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appearance. Fochabers, the neighbouring village, is a poor place, many of the houses being ruinous; but it is remarkable, they have in general orchards well stored with apple-trees. Elgin has what in England are called piazzas, that run in many places on each side of the street. It must have been a much better place formerly. Probably it had piazzas all along the town, as I have seen at Bologna. I approved much of such structures in a town, on account of their conveniency in wet weather. Dr. Johnson disapproved of them, "because (said he) it makes the under-storey of a house very dark, which greatly over-balances the conveniency, when it is considered how small a part of the year it rains; how few are usually in the street at such times; that many who are might as well be at home; and the little that people suffer, supposing them to be as much wet as they commonly are in walking a street.”

We fared but ill at our inn here; and Dr. Johnson said, this was the first time he had seen a dinner in Scotland that he could not eat

In the afternoon, we drove over the very heath where Macbeth met the witches, according to tradition.* Dr. Johnson again solemnly repeated

"How far is't called to Fores? What are these,

So withered, and so wild in their attire ?

They look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on't."

He repeated a good deal more of "Macbeth." His recitation was grand and affecting, and, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed to me, had no more tone than it should have; it was the better for it. He then parodied the "All hail" of the witches to Macbeth, addressing himself to me. I had purchased some land called Dalblair; and as in Scotland it is customary to distinguish landed men by the name of Duke, "to take myself off to Gordon Castle; else I might perhaps have been appointed necklace-maker to the Queen and the Princesses." His Grace had an old librarian, Mr. James Hoy (a correspondent of Burns's) who was called the Duke's Crammer. His forenoon duty was to read the new books, as they arrived at the castle, while the Duke worked at his turning-lathe; and in the afternoons, over a bottle of claret, he filled his patron with all that he considered worth remembering in them. Had Johnson visited Gordon Castle the quality and manner of his literary communications to the Duke would have formed a curious contrast to those of the old Scotch librarian.-ED.]

• In reality they did not reach the spot till the following day. Johnson traces the journey correctly. Boswell had been misled by his memory or by looking into Pennant, who fell into the same error. ("Tour in Scotland in 1769.") The "blasted heath" lies to the west of Forres, about halfway between that town and Nairn. A round knoll planted with fir-trees, and known by the name of "Macbeth's Hilloch," has from time immemorial been pointed out as the place where the Thane met the weird sisters. In the immediate neighbourhood is the old castle of Inshock, once a seat of the Hays of Lochloy; and the hills of Rosshire and Sutherland are seen across the Frith. The once-dreary table-land of the moor is now almost all under cultivation-either with woods or arable farms, and the public highway passes through it.--ED.

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their estates, I had thus two titles, Dalblair and Young Auchinleck. So my friend, in imitation of

"All hail, Macbeth! hail to thec, Thane of Cawdor!" condescended to amuse himself with uttering

"All hail, Dalblair! hail to thee, Laird of Auchinleck!"

We got to Fores at night, and found an admirable inn, in which Dr. Johnson was pleased to meet with a landlord who styled himself "Wine Cooper, from LONDON."

FRIDAY, AUGUST 27.

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It was dark when we came to Fores last night, so we did not see what is called King Duncan's monument.* I shall now mark some gleanings of Dr. Johnson's conversation. I spoke of "Leonidas," and said there were some good passages in it.-JOHNSON: "Why, you must seek for them." He said, Paul Whitehead's Manners was a poor performance. Speaking of Derrick, he told me "he had a kindness for him, and had often said, that if his letters had been written by one of a more established name they would have been thought very pretty letters."

This morning I introduced the subject of the origin of evil.-JOHNSON: "Moral evil is occasioned by free will, which implies choice between good and evil. With all the evil that there is, there is no man but would rather be a free agent than a mere machine without the evil; and what is

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Boswell must allude to "Forres Pillar" or "Sweno's Stone," a curiously carved obelisk, 23 feet in height above the ground, and said to be 12 feet under ground. stands in a field about half a mile to the east of the town. It is commonly supposed to commemorate the expulsion of the Danes after the Battle of Mortlach in the reign of Malcolm II. The antiquity of the stone is pointed out incidentally in a charter granted

If a man would

He is a different

best for each individual must be best for the whole. rather be the machine, I cannot argue with him. being from me."-BOSWELL: "A man, as a machine, may have agreeable sensations; for instance, he may have pleasure in music.” -JOHNSON: "No, sir, he cannot have pleasure in music; at least no power of producing music; for he who can produce music may let it alone; he who can play upon a fiddle may break it; such a man is not a machine." This reasoning satisfied me. It is certain, there cannot be a free agent unless there is the power of being evil as well as good. We must take the inherent possibilities of things into consideration, in our reasonings or conjectures concerning the works of God.

We came to Nairn to breakfast. Though a county town and a royal burgh, it is a miserable place. Over the room where we sat, a girl was spinning wool with a great wheel, and singing an Erse song: "I'll warrant you," said Dr. Johnson, "one of the songs of Ossian." He then repeated these lines:

"Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound.

All at her work the village maiden sings;
Nor, while she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitude of things."

I thought I had heard these lines before.-JOHNSON: "I fancy not, sir; for they are in a detached poem, the name of which I do not remember, written by one Giffard, a parson."

