eaders must be familiar with
Dr. Johnson's celebrated account of the conversion to Protestantism of
the people of Rum. "The inhabitants," says the Doctor, in his "Journey
to the Western Islands," "are fifty-eight families, who continued
Papists for some time after the laird became a Protestant. Their
adherence to their old religion was strengthened by the countenance of
the laird's sister, a zealous Romanist; till one Sunday, as they were
going to mass under the conduct of their patroness, Maclean met them on
the way, gave one of them a blow on the head with a yellow stick,--I
suppose a cane, for which the Erse had no name, and drove them to the
kirk, from which they have never departed. Since the use of this method
of conversion, the inhabitants of Eigg and Canna who continue Papists
call the Protestantism of Rum the religion of the yellow stick." Now,
such was the kind of Protestantism that, since the days of Dr. Johnson,
had also been introduced, I know not by what means, into Eigg. It had
lived on the best possible terms with the Popery of the island; the
parish minister had soaked day after day in the public-house with a
Roman Catholic boon companion; and when a Papist man married a
Protestant woman, the woman, as a matter of course, became Papist also;
whereas, when it was the man who was a Protestant, and the woman a
Papist, the woman remained what she had been. Roman Catholicism was
quite content with terms, actual though not implied, of a kind so
decidedly advantageous; and the Roman Catholics used good-humoredly to
urge on their neighbors the Protestants, that, as it was palpable they
had no religion of any kind, they had better surely come over to them,
and have some. In short, all was harmony between the two Churches. My
friend labored hard, as a good and honest man ought, to impart to
Protestantism in his parish the animating life of the Reformation; and,
through the blessing of God, after years of anxious toil, he at length
fully succeeded.

I had got wet, and the day continued bad; and so, instead of returning
to the evening sermon, which began at six, I remained alone aboard of
the vessel. The rain ceased in little more than an hour after, and in
somewhat more than two hours I got up on deck to see whether the
congregation was not dispersing, and if it was not yet time to hang on
the kettle for our evening tea. The unexpected apparition of some one
aboard the Free Church yacht startled two ragged boys wh