were at times very doubtful whether we should be
able to effect our purpose. To have seen it, even alone, would have
given me great satisfaction; but the venerable scene was rendered much
more pleasing by the company of my great and pious friend, who was no
less affected by it than I was; and who has described the impressions it
should make on the mind, with such strength of thought, and energy of
language, that I shall quote his words, as conveying my own sensations
much more forcibly than I am capable of doing:--

'We were now treading that illustrious Island, which was once the
luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving
barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of
religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be
impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were
possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever
makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the
present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and
from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent
and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery,
or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not
gain force upon the plain of _Marathon_, or whose piety would not grow
warmer among the ruins of _Iona_[898]!'

Upon hearing that Sir Allan M'Lean was arrived, the inhabitants, who
still consider themselves as the people of M'Lean, to whom the island
formerly belonged, though the Duke of Argyle has at present possession
of it, ran eagerly to him.

We were accommodated this night in a large barn, the island, affording
no lodging that we should have liked so well. Some good hay was strewed
at one end of it, to form a bed for us, upon which we lay with our
clothes on; and we were furnished with blankets from the village[899].
Each of us had a portmanteau for a pillow. When I awaked in the morning,
and looked round me, I could not help smiling at the idea of the chief
of the M'Leans, the great English Moralist, and myself, lying thus
extended in such a situation.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20.

Early in the morning we surveyed the remains of antiquity at this place,
accompanied by an illiterate fellow, as _Cicerone_, who called himself a
descendant of a cousin of Saint Columba, the founder of the religious
establishment here. As I knew that many persons had already