Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/295

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IONA'S PAST AND PRESENT.
231

philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!"

Boswell surely not without good reason maintains that "had their tour produced nothing else but this sublime passage the world must have acknowledged that it was not made in vain."

RUINS IN IONA.

The Southern Coast of Mull and Lochbuy
(October 20-22).

Sailing from Iona about midday on Wednesday, October 20, our travellers landed in the evening on the southern coast of Mull, near the house of the Rev. Neal Macleod, who gave them lodgings for the night. Johnson oddly described him as "the cleanest-headed man that he had met with in the Western Islands." The talk ran on English statesmen. Here it was that Johnson called Mr. Pitt a meteor, and Sir Robert Walpole a fixed star, and main-