by a gentleman whose father was a young man
when Dr. Johnson visited the place. I shake
hands with him, he shook hands with his father,
his father may have shaken hands with
Dr. Johnson, which enables me to think that I
myself have almost shaken hands with Dr.
Johnson. I hear the same guide's story that
the doctor heard; how, after the Reformation,
an order was issued directing the lead, which
covered the roof, to be taken away and
converted into money for the use of the army, and
how the vessel in which " the cargo of sacrilege"
(so says Dr. Johnson) was shipped for
Holland, foundered at sea, and was lost with
the lead and all hands.

Elgin was a small place in Dr. Johnson's time;
but it is a busy bustling town now, with an
extensive suburb of substantial mansions and neat
villas, most of them embowered in luxuriant
gardens blooming with flowers and teeming with
fruit. It is the Cheltenham of the north.

After partaking of toddy from an ancestral
tumbler—I wonder how many hogsheads of
toddy that crystal goblet has held! I return to
the train, and in less than half an hour plunge
into the Highlands. It was shortly after he
left Elgin that Dr. Johnson made this entry in
his diary: " Here I first heard the Erse language."
I had heard the Erse language before;
but it was "here" that I first heard it on this
journey. It was not spoken; it was sung. The
voice proceeded from a third-class carriage in
my rear. By-and-by the strains were in front,
and, as station after station was passed, the
voice receded, and then came nearer again,
which puzzled me not a little at first, but
eventually explained itself in this way:—A
favourite singer of Erse romances was in the
train, and he was passing from carriage to
carriage to give the third-class passengers a taste
of his quality. As the Erse minstrel could not
come to me, I went to him, and found him in
the midst of a score of his fellows—apparently
fishermen—singing as if for his life, while his
auditors listened with open mouths and intense
admiration. He sang song after song with a
short dry cough at the end of each line, as a
sort of vocal comma; and as his audience never
laughed, but preserved the most stolid gravity,
I presumed that the lyrics were Homeric rather
than Anacreontic. I must say that I felt rather
ashamed, being a Scot born on the borders of
the Highlands, to think that I did not
understand a single word he sung. I thought to
make some amends to myself by trying the
Highlander with English; but that experiment
only made the matter worse, for he not only
understood English, but spoke it with remarkable
accuracy. The popular idea in England is,
that all Highlanders are red-headed. There were
at least a hundred Highlanders in this train, and
I did not notice more than three who were
positively red. The majority of them were
coal-black; and not one of them wore a kilt! The
Erse language, when sung, sounds like German,
and the native manner of singing is like the
French. I bring an English lady in to see real
Highlanders—she has only seen stage and
snuff-shop-door specimens—and they stare at
her so with their black eyes that she is seized
with a distracting thought of the fate of poor
Mr. Briggs, and escapes on the first opportunity.
When the minstrel departs, I find that
there is no Highlander left who can speak
English. I cannot, therefore, make myself
understood, until the happy thought occurs to me
to express myself in whisky, when they all by a
marvellous inspiration of intelligence comprehend
me on the instant. My experience of
life in all quarters of the globe leads me to
believe that liquor is the language of the world.

Most appropriately the shades of night were
falling upon the scene when the train, with a
horrid scream, belching forth fire and smoke,
rushed across the blasted heath near Fores. I
really think the stoker got up the effect on
purpose. The heath-scene was better and
more blasted than it had ever appeared to me
on the stage. It was vaster, and the illusion
was not destroyed by a proscenium of red
curtain and tassel; and certainly a pot, three hags,
and a gentleman in a kilt would have cut but a
poor figure on so wide an expanse of heath.
There is something to be said for the boards
after all. Yet the boards do not consecrate
scenes and events as history consecrates them.
This figment of the great poet's brain, grand as
it is, familiar as it is to the whole civilised
world, does not affect me with the touch of
nature which awakes my heart's strings
presently when I am whirled along the outskirts
of the field of Culloden. I do not see the
witches stirring the caldron. I do not hear
Macbeth asking them what it is they do; but I
do see bonny Prince Charlie and his faithful
Highlanders flying from the lost field, and I
can hear the thunder of Cumberland's cannon
in the distance; and the wind comes moaning
to the shuddering rocks of the Firth with the
burden of the sad wail, " Wae's me for Prince
Charlie." Once more I want to flourish a
claymore, and ask "Wha wadna follow thee,
king of the Heelan' hearts?" As I look out at
the carriage window, and peer, through the
darkness at some copse of furze or cluster of
whin-bushes, my heart is in my mouth lest he
should be hiding there, and Cumberland's men
should come and find him. Every sound is
sadly burdened with the name of Charlie. The
receding sea murmurs his name, and stretches
forth its white arms to enfold him in one last
parting embrace; the wind moans for him, the
stars are pale with fear for him, the sky drops
big tears, all nature wails with the cry of
Charlie, Charlie, Charlie!

The blasted heath, consecrated by Shakespeare,
does not affect me; but Culloden Moor
moves me deeply. Yet, as I have said, my
understanding rejects Charlie, while it certainly
does not reject Shakespeare. A case of the
flame of patriotism burning more fiercely than
the flame of poesy.

I slept at Inverness in a gaunt unpapered
room in the new wing of a huge barrack, by