of tourist-life as it is now organised. That there is now an effective fleet of steam - ships opening up to the adventurous every remarkable feature of the two archipelagos either by direct communication with them or by bringing their passengers within easy boating distance to them-is a phenomenon due to the active and enterprising spirit of the islanders, whose commercial activity it is not the brief and casual convenience of the tourist-that has made the two archipelagos so accessible to every one. The Times' correspondent should have been content with the causes, even though they did not arise out of a burning zeal for the ease and luxury of the pleasureseeker. He bears testimony, when unpleasant recollections do not disturb his equanimity, to the substantial merits of the organisation for water traffic. "Of the safety and steadiness of the steamboats I can speak with confidence; and they are so carefully navigated that they have hitherto enjoyed complete immunity from accidents."

Among the tourist community there are a few who think they have made a good investment when they get not only to scenery but to social conditions as antagonistic as they can find them to the wearisome monotony of their quiet life at home. They are not always delighted with their acquisition when they prove successful. Dirt, discomfort, starvation, a rude suspicious peasantry, and common comforts only obtainable through the temptation of extravagant remuneration, are characteristics not in harmony with the pleasant prospects of recreation, ease, and enlivening novelty that suggested the adventure. It has been seen how these specialties can be obtained in luxurious profusion at no greater distance than Kerry in Ireland, and

they are also in some measure characteristics of the Highlands of Scotland. The organisation at the command of the tourist for sustenance and rapid travelling is there, in the established touring lines, on a standard not only of comfort and luxury, but of magnificence. Still it has the dangers and difficulties that overtook our friends in Kerry; and the necessity of conforming with all the regulations for keeping on the adjusted line, is a restraint not welcome to the wanderer who desires independence as well as the other elements of the period of enjoyment.

The social conditions in our

northern archipelagos are of a different kind. The Celt never set his foot there, or, if he did, he has been improved out of the soil many centuries ago. The people may claim the purest Teutonic blood to be found in the British empire, enriched by the industries of agriculture, manufactures, and shipping; they afford no picturesque antagonisms to the respectable inhabitants of England and lowland Scotland. The good inns and lodging-places at the disposal of the stranger are hence no exotic effort of difficult and perilous character. It is the same with the means of conveyance, and hence the steam-ships supported by the commercial intercourse of the inhabitants are easily and cheaply put at the service of the stranger. To many who have never set foot on any island of these attractive archipelagos, Orkney and Shetland must still recall the memory of the genial and distinguished man who held for some years judicial rule over them-William Edmondstoune Aytoun, who charmed the world with his achievements as poet, essayist, and adept, it might be said, in every kind of literary labour that draws on the

resources of wit, humour, pathos, and learning. It is remembered as if it had happened but yesterday, how, in a great symposium devoted to Lord Lytton, Aytoun stood up suddenly and unexpectedly. It was evident from the working of his expressive features, and especially the merry gleam of his eye, that something pleasant and surprising was at hand. The standard toast of the navy and army had been announced. It appeared that no ordinary officer of either service was present, but Aytoun more than compensated the defect by returning thanks for one of the services as "Lord High Admiral of Orkney,"-a solemn dignity conferred on him to complete his judicial powers as sheriff of the district, by aiding it with an admiralty jurisdiction.

Scott, in the gorgeous romance of The Pirate,' has given currency throughout the world to the deep-rooted dislike of the northern islanders to Scotland, and everything connected with the Scottish people. This antipathy is rooted far back in remote periods of northern history, when the Scandinavian races--including the inhabitants of Orkney and Shetland -had established a vast naval empire that was the terror of all trading communities whose harbours they attacked and pillaged, and whose shipping they captured or destroyed. The dread of their name spread over all the sea-boards from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. To be picked out, as it were, from this grand fighting and plundering corporation, was a calamity that dwelt in the hearts of the people for centuries after the time when it might have been expected that they would fraternise with the Teutonic inhabitants of Caithness and the Lowlands of Scotland. Aytoun surprised his

friends, and perhaps himself, by the discovery of another unamiable phenomenon-a strong feeling of enmity towards each other by the inhabitants of the two groups or archipelagos He used to say that if he could take the law absolutely into his hands, he could abolish crime in both. All the Orcadian criminals he would banish to Shetland, returning the compliment in a like importation to Orkney.

