tical computation. Not many years ago, the late Laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition. The fixth part of a people is fuppofed capable of bearing arms: Raafay had therefore fix hundred inhabitants. But because it is not likely that every man able to ferve in the field would follow the fummons, or that the chief would leave his lands totally defencelefs, or take away all the hands qualified for labour, let it be fuppofed, that half as many might be permitted to stay at home. The whole number will then be nine hundred, or nine to a fquare mile; a degree of populoufnefs greater than thofe tracts of defolation can often fhow. They are content with their country, and faithful to their chiefs, and yet uninfected with the fever of migration..

Near the house, at Raafay, is a chapel unroofed and ruinous, which has long been ufed only as a place of burial. About the churches, in the islands, are fmall fquares inclofed with ftone, which belong to particular families, as repofitcries for the dead. At Raafay there is one, I think, for the proprietor, and one for fome collateral house.

It is told by Martin, that at the death of the Lady of the island, it has been here the custom to erect a cross. This we found not to be true. The stones that stand about the chapel at a small diftance, fome of which have perhaps croffes cut upon them, are believed to have been not funeral monuments,

H.2...

numents, but the ancient boundaries of the fanétu

ary or confecrated ground.

Martin was a man not illiterate: he was an inhabitant of Sky, and therefore was within reach of intelligence, and with no great difficulty might have vifited the places which he undertakes to defcribe; yet with all his opportunities, he has often fuffered himself to be deceived. He lived in the last century, when the chiefs of the clans had loft little of their original influence. The mountains were yet unpenetrated, no inlet was opened to foreign novelties, and the feudal inftitutions operated upon life with their full force. He might therefore have displayed a series of fubordination and a form of government, which in more luminous and improved regions, have been long forgotten, and have delighted his readers with many uncouth customs that are now difufed, and wild opinions that prevail no longer. But he probably had not knowledge of the world fufficient to qualify him for judging what would deferve or gain the attention of mankind. The mode of life which was familiar to himfelf 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 perform-.. ed. In nations, where there is hardly the ufe of letters, what is once out of fight is loft for ever. They think but little, and of their few thoughts,

none

none are wafted on the past, in which they are neither interested by fear nor hope. Their only regifters are ftated obfervances and practical repre- -. fentations. For this reafon an age of ignorance is an age of ceremony. Pageants, and proceffions, and commemorations, gradually fhrink away, as ✩ bet er methods come into ufe of recording events, and preferving rights.

It is not only in Raafay that the chapel is unroof ed and useless; through the few iflands which we visited, we neither faw nor heard of any houfe of prayer, except in Sky, that was not in ruins. The malignant influence of Calvinifm has blafted cere→ mony and decency together; and if the remembrance of papal fuperftition is obliterated, the monuments of papal piety are likewife effaced.

It has been, for many years, popular to talk of the lazy devotion of the Romifi 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 re- :ligion muft in time be the confequence; for while the public acts of the miniftry are now performed in houfas, a very fmall number can be prefent; and as the greater part of the iflanders make no ufe of books, all muft neceffarily live in total ignorance, who want the opportunity of vocal inftruc

tion.

H.3

From

From thefe remains of ancient fanctity, which are every where to be found, it has been conjectured, that, for the last two centuries, the inhabi-... tants of the islands have decreased in number.— This argument, which fuppofes that the churches have been fuffered to fall, only because they were no longer neceffary, would have fome force, if the houses of worship ftill remaining were fufficient for the people. But fince they have now no churches.. at all, thefe 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 provifion for public wor-_ fhip would be made...

Where the religion of a country enforces confe-crated 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 said to be found in islands now inhabited; 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. Vo-... luntary folitude was the great art of propitiation, by which crimes were effaced, and confcience was appeased; it is therefore not unlikely, that orato

ries were often built in places where retirement was fure to have no disturbance.

Raafay has little that can detain a traveller, cx, cept the laird and his family; but their power wants no auxiliaries. Such a feat of hospitality, amidit the winds and waters, filks 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 Phæacia.

DUNVEGAN.

At Raafay, by good fortune, Macleod, fo 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, fo called, becaufe James the fifth of Scotland, who had the curiofity to vifit the iflands, came into it.

The port is made by an inlet of the fea, deep and narrow, where a ship lay waiting to difpeople: Sky, by carrying the natives away to America.

In coafting Sky, we paffed by the cavern in which it is the custom, as Martin relates, to catch birds in the night, by making a fire at the entrance.