has its charms to a cheerful mind. I am busy
planting and taking measures for opening the summer campaign in farming;
and I find I have an excellent resource, when revolutions in politicks
perhaps, and revolutions of the sun for certain, will make it decent for
me to retreat behind the ranks of the more forward in life.

'I am glad to hear the last was a very busy week with you. I see you as
counsel in some causes which must have opened a charming field for your
humourous vein. As it is more uncommon, so I verily believe it is more
useful than the more serious exercise of reason; and, to a man who is to
appear in publick, more eclat is to be gained, sometimes more money too,
by a _bon-mot_, than a learned speech. It is the fund of natural humour
which Lord North possesses, that makes him so much the favourite of the
house, and so able, because so amiable, a leader of a party[1138].

'I have now finished _my_ Tour of _Seven Pages_. In what remains, I beg
leave to offer my compliments, and those of _ma tres chere femme_, to
you and Mrs. Boswell. Pray unbend the busy brow, and frolick a little in
a letter to,

'My dear Boswell,

'Your affectionate friend,

'GEORGE DEMPSTER[1139].'

I shall also present the publick with a correspondence with the Laird
of Rasay, concerning a passage in the _Journey to the_ Western Islands,
which shews Dr. Johnson in a very amiable light.

'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

'Rasay, April 10th, 1775.

'DEAR SIR,

'I take this occasion of returning you my most hearty thanks for the
civilities shewn to my daughter by you and Mrs. Boswell. Yet, though she
has informed me that I am under this obligation, I should very probably
have deferred troubling you with making my acknowledgments at present,
if I had not seen Dr. Johnson's _Journey to the Western Isles_, in which
he has been pleased to make a very friendly mention of my family, for
which I am surely obliged to him, as being more than an equivalent for
the reception you and he met with. Yet there is one paragraph I should
have been glad he had omitted, which I am sure was owing to
misinformation; that is, that I had acknowledged McLeod to be my chief,
though my ancestors disputed the pre-eminence for a long tract of time.

'I never had occasion to enter seriously on this argument with the
present laird or his grandfather, nor could I have any temptation to
such a renunciation from either of them. I acknowledge, the benefit of
being chief