tants of England, and other polished nations:
"When I was at Ferney in 1764," Boswell relates, "I mentioned our design
(of going to the Hebrides) to Voltaire. He looked at me as if I had
talked of going to the North Pole, and said, 'You do not insist on my
accompanying you!' 'No, sir.' 'Then I am very willing you should go.'"
In this remote, and, in the circles of London, almost unknown region,
Flora Macdonald was born and educated.

The death of her father, Macdonald of Milton, when she was only a year
old, made an important change in the destiny of the little Highland
girl. Her mother married again, and became the wife of Macdonald of
Armadale in Skye. Flora was, therefore, removed from the island of South
Uist to an island which was nearer to the means of acquiring information
than her native place.

It was a popular error of the times, more especially among the English
Whigs, to regard the Highlanders of every grade, as an ignorant,
barbarous race. So far as the lowest classes were concerned, this
imputation might be well-founded, though certainly not so well as it has
much longer been in the same classes in England. Previously to the reign
of George the Third many of the peasantry could not read, and many could
not understand what they read in English. There were few books in
Gaelic, and the defect was only partially supplied by the instruction of
bards and seneachies. But, among the middle and higher classes,
education was generally diffused. The excellent grammar-schools in
Inverness, Fortrose, and Dunkeld sent out men well-informed, excellent
classical scholars, and these from among that order which in England is
the most illiterate--the gentlemen-farmers. The Universities gave them
even a greater extent of advantages. When the Hessian troops were
quartered in Atholl, the commanding officers, who were accomplished
gentlemen, found a ready communication in Latin at every inn. Upon the
Colonel of the Hessian cavalry halting at Dunkeld, he was addressed by
the innkeeper in Latin. This class of innkeepers has wholly, unhappily,
disappeared in the Highlands.[275]

But it was in the island of Skye that classical learning was the most
general, and there an extraordinary degree of intelligence and
acquirement prevailed among the landed gentry. "I believe," observes
General Stewart, "it is rather unique for the gentry of a remote corner
to learn Latin, merely to talk to each other; yet so it was in Skye."
The acquisit