IN THE SHETLANDS 321 
sonalities come to relieve you. Afterwards, perhaps, 
as you walk away, they may ; but for some time they 
have a strangely hollow ring about them. One quota- 
tion indeed, not of comfort, but as descriptive of the 
kind of impression made upon me by such sights as 
these, has often since come into my mind. It is not, 
however, from the poets, but out of the pages of 
a great historian—of Gibbon—that I get it, and it is 
this : “ The son of Arcadius, who was accustomed only 
to the voice of flattery, heard with astonishment the 
severe language of truth ; he blushed and trembled.” 
This, I think, describes more nearly the sort of effect 
which getting away from man and his optimistic 
chirruppings, and seeing gulls kill kittiwakes, by my- 
self, has had upon me. _ I have heard, all at once, the 
severe language of truth, and I have blushed and 
trembled—trembled at what 1 saw—blushed for what 
I had tried to believe. Afterwards, as I reflect upon 
it, there come to me with sterner meaning, even, than 
they had before, those words of Shakespeare—pointed 
by your friends, through life— 
From Rumour’s tongues 
They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs. 
Well, there are pleasanter sights than the one that 
has called forth this rigmarole, and I have just seen 
a seal playing with the long brown seaweed growing 
at the bottom of the sea, in a very delicious manner. 
He seized it in his mouth, and, rolling over and over, 
wrapped himself all round with it. Having thus put 
Y 
