THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW,

For APRIL, 1809.

Art. I. Caledonian Sketches; or a Tour through Scotland in 1807: to which is prefixed an Explanatory Address to the Public, upon a recent Trial. By Sir John Carr. 4to. pp. about 550. Price 21. 2s. Mathews and Leigh. 1809.

OUR knight has once more run his summer course of adventures, and given the story of them to the world with a richness of exhibition, in point of paper, typography, and engraving, to which we might question the claims of any narrative less important than the retreat of the Ten Thousand, or the voyage of Columbus. We cannot help thinking what pride would have elated, the minds of facetious innkeepers, singing boatmen, mountain guides, the possessors of mud cabins, and possibly some lords of ancient castles, if they could have foreseen that their doings and their sentences were to be recorded and recited in such elegant lines of letters, on such beautiful fields of paper. And the builders of steeples and bridges would have looked with augmented complacency at their performances, which they already admired beyond all other works of art in the world, if it could have been foretold to them that the skill and genius, so wonderfully displayed in these structures, were destined to be represented in a thousand impressions of a fair delineation, and admired to the extremities of the kingdom, not to mention the Continent and America,' where it seems that some of the knight's former works have attained no smalldegree of popularity.

So long as England, the continent of Europe, and America, three portions of this unfortunate world that cannot, at present, agree in any one sublunary thing besides, shall agree to welcome Sir John's costly volumes in the most rapid succession in which horses, chaises, ships, printers, and engravers, can co-operate to furnish them, it will be in vain for reviewers to hint a wish that the intervals might be a little lengthened, in accommodation to their toils and their purses. VOL. V.

It will be in vain to suggest how many accomplishments, of rather laborious acquirement, are useful and graceful to a traveller, or how many are to be held quite indispensable if he means to come upon us for two guineas every time he returns. We are tempted, notwithstanding, to take the liberty of submitting, that when a traveller undertakes no less a task than that of displaying the peculiar character of a people, it may be of some advantage to him to have studied philosophically, not slightly glanced over, the distinguishing characters and institutions of other nations; that he would have done well to read over, at least half a dozen times, such works as the Spirit of Laws, and the Wealth of Nations; that an intimate acquaintance with natural history would not tend to impoverish his observations on the productions and animal inhabitants of hill and dale; and that if he is resolved to have names or sentences from a learned language, the reader should have some security that a certain noted river shall not be written Tiber' and 'Tibur' in the same line. It may also be equally pertinent and useless to repeat to Sir John the admonition, that no new or accurate views of a country can be acquired in such a galloping expedition as this. We are not suffered to learn the exact space of time in which it was performed, but it appears to have been despatched within a very moderate section of the finer portion of the year, and with an inconceivably passionate attachment and undeviating fidelity to the king's high road. At Edinburgh indeed, in the midst of ease and gentility, he remained a considerable time, and has occupied an excessively disproportioned space of his book with details and descriptions which we could have so much cheaper in works written for the particular purpose; but when he advances toward the retired and mountainous regions, where a natural and moral scenery of a new and wild and striking character opens around him, his movements acquire the celerity of a culprit escaping from the officers of justice.

We can comprehend that it was necessary at each post to inquire about the means of being conveyed to the next; but that this should so often appear the first and chief of the traveller's occupations, comports but indifferently with our notion of the functions of a man whom the public employ and pay, (for this is the view in which Sir John may fairly be regarded) to furnish them with original and accurate information of the manners and curiosities of the country which he traverses, and especially of those parts of it which are most remote, most peculiar, and least accessible. We could have allowed him to quit Edinburgh just as soon as he pleased, and any other large town, as it may be pre

sumed that large towns in Scotland bear so much resemblance to large towns in England, that the points of difference can very soon be told; and at any rate we have plenty of means of information. But when he reached the villages and the summer camps of the true Caledonians, when he surveyed their domestic and rural economy, when he wandered on the margin of their lakes, looked into their dark glens, listened to their torrents and cataracts, and climbed their hills, we should have been much better pleased to have been with him half a year, sometimes rambling, and sometimes stationary for a number of weeks at once, than to have had the dashing amusement of riding after him at a hunting pace, through such a country, even though we closed and crowned the adventure with the triumph of finding our necks safe out of the highlands, and out of Scotland itself, at the end of a very few weeks from the time of its com

mencement.

