Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/178

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142
CULLODEN.

than one chamber living with old tapestry. In one of them stands the state bed of Sir Hugh Campbell, who in 1672 married Lady Henrietta Stewart. Their initials, with the date, are carved on the outside wall of the court. At one end of the hall runs a gallery which bears the name of the Fiddler's Walk. There the musicians used to play, keeping time with their steps to their tune.

Inverness (August 28-30).

From Cawdor Johnson and Boswell drove to Fort George, "the most regular fortification in the island," according to Johnson; "where," he continues, "they were entertained by Sir Eyre Coote, the Governor, with such elegance of conversation, as left us no attention to the delicacies of his table." Wolfe, who saw it in 1751, when it was partly made, writes: "I believe there is still work for six or seven years to do. When it is finished one may venture to say (without saying much) that it will be the most considerable fortress, and the best situated in Great Britain."[1] In the evening our travellers continued their journey to Inverness—a distance of twelve miles. The reviewer of Johnson's narrative in the Scots Magazine expresses his wonder that as "he must have passed near the Field of Culloden he studiously avoided to mention that battle."[2] Boswell is equally reticent. The explanation is perhaps merely due to the dusk of evening, in which they passed by the spot. It is not unlikely, on the other hand, that the silence was intentional. Johnson shows a curious reticence in a passage in which he refers to the Rebellion of 1745. In his description of Rasay he writes: "Not many years ago the late laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition." Had he visited Culloden or described the campaign, his indignation must have flamed forth at the cruelties of the butcher duke. Boswell, Lowlander though he was, said "that they would never be forgotten." With Smollett, in his Tears of Scotland, they might well have exclaimed:—

"Yet when the rage of battle ceased,
The victor's soul was not appeased:
The naked and forlorn must feel
Devouring flames and murd'ring steel."

  1. Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 178.
  2. Scots Magazine, 1775, p. 26.