want of "variety in universal barrenness."[1] In the midst of such scenes, as the autumn day was darkening to its close, they would have allowed that, "when there is a guide whose conduct may be trusted, a mind not naturally too much disposed to fear, may preserve some degree of cheerfulness; but what," they would have asked, "must be the solicitude of him who should be wandering among the crags and hollows benighted, ignorant, and alone?"[2] Upon the islets on Loch Lomond they would have longed "to employ all the arts of embellishment," so that these little spots should no longer "court the gazer at a distance, but disgust him at his approach, when he finds instead of soft lawns and shady thickets nothing more than uncultivated ruggedness."[3] Everywhere they would have regretted the want of the arts and civilization and refinements of modern life.
Had Johnson been treated more kindly by the weather, doubtless the gloom of the landscape would have been less reflected upon his pages. Fifty-eight days of rain to three days of clear skies would have been sufficient to depress even the wildest worshipper of rude nature. In the eleven days in which he was kept prisoner by storms in Col, he had "no succession of sunshine to rain, or of calms to tempests; wind and rain were the only weather."[4] When the sun did shine he lets us catch a little of its cheerful light. His first day's Highland journey took him along the shore of Loch Ness in weather that was bright, though not hot. "The way was very pleasant; on the left were high and steep rocks, shaded with birch, and covered with fern or heath. On the right the limpid waters of Loch Ness were beating their bank, and waving their surface by a gentle undulation."[5] The morrow was equally fine. How prettily he has described his rest in the valley on the bank, where he first thought of writing the story of his tour, "with a clear rivulet streaming at his feet. The day was calm, the air was soft, and all was rudeness, silence and solitude."[6] Very different would have been the tale which he told had he travelled in the days of fast and commodious steamboats, good roads and carriages, comfortable inns, post-offices, telegraphs, and shops. He would not have seen a different system of life, or got an acquisition of ideas, but he might have found patience, and even promptings for descriptions of the beauties of rugged nature. "In an age when every London