A traveller, that should really deserve to be paid at any thing like the rate demanded by Sir John, would not have staid in London till the commencement of the delightful month of June.' He would have set off northward at the first approach of spring, would have thought it no part of his business to describe the buildings of Cambridge, Stamford, or York, would have confined his notice of Dur. ham and Newcastle to the description and censure of the state of the prisons in those towns, and would have begun his narrative and sketches exactly at the 'peel' which he was shewn at the edge of the border tract, formerly named the Debateable Land. He would have waited a few weeks in Edinburgh and its neighbourhood, for the complete departure of the Scotch winter; he would then have vanished somewhere in the north or the west, and would have been seen no more in the latitude of the Tweed, till fairly blown back by the tempests of November. During this long interval, his course would have been such, that any inquiry after him along the great road would very soon have failed. He would certainly have had no antipathy to the sight of a good town, or to the accommodations of a good inn; but his curiosity would have led him on many an adventure across the black and almost trackless ridges, the 'hills of mist,' into those obscure retreats where the little society retains somewhat of the character of former ages. He would have found his way into little schools, and 'kirks,' where that primitive simplicity receives, from the two kinds of instruction, a certain dignity which characterises in an equal degree no other mountaineers in the world. He would have visited the establishments on the hills, to which the in

habitants of the vallies remove during the summer, famili arising himself with the shepherds, with their children, and with their fare, and listening to their legends and local histories. He would have spent many weeks among the islands, tracing their moral diversities from one another, and the difference of any or all of them from the character of society on the main land. And then as to the natural scenery, he would have eagerly explored it through all its romantic and dreary forms, even to the tops of the mountains. Time for all this might have been secured, by entering the country early in the year, and remaining in it till late in the autumn. If it be objected that there would have been many other requisites, besides time, for such an enterprize, and that especially a knowledge of the Gaelic language would have been indispensable, why should it not be answered at once, that a knowledge of that language is necessary, absolutely necessary, to any one who undertakes to give a satisfactory account of the inhabitants of the Highlands. If again it were pleaded that the gentleman's health may be too delicate for him to sleep on heath within a slight tent, or to enjoy the air and odours of a smoky hut the whole night, or to defy the effects of wet clothes, or to endure the contact of his linen when it may not bear a comparison with the snow on the Highland summits, rather than abandon a scene of sublimity and primitive character and Gaelic song in quest of soap, or to ford rivers on foot, or to clamber among the chasms and ledges of precipices, or to spend several days in such a place as the island of Staffa, taking views of Fingal's Cave, and the other wonderful appearances of its coast,-if his corporeal nature is inadequate to all this, we certainly cannot require him to attempt it; but then we must look out for some other adventurer to bring us such sketches' as would give the boldest and most peculiar features of the Caledonian territories and people. It had been no fault in Bruce, or Park, or Hearne, or Mackenzie, if their physical part had been composed of slight and frail materials; but it had been a good reason for declining any approach to regions, where they knew that the explorer would need all the vigour, as well as the courage, of a wild beast. It is rather foolish, to be sure, to bring into thought even the most remote comparison between the expeditions of these travellers, and any possible route in the British island; but yet there are very many things in the Highlands of Scotland, eminently worthy of description, which will never be truly described by any but the best built, best winded, best seasoned, and least dainty, of travelling heroes:

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While however we have thus signified what kind of man, and in what course of proceeding, we can be willing to employ and pay as an explorer of the northern part of our island, and protested against the usurpation of sumptuous quarto honours now before us, we must not deny that the knight has given us, as usual, a good deal of information and amusement. He knows more than we do, though we know much more than we can approve, of his clandestine dealings with other books while making up his own; but at the same time he certainly keeps a sharp look about him, does not appear during his journies to sleep or drink more than quantum sufficit, and in every place he visits is always sure to direct his inquiries to some of the proper subjects. We really think very few persons could make so pleasant a story out of an adventure, in which they whipped on so fast, and so very far in a straight line. Let any one consider what a narrow stripe, what a mere riband of a country, can be effectually surveyed by a traveller, who (unlike old Elwes) shall make strict conscience of not eluding a turnpike-bar by ever diverting into a bye-road for three or four hundred miles together, and ask himself whether it would be easy to get wherewithal to make an entertaining quarto during such a run. In addition to the real value of some parts of his materials, and the amusing quality of others, the knight has in general a clear, easy, gentlemanly style, but seldom twisted into affectation or loaded with finery. His manner of describing has always pleased us; in general the moral proprieties are duly preserved; there is nothing dogmatical in the mode of giving his opinions; and as to his temper, we doubt whether any adventurer traversing, at this present writing, any part of this terraqueous globe, possesses half so much good humour. He turns even mischances and disappointments into pleasantry, finds or makes every body obliging to him (except those vile critics, caricaturists, and jurors) and sprinkles golden opinions' on all sorts of people.' The high and low, the living and the dead, share the diffusive liberality of his praise; which chaunts in gentle and well deserved accents the generosity of a peasant, but swells, as it ought, into a resounding magnificence, when it alludes to the highest of mortal things: witness the following two specimens, the latter of which is the finest passage in the volume.

This equipment enabled me to observe the natural kindness and civility of the lower people, which with pleasure I record. A few miles before

I reached Nairn, I came to a gloomy heath, from which two roads diverged, and I knew not which to take: the night was advancing, I was alone, and all was silent. In this dilemma, I rode back to a little black

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