University of Virginia Library

132. LETTER CXXXII.

Ten days had gone by like the “Days of Thalaba,”
and I took my leave of Gordon Castle. It seemed to
me, as I looked back upon it, as if I had passed a
separate life there — so beautiful had been every object
on which I had looked in that time, and so free from
every mixture of ennui had been the hours from the
first to the last, I have set them apart in my memory,
those ten days, as a bright ellipse in the usual procession
of joys and sorrows. It is a little world, walled
in from rudeness and vexation, in which I have lived a
life.

I took the coach for Elgin, and visited the fine old
ruins of the cathedral, and then kept on to Inverness,
passing over the “Blasted Heath,” the tryst of Macbeth
and the witches. We passed within sight of
Culloden Moor, at sunset, and the driver pointed out
to me a lonely castle where the Pretender slept the
night before the battle. The interest with which I
had read the romantic history of Prince Charlie, in
my boyhood, was fully awakened, for his name is still
a watch-word of aristocracy in Scotland; and the
jacobite songs, with their half-warlike, half-melancholy
music, were favorites of the Dutchess of Gordon,
who sung them in their original Scotch, with an
enthusiasm and sweetness that stirred my blood like
the sound of a trumpet. There certainly never was a
cause so indebted to music and poetry as that which
was lost at Culloden.

The hotel at Inverness was crowded with livery-servants,
and the door inaccessible for carriages. I
had arrived on the last day of a county meeting, and
all the chieftains and lairds of the north and west of
Scotland were together. The last ball was to be given
that evening, and I was strongly tempted to go by four
or five acquaintances whom I found in the hotel, but
the gout was peremptory. My shoe would not go on,
and I went to bed.

I was limping about in the morning when a kind old
baronet, whom I had met at Gordon Castle, when I
was warmly accosted by a gentleman whom I did not
immediately remember. On his reminding me that
we had parted last on Lake Leman, however, I recollected
a gentlemanlike Scotchman, who had offered
me his glass opposite Copet to look at the house of
Madame de Stael, and whom I had left afterward at
Lausanne, without even knowing his name. He invited
me immediately to dine, and in about an hour or
two after, called in his carriage, and drove me to a
charming country-house, a few miles down the shore
of Loch Ness, where he presented me to his family,
and treated me in every respect as if I had been the
oldest of his friends. I mention the circumstance for
the sake of a comment on what seems to me a universal
error with regard to the Scotch character. Instead
of a calculating and cold people, as they are always
described by the English, they seem to me more a
nation of impulse and warm feeling than any other I
have seen. Their history certainly goes to prove a
most chivalrous character in days gone by, and as far
as I know Scotchmen, they preserve it still with even
less of the modification of the times than other
nations. The instance I have mentioned above, is one
of many that have come under my own observation,
and in many inquiries since, I have never found an
Englishman, who had been in Scotland, who did not
confirm my impression. I have not traded with them,
it is true, and I have seen only the wealthier class, but
still I think my judgment a fair one. The Scotch in
England are, in a manner, what the Yankees are in
the southern states, and their advantages of superior
quickness and education have given them a success
which is ascribed to meaner causes. I think (common
prejudice contradicente) that neither the Scotch
nor the English are a cold or an unfriendly people,
but the Scotch certainly the farther remove from coldness
of the two.

Inverness is the only place I have ever been in where
no medicine could be procured on a Sunday. I did
not want, indeed, for other mementoes of the sacredness
of the day. In the crowd of the public room of
the hotel, half the persons at least, had either bible or
prayer-book, and there was a hush through the house,
and a gravity in the faces of the people passing in the

street, that reminded me more of New-England than
anything I have seen. I had wanted some linen
washed on Saturday. “Impossible!” said the waiter,
“no one does up linen on Sunday.” Toward evening
I wished for a carriage to drive over to my hospitable
friend. Mine host stared, and I found it was indecorous
to drive out on Sunday. I must add, however,
that the apothecary's shop was opened after the
second service, and that I was allowed a carriage on
pleading my lameness.

