ese islands were some old acquaintances of
the mainland, which have slipped their moorings and drifted out to sea.
A sense of loneliness and melancholy steals over one amid this bleak,
wild scenery,--a sense of having one's self drifted away from the haunts
of men, almost from those of vegetation, so much sameness is there in
the landscape, so little of promise or growth on the soil. No wonder
that Dr. Johnson, to whom London streets and atmosphere alone were
congenial, and who brought with him to the Hebrides his strong antipathy
to everything Scotch, was often a prey to discontent and murmuring in
these latitudes, and that in a moment of ill-humor he should have
exclaimed to Boswell,--"Oh, Sir, a most dolorous country!" No wonder,
that, his suspicions excited by the nakedness of the land and his
preconceived notions of Scotch cupidity, he should, on occasion of
losing his stout oaken stick, while crossing the Island of Mull on a
Highland sheltie, have vowed to Boswell that it had been stolen by the
natives, justifying the charge by the argument,--"Consider, Sir, the
value of such a piece of timber here!"

Campbell, so his biographer tells us, "felt the loneliness of his
situation at Sunipol House acutely at first, though he soon became
reconciled to a country which, though bleak and wild, was peculiarly
romantic and nourished the poetry in his soul." Even a creature of a
lower order than philosophers, poets, or even us poor tourists, has been
known to feel the chilling influence of Nature in these her wildest
forms, and though weaned from softer airs, perhaps reconciled to its
stern lot, has cherished in its innermost bosom a memory so warm, so
strong, as to assert itself at last with a force that fired and burst
the little breast in which it had unconsciously smothered. Witness
Campbell's little poem, "The Parrot," the incident of which he learned
in the Island of Mull, from the family to whom the bird belonged,--an
incident which inspired the poet to a strain so touchingly sweet that I
cannot resist the temptation to quote it entire.

"The deep affections of the breast,
That Heaven to living things imparts,
Are not exclusively possessed
By human hearts.

"A parrot from the Spanish Main,
Full young, and early caged, came o'er
With bright wings to the bleak domain
Of Mulla's shore.

"To spicy groves where he had won
His plumage of resplendent hue,
H