their dinners, various and plentiful. The table
is always covered with elegant linen. Their plates for common use are
often of that kind of manufacture which is called cream coloured, or
queen's ware. They use silver on all occasions where it is common in
England, nor did I ever find the spoon of horn, but in one house.

The knives are not often either very bright, or very sharp. They are
indeed instruments of which the Highlanders have not been long acquainted
with the general use. They were not regularly laid on the table, before
the prohibition of arms, and the change of dress. Thirty years ago the
Highlander wore his knife as a companion to his dirk or dagger, and when
the company sat down to meat, the men who had knives, cut the flesh into
small pieces for the women, who with their fingers conveyed it to their
mouths.

There was perhaps never any change of national manners so quick, so
great, and so general, as that which has operated in the Highlands, by
the last conquest, and the subsequent laws. We came thither too late to
see what we expected, a people of peculiar appearance, and a system of
antiquated life. The clans retain little now of their original
character, their ferocity of temper is softened, their military ardour is
extinguished, their dignity of independence is depressed, their contempt
of government subdued, and the reverence for their chiefs abated. Of
what they had before the late conquest of their country, there remain
only their language and their poverty. Their language is attacked on
every side. Schools are erected, in which English only is taught, and
there were lately some who thought it reasonable to refuse them a version
of the holy scriptures, that they might have no monument of their mother-
tongue.

That their poverty is gradually abated, cannot be mentioned among the
unpleasing consequences of subjection. They are now acquainted with
money, and the possibility of gain will by degrees make them industrious.
Such is the effect of the late regulations, that a longer journey than to
the Highlands must be taken by him whose curiosity pants for savage
virtues and barbarous grandeur.

RAASAY

At the first intermission of the stormy weather we were informed, that
the boat, which was to convey us to Raasay, attended us on the coast. We
had from this time our intelligence facilitated, and our conversation
enlarged, by the company of Mr. Macqueen, minister of a parish i