A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

Front Cover
Lawrie & Symington, 1792 - Authors, English - 235 pages

From inside the book

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 210 - Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and...
Page 153 - Those who profess to feel it do not boast of it as a privilege, nor are considered by others as advantageously distinguished. They have no temptation to feign ; and their hearers have no motive to encourage the imposture.
Page 105 - Whatever is imaged in the wildest tale, if giants, dragons, and enchantment be excepted, would be felt by him, who, wandering in the mountains without a guide, or upon the sea without a pilot, should be carried, amidst his terror and uncertainty, to the hospitality and elegance of Raasay or Dunvegan.
Page 89 - Raasay has little that can detain a traveller, except the laird and his family ; but their power wants no auxiliaries. Such a seat of hospitality, amidst the winds and waters, fills the imagination with a delightful contrariety of images. Without is the rough ocean and the rocky land, the beating billows and the howling storm : within is plenty and elegance, beauty and gaiety, the song and the dance.
Page 152 - Strong reasons for incredulity will readily occur. This faculty of seeing things out of sight is local, and commonly useless. It is a breach of the common order of things, without any visible reason or perceptible benefit. It is ascribed only to a people very little enlightened; and among them, for the most part, to the mean and ignorant.
Page 197 - But there is a frightful interval between the seed and timber. He that calculates the growth of trees, has the unwelcome remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that he is doing what will never benefit himself; and when he rejoices to see the stem rise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down.
Page 155 - ... one generation of ignorance effaces the whole series of unwritten history. Books are faithful repositories, which may be a while neglected or forgotten; but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction: memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. Written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. Tradition is but a meteor, which, if once it falls, cannot be rekindled.
Page 153 - Boyle has been able to resist ; that sudden impressions, which the event has verified, have been felt by more than own or publish them ; that the Second Sight of the Hebrides...
Page 232 - It was pleafing to fee one of the moft defperate of human calamities capable of fo much help: whatever enlarges hope, will exalt courage ; after having feen the deaf taught arithmetick, who would be afraid to cultivate the Hebrides?
Page 50 - Regions mountainous and wild, thinly inhabited, and little cultivated, make a great part of the earth, and he that has never seen them, must live unacquainted with much of the face of nature, and with one of the great scenes of human existence.

Bibliographic information