that when this short and painful life shall have an end, I
may, for his sake, be received to everlasting happiness. Amen.'

'SIR ALEXANDER DICK TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

'Prestonfield, Feb. 17, 1777.

'SIR, I had yesterday the honour of receiving your book of your Journey
to the Western Islands of Scotland, which you was so good as to send me,
by the hands of our mutual friend, Mr. Boswell, of Auchinleck; for which
I return you my most hearty thanks; and after carefully reading it over
again, shall deposit in my little collection of choice books, next our
worthy friend's Journey to Corsica. As there are many things to admire
in both performances, I have often wished that no Travels or Journeys
should be published but those undertaken by persons of integrity and
capacity to judge well, and describe faithfully, and in good language,
the situation, condition, and manners of the countries past through.
Indeed our country of Scotland, in spite of the union of the crowns,
is still in most places so devoid of clothing, or cover from hedges and
plantations, that it was well you gave your readers a sound Monitoire
with respect to that circumstance. The truths you have told, and the
purity of the language in which they are expressed, as your Journey is
universally read, may, and already appear to have a very good effect.
For a man of my acquaintance, who has the largest nursery for trees and
hedges in this country, tells me, that of late the demand upon him for
these articles is doubled, and sometimes tripled. I have, therefore,
listed Dr. Samuel Johnson in some of my memorandums of the principal
planters and favourers of the enclosures, under a name which I took the
liberty to invent from the Greek, Papadendrion. Lord Auchinleck and some
few more are of the list. I am told that one gentleman in the shire of
Aberdeen, viz. Sir Archibald Grant, has planted above fifty millions of
trees on a piece of very wild ground at Monimusk: I must enquire if he
has fenced them well, before he enters my list; for, that is the soul
of enclosing. I began myself to plant a little, our ground being too
valuable for much, and that is now fifty years ago; and the trees, now
in my seventy-fourth year, I look up to with reverence, and shew them to
my eldest son now in his fifteenth year, and they are full the height
of my country-house here, where I had the pleasure of receiving you,
and hope again to have that satisfaction with our mutual friend, M