a
seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns,--or cotton; I mean
stuffs made of vegetable substances. I would have no silk; you cannot
tell when it is clean: It will be very nasty before it is perceived to
be so. Linen detects its own dirtiness.'

To hear the grave Dr. Samuel Johnson, 'that majestick teacher of moral
and religious wisdom,' while sitting solemn in an armchair in the Isle
of Sky, talk, _ex cathedra_, of his keeping a seraglio[607], and
acknowledge that the supposition had _often_ been in his thoughts,
struck me so forcibly with ludicrous contrast, that I could not but
laugh immoderately. He was too proud to submit, even for a moment, to be
the object of ridicule, and instantly retaliated with such keen
sarcastick wit, and such a variety of degrading images, of every one of
which I was the object, that, though I can bear such attacks as well as
most men, I yet found myself so much the sport of all the company, that
I would gladly expunge from my mind every trace of this severe retort.

Talking of our friend Langton's house in Lincolnshire, he said, 'the old
house of the family was burnt. A temporary building was erected in its
room; and to this day they have been always adding as the family
increased. It is like a shirt made for a man when he was a child, and
enlarged always as he grows older.'

We talked to-night of Luther's allowing the Landgrave of Hesse two
wives, and that it was with the consent of the wife to whom he was first
married. JOHNSON. 'There was no harm in this, so far as she was only
concerned, because _volenti non fit injuria_. But it was an offence
against the general order of society, and against the law of the Gospel,
by which one man and one woman are to be united. No man can have two
wives, but by preventing somebody else from having one.'

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17.

After dinner yesterday, we had a conversation upon cunning. M'Leod said
that he was not afraid of cunning people; but would let them play their
tricks about him like monkeys. 'But, (said I,) they'll scratch;' and Mr.
M'Queen added, 'they'll invent new tricks, as soon as you find out what
they do.' JOHNSON. 'Cunning has effect from the credulity of others,
rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no
extraordinary talents to lie and deceive[608].' This led us to consider
whether it did not require great abilities to be very wicked. JOHNSON.
'It requires great abilities to have the _