iful, when the novelty and the beauty of the
scene excite wonder and praise and joy. It is then people are glad to
come to the Isle of Skye, and find a charm in its lonely and rustic life,
in its tranquil lochs and its purple hills; but I fancy in Skye it is as
often wet as not; and when we were there the rain was in the ascendant,
and one would, except for the name of the thing, have been often just as
soon at home. Mr. Spurgeon once said to a Scotchman, as he was pointing
out the grandeur of a Highland scene, that it seemed as if God, after He
had finished making the world, got together all the spare rubbish, and
shot it down there. Apparently something similar has been done with
regard to Skye. You are bewildered with their number and variety--rocks
to the right, rocks to the left, rocks before, rocks behind, rocks rising
steep out of the sea with all sorts of rugged outlines, rocks sloping
away into wide moors where no life is to be seen, or into lochs where the
fish have it almost all to themselves. It is as well that it should be
so. The land does not flow with milk and honey. The hut of a Skye
peasant, with its turf walls, its bare and filthy floor, not the sweeter
for the fact that the cow--if the owner is rich enough to have
one--sleeps behind, its peat fire, with no chimney for the escape of
smoke, its bare-legged boys and girls, its sombre men, its gaunt women,
seemed to me the climax of human wretchedness.

It is with no common pleasure we get in our boat and are rowed ashore.
It is a secular day with us in England. Here, in Portree, it is fast
day, and all the shops are closed, and if we had not laid in a stock of
mutton at Oronsay, it would have been fast day with us on board the
_Elena_ as well as with the pious people ashore. It seems to me there
are services in the churches, either in English or in Gaelic, all day
long. Of course I attend the Gaelic sermon. It is recorded of an old
Duke of Argyll that on one occasion he was heard to declare that if he
wanted to court a young lady he would talk French, as that was the
language of flattery; that if he wished to curse and swear, he would have
recourse to English; but that if he wanted to worship God, he would
employ the Gaelic tongue. It may be that I heard a bad specimen, as the
sermon or service did not seem to be particularly impressive; and as the
preacher took a whole hour in which to expound and amplify his text, it
must be admitted that,