considering I did not understand a word of it, it
was not a little wearying. I must, however, own that the people listened
with the utmost attention, and that even such of them as were asleep all
the time, slept in a quiet, subdued, and reverential manner. Indeed,
they think much of religion in this Isle of Skye, and have a profound
respect for the clergy. "Sure," said an island guide one day, as he was
speaking of a distinguished divine, whom he had attended during a summer
tour--"sure he's a verra godly man, he gave me a drink out o' his ain
flask." And yet Portree is not a drinking place. There are two or three
good hotels for the tourists, and little more. I saw no sign of
intoxication on the evening of the fast day, but I did see churches
filled, and all business suspended, and the sight of the Gaelic
congregation was extremely interesting. The men in good warm home-spun
frieze, the women with clean faces, and plaid shawls, and white caps, the
younger ones with the last new thing in bonnets, looking as unlike the
big, bare-footed damsels of the streets, and the old withered women whom
you see coming in from the wide and dreary moor, as it is possible to
imagine. In London heresy may prevail--sometimes, it is said, it crosses
the Scottish border; but here, at any rate, since the Reformation has
flourished the sincere milk of the Word. These men and women have their
Gaelic Bible, and that they cling to as their guide in life, their
comfort in adversity, their stay and support in death, and as the
foundation of their hopes of immortal life and joy. An old gossiping
writer, who died a year or two since, relates how a Presbyterian
clergyman confessed to him that his congregation, who only used the
Gaelic, were so well versed in theology, that it was impossible for him
to go beyond their reach in the most profound doctrines of Christianity.
Perhaps it is as well for some ministers whom I have heard, but should be
sorry to name, that they have not Gaelic hearers. They must be terrible
fellows to preach to, these men, fed on the Shorter Catechism, the
Proverbs of Solomon, and the rest of the Old and New Testaments. It is
little to them what the philosophers think. Mill, and Spencer, and
Tyndall, and Huxley they ignore. Dark-eyed, black-haired, with heads
which you might knock against a rock without cracking, and with arms and
legs that one would fancy could stop the Flying Dutchman,--evidently
these are not the