ALEXANDER WILSON 



POET-NATURALIST 



CHAPTER I 



SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



When James Boswell, in defending Scotland to 

 Dr. Samuel Johnson, spoke of the country's 

 splendid prospects, the Doctor brought his heavy 

 fist down on the table with a thud which shook the 

 room and thundered out, "Sir, let me tell you, the 

 noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the 

 high-road that leads him to England." In very 

 truth it must be said that there was not much in the 

 appearances of things to give the lie to Dr. John- 

 son. The Scotland of the early part of the eigh- 

 teenth century was a bare, dreary country. Its farm 

 lands were unenclosed and almost without growth, 

 save where flowered the heath and whin ; its towns 

 were dirty and sewerless ; even from the streets of 

 such cities as Glasgow and Edinburgh went up the 

 stench of decayed refuse which had been thrown 

 from the windows above; the churches were very 

 frequently disorganized and factious, the schools 

 poor, and the morals of the people loose and cor- 

 rupt. 



Especially among the lower classes in Scotland, 

 morality was in a deplorable state. The cold, strict 

 religion became so formal and forbidding as to be 

 a harmful rather than a helping influence, and was 

 regarded by the younger people as a thing to be 



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