Inverness is a romantic-looking town, charmingly
situated between Loch Ness and the Murray Firth,
with the bright river Ness running through it, parallel
to its principal street, and the most picturesque eminences
in its neighborhood. There is a very singular
elevation on the other side of the Ness, shaped like a
ship, keel up, and rising from the centre of the plain,
covered with beautiful trees. It is called, in Gaelic,
Tonnaheuric, or the Hill of the Fairies.

It has been in one respect like getting abroad again,
to come to Scotland. Nothing seemed more odd to
me on my first arrival in England, than having suddenly
ceased to be a “foreigner.” I was as little at
home myself, as in France or Turkey (much less
than in Italy), yet there was that in the manner of
every person who approached me which conveyed the
presumption that I was as familiar with everything
about me as himself. In Scotland, however, the
Englishman is the “Sassenach,” and a stranger; and,
as I was always taken for one, I found myself once
more invested with that agreeable consequence which
accompanies it, my supposed prejudices consulted,
my opinion about another country asked, and comparisons
referred to me as an exparte judge. I found
here, as abroad, too, that the Englishman was expected
to pay more for trifling services than a native, and
that he would be much more difficult about his accommodations,
and more particular in his chance
company. I was amused at the hotel with an instance
of the want of honor shown “the prophet in his own
country.” I went down to the coffee-room for my breakfast
about noon, and found a remarkably fashionable,
pale, “Werter-like man,” excessively dressed, but
with all the air of a gentleman, sitting with the newspaper
on one side of the fire. He offered me the
paper after a few minutes, but with the cold, half-supercilious
politeness which marks the dandy tribe,
and strolled off to the window. The landlord entered
presently, and asked me if I had any objection to
breakfasting with that gentleman, as it would be a
convenience in serving it up. “None in the world,”
I said “but you had better ask the other gentleman
first.” “Hoot!” said Boniface, throwing up his chin
with an incredulous expression, “it's honor for the
like o'him. He's joost a laddie born and brought up
i' the toon. I kenn'd him weel.” And so enter
breakfast for two. I found my companion a well-bred
man; rather surprised, however, if not vexed, to
discover that I knew he was of Inverness. He had
been in the civil services of the East India Company
for some years (hence his paleness), and had returned
to Scotland for his health. He was not the least
aware that he was known, apparently and he certainly
had not the slightest trace of his Scotch birth. The
landlord told me afterward that his parents were poor,
and he had raised himself by his own cleverness alone,
and yet it was “honor for the like o' him” to sit at
table with a common stranger! The world is really
very much the same all over.

In the three days I passed at Inverness, I made the
acquaintance of several of the warm-hearted Highland
chiefs, and found great difficulty in refusing to go
home with them. One of the “Lords of the Isles”
was among the number, a handsome, high-spirited
youth, who would have been the chivalrous Lord
Ronald of a century ago, but was now only the best
shot, the best rider, the most elegant man, and the
most “capital fellow” in the west of Scotland. He
had lost everything but his “Isle” in his London campaigns,
and was beginning to listen to his friends
advice, and look out for a wife to mend his fortune
and his morals. There was a peculiar style about all
these young men, something very like the manner of
our high-bred Virginians — a free, gallant self-possessed
bearing, fiery and prompt, yet full of courtesy.
I was pleased with them altogether.

I had formed an agreeable acquaintance, on my
passage from London to Edinburgh in the steamer,
with a gentleman bound to the Highlands for the
shooting season. He was engaged to pay a visit to
Lord Lumley, with whom I had myself promised to
pass a week, and we parted at Edinboro' in the hope
of meeting at Kinrara. On my return from Dalhousie,
a fortnight after, we met by chance at the hotel in
Edinboro', he having arrived the same day, and having
taken a passage like myself for Aberdeen. We
made another agreeable passage together, and he left
me at the gate of Gordon castle, proceeding north on
another visit. I was sitting in the coffee-room at
Inverness, pondering how I should reach Kinrara,
when, enter again my friend, to my great surprise,
who informed me that Lord Lumley had returned to
England. Disappointed alike in our visit, we took a
passage together once more in the steamer from
Inverness to Fort William for the following morning.
It was a singular train of coincidences, but I was
indebted to it for one of the most agreeable chance
acquaintances I have yet made.