In his high-sounding offices, legal and naval, Aytoun was the successor of another man of learning, wit, and genius, whose career may be traced in brilliant utterance through the pages of 'Maga' Charles Neaves. He was not only a man of lyrical genius but an elegant and accurate classical scholar, fastidious and reserved in letting the world into the secrets of his accomplishments. He left little to preserve the fame of his lyrical powers besides his 'Songs and Verses, Social and Scientific:' and his varied scholarship, extending from the classic to the Scandinavian languages, is only represented by A Glance at some of the Principles of Comparative Philology as Illustrated in the Latin and Anglican Forms of Speech.' From the friendly hand of one who has since joined him in "the silent land," there came a genial tribute to his character and genius. All who knew him recognised the appreciative aptness of such sketches as this:

"Lord Neaves's 'Songs and Verses are the perfection of admirable good sense, combined with that quickness to perceive the ludicrous side of a question which is as an additional sense, and gives its possessor an advantage over his fellows, whether he can express it or not, which is incalculable. Indeed it is this sense of the ludicrous more than the satirical power in them which makes them admirable. For satire can scarcely help a certain tendency towards ill

nature, and must hurt here and there even when it does not mean to do so; but there is nothing hurtful or unkind in that natural humour which cannot blunt its own lively perception of the ridiculous elements involved in many a serious question, and which can no more keep itself from laughing than it can from breathing. It is this which makes these songs telling; they are so void of offence that the victim must have often been, we must imagine, compelled to join in the laugh against himself. . These humorous compositions were always his most characteristic work; and though in later years he became, as most old men of active mind and friendly disposition do, a popular oracle, giving forth graceful addresses full of the most charming and amiable good advice, yet it is always his gayer tone which is the most successful."*

From a pleasant trait of the natives of these distant Isles-to be presently referred to it will readily be inferred that it was a matter of pride and glory to them to possess, as their own chief, one so gifted. The Orcadians, indeed, were sometimes given to boasting of their good fortune in the posses'sion of distinguished sheriffs. The predecessor of Lord Neaves in that high office was also a man of mark, but the qualities that gave him that character were somewhat motley. He was endowed with wit and learning, but his manifestations of these qualities were often twisted from the ends that might have rendered them beautiful and benignant, through a curious moral perversity playing such pranks as might make the angels weep and demons indulge in freaks of wild laughter.

The amiable characteristic that prompted these dwellers in the far north to take a pride in the eminence and fame of their chief magistrate naturally colours their reception of visitors who happen to be

Any

known in their generation. one who hungers after that kind of notice will make a good investment of any claim to eminence he may possess, by throwing himself among them. The feature is perhaps natural to an intelligent and educated people cut off from the world, and is a sort of reverse of the proverbial insignificance that sometimes freezes the heart of a local celebrity when he finds himself cast into the mighty world of London.

The little world far off in the Northern Ocean makes the best of all its means of knowing everything about those who make themselves conspicuous or valuable in the vast world beyond. The London author or artist who meets half a million of faces daily, with no one in that multitude conscious of the honour enjoyed from the light of his countenance, is sometimes surprised, and not unpleasantly perhaps, from the full knowledge and appreciation of his qualifications and genius which he finds in Kirkwall or Lerwick. Mistakes, no doubt, sometimes occur, as they will wherever the imperfect senses of man are at work. A friend, for instance, finding himself one of the many inmates of a steamer sailing about among the islands, if he was gratified by the respect and kindness lavished on him, was in some measure perplexed by certain incongruities in the complimentary references to his services to his race. The solution of the peculiarity came in the discovery that he had been throughout mistaken for a celebrity of the day, whose name, if carelessly pronounced, was apt to sound like his own. The confusion was about as incongruous as if Thomas Carlyle had been received and treated as Thomas Hood, by persons anxious to show their acquaintance with

his works, and their appreciation of his genius. He let the affair take its course, for he did not require to lend any assistance to its influence, and it afforded him a rich fund of amusement.

There is a pleasant satisfaction in what one may call the individualisation that arises in connecting men of mark with remote and unfrequented districts. The distinguished man you have been talking to in your club in Pall Mall is rubbed out of recollection by the roar and traffic of Oxford Street and the Strand. The recollections are more abiding if the meeting has been on Pilatre or the Brocken, or even on the lonely Shetland island of Noss. A family to whom the world has been indebted for services of a valuable, and indeed, it might be said, of a benignant and merciful kind, may be remembered in the Stevensons, father and sons, who were engineers, and especially marine engineers. It was to their services that a pious native referred, when the tattered condition of the sails and rigging of his boat came under rebuke, murmuring that, "had it been the Lord's will that these lighthouses had not been raised," he would long ago have had fresh sails to his boat,-a strong illustration of the difficulty of arousing blame or disapproval in the mind of any one who profits through events that may be calamitous to others.

