The mode of life which was familiar to himself, he did not fuppofe unknown to others, nor imagined that he could give pleasure by telling that of which it was, in his little country, impoffible to be ignorant.

What he has neglected cannot now be performed. In nations, where there is hardly the use of letters, what is once out of fight is loft for ever. They think but little, and of their few thoughts, none are wafted on the paft, in which they are neither interested by fear nor hope. Their only registers are ftated observances and practical representations. For this reason an age of ignorance is an age of ceremony. Pageants, and proceffions, and commemorations, gradually fhrink away, as better methods come into ufe of recording events, and preferving rights.

It is not only in Raafay that the chapel is unroofed and useless; through the few iflands

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iflands which we visited, we neither faw nor heard of any house of prayer, except in Sky, that was not in ruins. The malignant influence of Calvinifm has blafted ceremony and decency together; and if the remembrance of papal fuperftition is obliterated, the monuments of papal piety are likewise effaced.

It has been, for many years, popular to talk of the lazy devotion of the Romish clergy; over the fleepy laziness of men that erected churches, we may indulge our fuperiority with a new triumph, by comparing it with the fervid activity of those who fuffer them to fall.

Of the deftruction of churches, the decay of religion muft in time be the confequence; for while the publick acts of the ministry are now performed in houses, a very small number can be prefent; and as the greater part of the Iflanders make no ufe

of

of books, all muft neceffarily live in total ignorance who want the opportunity of vocal inftruction.

From these remains of ancient fanctity, which are every where to be found, it has been conjectured, that, for the laft two centuries, the inhabitants of the Islandshave decreased in number. This argument, which supposes that the churches have been fuffered to fall, only because they were no longer neceffary, would have some force, if the houses of worship still remaining were fufficient for the people. But fince they have now no churches at all, these venerable fragments do not prove the people of former times to have been more numerous, but to have been more devout. If the inhabitants were doubled with their prefent principles, it appears not that any provision for publick worship would be made. Where the religion of a country enforces confecrated buildings, the number

of those buildings may be fuppofed to afford fome indication, however uncertain, of the populousness of the place; but where by a change of manners a nation is contented to live without them, their decay implies no diminution of inhabitants.

Some of these dilapidations are faid to be found in iflands now uninhabited; but I doubt whether we can thence infer that they were ever peopled. The religion of the middle age, is well known to have placed too much hope in lonely aufterities. Voluntary folitude was the great art of propitiation, by which crimes were effaced, and confcience was appeased; it is therefore not unlikely, that oratories were often built in places where retirement was fure to have no difturbance.

Raafay has little that can detain a traveller, except the Laird and his family; but their power wants no auxiliaries.

Such

Such a feat of hospitality, amidst the winds and waters, fills the imagination with a delightful contrariety of images. Without is the rough ocean and the rocky land, the beating billows and the howling storm: within is plenty and elegance, beauty and gaiety, the fong and the dance. In Raafay, if I could have found an Ulyffes, I had fancied a Phœacia.

DUNVEGAN.

At Raafay, by good fortune, Macleod, so the chief of the clan is called, was paying a vifit, and by him we were invited to his feat at Dunvegan. Raafay has a ftout boat, built in Norway, in which, with fix oars, he conveyed us back to Sky. We landed at Port Re, so called, because James' the Fifth of Scotland, who had curiosity to visit the Islands, came into it. The port is made by an inlet of the sea, deep and narrow, where

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