayed. Where there is yet
shame, there may in time be virtue.
The dissolution of St. Leonard’s college was doubtless necessary; but of that
necessity there is reason to complain. It is surely not without just reproach, that
a nation, of which the commerce is hourly extending, and the wealth
encreasing, denies any participation of its prosperity to its literary societies; and
while its merchants or its nobles are raising palaces, suffers its universities to
moulder into dust.

Of the two colleges yet standing, one is by the institution of its founder
appropriated to Divinity. It is said to be capable of containing fifty students; but
more than one must occupy a chamber. The library, which is of late erection, is
not very spacious, but elegant and luminous.
The doctor, by whom it was shewn, hoped to irritate or subdue my English
vanity by telling me, that we had no such repository of books in England.
Saint Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and education,
being situated in a populous, yet a cheap country, and exposing the minds and
manners of young men neither to the levity and dissoluteness of a capital city,
nor to the gross luxury of a town of commerce, places naturally unpropitious to
learning; in one the desire of knowledge easily gives way to the love of
pleasure, and in the other, is in danger of yielding to the love of money