I expected Mr. Kenneth Macaulay, the minister of Calder, who published the "History of St. Kilda," a book which Dr. Johnson liked, would have met us here, as I had written to him from Aberdeen. But 1 received a letter from him, telling me that he could not leave home, as he was to administer the sacrament the following Sunday, and earnestly requesting to see us at his manse. "We'll go," said Dr. Johnson; which we accordingly did. Mrs. Macaulay received us, and told us her husband was in the church distributing tokens.* We arrived between twelve and one o'clock, and it was near three before he came to us.

by Alexander II., of the lands of Burgie, extending "a magno quercu in Malvin usque ad rune Pictorum." The carved figures and runic tracery on the pillar are singularly elaborate and striking.-ED.

• In Scotland there is a great deal of preparation before administering the sacrament. The minister of the parish examines the people as to their fitness, and to those of whom he approves gives little pieces of tin [pewter], stamped with the name of the parish, as tokens, which they must produce before receiving it. This is a species of priestly power, and sometimes may be abused. I remember a law-suit brought by a person against his parish minister, for refusing him admission to that sacred ordinance. -BOSWELL.

Dr. Johnson thanked him for his book, and said it was a very pretty piece of topography. Macaulay did not seem much to mind the compliment. From his conversation, Dr. Johnson was persuaded that he had not written the book which goes under his name. I myself always suspected so; and I have been told it was written by the learned Dr. John Macpherson of Sky, from the materials collected by Macaulay. Dr. Johnson said privately to me, "There is a combination in it of which Macaulay is not capable." However, he was exceedingly hospitable; and, as he obligingly promised us a route for our tour through the Western Isles, we agreed to stay with him all night.*

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After dinner, we walked to the old castle of Calder (pronounced Cawder), the Thane of Cawdor's seat. I was sorry that my friend,

Mr. Macaulay had, previous to his settlement at Calder, been minister of Ardnamurchan, in Argyleshire, and visited St. Kilda in 1758, as missionary to the island, from the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge. His "History of St. Kilda" was published in 1764. It is not very accurate in details, but is well written. Passages of the

this "prosperous gentleman," was not there. The old tower must be of great antiquity. There is a draw-bridge, what has been a moat, and an ancient court. There is a hawthorn-tree, which rises like a wooden pillar through the rooms of the castle; for, by a strange conceit, the walls have been built round it. The thickness of the walls, the small slanting windows, and a great iron door at the entrance on the second storey as you ascend the stairs, all indicate the rude times in which this castle was erected. There were here some large venerable trees.*

work are somewhat Johnsonian in expression: e. g., "Silver and gold, stately houses and costly furniture, together with the fantastic luxury of dress and the table, they neither have nor desire. To rise in fleets and armies, amidst infinite toils and dangers; to earn posts or pensions, after having wriggled themselves into the favour of the great, at the expense of honour and conscience; to create overgrown estates, after having practised all the vile arts of avarice, frauds, extortion and servility, are passions and wishes which Providence has kindly concealed from them. The humble blessings of bread and wild-fowl, of peaceful cottages and little flocks, of angling-rods and huntingropes, are all the riches, honours, and profits they aspire after. If at a distance from the seats of justice, they are absolute strangers to the law's delays; if ignorant and unphilosophical, they are libertines neither in belief or practice, nor with learned speculations strike at the foundation of virtue, nor produce any breach of the public tranquillity or happiness."-See "Wilson's Voyage Round Scotland," 1842, in which there is a highly interesting account of St. Kilda. The population of the little island consists of about a score of families, or 105 souls, who pay their rent (about 607.) by means of the feathers of sea-fowl, of which united they are bound to contribute 240 stones, and each family also gives the proprietor twenty-three pecks of barley every year. The solan geese, fulmar, and other varieties of sea-fowl on the coast are innumerable, and the men are bold cragsmen. Mr. Wilson was much struck with their fearless mode of collecting the eggs and young of the various sea-fowl, from the faces of the vast precipitous cliffs which overhang the sea.-ED.]

• The royal licence to build and fortify a castle at Calder was granted by James II., in the year 1454. From the nature of the ground the castle could never have been surrounded by a moat, properly so called, but by a dry fosse or ditch. The hawthorn-tree does not rise "through the rooms of the castle," but merely reaches the top of an arched vault or dungeon, in the centre of the structure, which had been built over the tree on the rock. The iron door securing this gloomy and singular apartment was carried off from Lochindorb Castle by special permission from the Crown. The Campbells acquired the estate by marriage, in 1510. A certain Thane dying in 1494, left a posthumous child, a daughter, named Muriel, or Marion. She was carried off when about six years of age by Campbell, of Inverliver, who came with a following of sixty men. Muriel's grandmother, in order to identify the child, seared and marked her on the hip with a key, and her two uncles, Alexander and Hugh Calder, pursued the party with what assistance they could muster. A conflict took place in Strathnairn; Campbell sent forward the child under an escort, and dressed up a sheaf of corn to represent the young heiress. The ruse succeeded; Muriel was taken off, and ultimately became the wife of Sir John Campbell, third son of Argyle. In the heat of the conflict between the Campbells and Calders, when the tide seemed to run against the former, Inverliver exclaimed in Gaelic, "It is a far cry to Loch Awe, and a distant help to the Campbells;" a saying which became proverbial in the north, to express imminent danger and distant relief. Boswell's friend, the "prosperous gentleman," was John Campbell, Esq., M.P. who died in 1779, and was succeeded by his grandson. The latter was elevated to the peerage in 1796, by the title of Lord Cawdor. The tradition as to the site of the castle and the mysterious hawthorn-tree is, that a wise man counselled the Thane to load an ass with a chest

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