ver wild moorland and morasses, a journey that
even to Voltaire sounded like a tour to the North Pole. Smollett, in
_Humphrey Clinker_, says the people at the other end of the island knew
as little of Scotland as they did of Japan, nor was Charing Cross,
witness as it did the greatest height of 'the tide of human existence,'
then bright with the autumnal trips of circular tours and Macbrayne
steamers. The feeling for scenery, besides, was in its infancy, nor was
it scenery but men and manners that were sought by our two travellers,
to whom what would now be styled the Wordsworthian feeling had little
or no interest. Gibbon has none of it, and Johnston laughed at Shenstone
for not caring whether his woods and streams had anything good to eat in
them, 'as if one could fill one's belly with hearing soft murmurs or
looking at rough cascades.' Fleet Street to him was more delicious than
Tempe, and the bare scent of the pastoral draws an angry snort from the
critic. Boswell, in turn, confesses to no relish for nature; he admits
he has no pencil for visible objects, but only for varieties of mind and
_esprit_. The _Critical Review_ congratulated the public on a fortunate
event in the annals of literature for the following account in Johnson's
_Journey_--'I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of romance might have
delighted to feign. I had, indeed, no trees to whisper over my head but
a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and
all was rudeness, silence and solitude. Before me, and on either side,
were high hills, which, if hindering the eye from ranging, forced the
mind to find entertainment for itself.' This, little more than the
reflections of a Cockney on a hayrick, is as far as the eighteenth
century could go, nor need we wonder that the Rambler's moralizing at
Iona struck so much Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal
Society, that he 'clasped his hands together, and remained for some time
in an attitude of silent admiration.' Burns himself, as Prof. Veitch has
rightly indicated, has little of the later feeling and regards barren
nature with the unfavourable eyes of the farmer and the practical
agriculturist, nor has the travelled Goldsmith more to shew. Writing
from Edinburgh, he laments that 'no grove or brook lend their music to
cheer the stranger,' while at Leyden, 'wherever I turned my eye, fine
houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottoes, presented themselves.' Even
Gray found that M