To the elder Stevenson an incident occurred, small in itself, but told by him to his friends in a way to give it interest. In one of the remote islands where the object of his engineering attention stood, he was thus accosted with much earnestness by a respectable inhabitant: "Providence must have sent you to us-we are in a great strait, and it's just a wise man like you, acquainted with the world, that can relieve our minds." Their difficulty

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was, that a stranger had come among them whom the most knowing man in the neighbourhood believed to be a Pecht," for he was small and black, and had all the characteristics of the traditional "Pecht." The word, it may be noted, was equivalent to "Pict," a term laden with portentous controversy, as having been at one time applied to a portion of the natives of Scotland and the Northern Isles. Among these distant solitudes the traditions about the Picts or Pechts endow them with supernatural powers, ever employed by them in acts of mischief and cruelty towards the human race, and they were enemies to be extirpated without compunction. Here, then, was the great difficulty. If the creature they had got-and he was secure in their hands, being in bed and pretending to be asleep-was in reality a Pecht, it was their duty to put him to death. But if they should perform that duty, and discover afterwards that they had been prompted to it by a mistake, the consequences might be unpleasant. The lighthouse engineer, with his head full of science, was just the man to relieve them of the difficulty.

The lighthouse engineer, when he approached the object of dread and doubt, felt some reminiscences of old times arising within him, and finally identified an old schoolfellow, named Campbell, who had become renowned as a missionary in Africa. Thus a portentous mystery was solved, with eminent satisfaction to all concerned. But before we part with it, the opportunity may be taken to another little incident connecting this Campbell with another man of eminence. It happened to Thomas Campbell the poet to have purchased a book, directing that it should be sent to a certain house where he resided, giving his name

The dealer looked steadily at him, with a touch of admiration in his gaze, and at length ventured to ask if he had the honour to address "the illustrious Campbell." The bard of Hope, having too much good sense and modesty to accept the lustration unless it were offered with more specific individuality, asked what member of the clan Campbell he referred to and was told, "I mean the African missionary, of course, who ever heard of any other?" Campbell himself used to tell this incident with much picturesque glee, along with other little experiences of life-all told without egotism or vanity. He was a gentle and genial man; and it was inferred, not in what he said, but in what he was silent, that he knew his fame as a poet to be too firmly rooted in the language and literature of Britain to require any adventitious and egotistic efforts for its nourishment.

was

To return to our islands and their lighthouses. In its periodical voyage the lighthouse yacht sometimes carried a group of participators in the hospitality of the departmenta practice that perhaps the strict auditing of public accounts pursued in our day might have interrupted. There were many excuses for it sixty years ago, when the voyage not expedited by steam, and there was not, as now, an ample fleet at the disposal of all ready to invest in a moderate sum in one of the pleasantest of all possible maritime expeditions. It happened that the hospitality afforded to the guests of such occasions was far from unfruitful. The world gained from the practice the romance of 'The Pirate,' and Scott's Diary, kept on Board the Lighthouse YachtJuly and August 1814.' The close adaptation of the scenes to the events as achieved in The Pirate' is a wonderful testimony to the fer

VOL. CXXX.-NO. DCCXCI.

tility of Scott's genius. Reasoning on results only, the reader of the romance might infer that its author had spent many years of the period of life when outward influences are the most impressive among the stormy seas, winding lochs, and rugged precipices peopled by his imagination.

He who undertakes the office of guide, philosopher, and friend towards the perplexed fellow-creature pondering on the prospects for his few weeks of recreation, does not fulfil his duty unless he draws attention to works of art as well as the beauties and sublimities of nature. These cannot be said to abound in our islands; but the few to be seen there are peculiar, and, to people addicted to archæological investigations and speculations, particularly interesting. There are, in the first place, those strange buildings called brochs or burghs. Supreme among these is Mousa, easily accessible to the wanderer comfortably housed in his hotel in Lerwick, by a little walking and boating. It is a vast edifice of stone, being a round tower with a perfect curve, narrowing towards the centre of its height, and again expanding. To the question what it was, the ready answer comes—“ A fortress, of course." But it does not suffice either for attack or defence that a vast building is erected, unless there are specialties in its site and structure adapted to the purposes of war-to defend, and to retaliate on assailants. In the first place, there is the site. The engineer will tell you that the perfection of position for a modern fortress would be in a gentle hollow, so graduated that every cannon-ball sent from it should, during its whole course, be no further from the surface of the ground than the height of an ordinary man. In the feudal ages the fortress and the

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