A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 115 



were not mutually the better for so spending. I at least 

 owe much to these hours, among other things, views of theo- 

 logic truth, that determined the side I have taken in our 

 ecclesiastical controversy. Our courses at an after period lay 

 diverse ; the young minister had greatly more important busi- 

 ness to pursue than any which the geologic field furnishes ; 

 and so our amicable rivalry ceased early. In the words in 

 which an English poet addresses his brother, the clergyman 

 who sat for the picture in the " Deserted Village," my friend 

 "entered on a sacred office, where the harvest is great and 

 the labourers are few, and left to me a field in which the 

 labourers are many, and the harvest scarce worth carrying 

 away." 



Next day at noon we weighed anchor, and stood out for 

 Rum, a run of about twenty-five miles. A kind friend had, 

 we found, sent aboard in our behalf two pieces of rare anti- 

 quity, rare anywhere, but especially rare in the lockers of 

 the Betsey, in the agreeable form of two bottles of semi- 

 fossil Madeira, Madeira that had actually existed in the 

 grape exactly half a century before, at the time when Robe- 

 spierre was startling Paris from its propriety, by mutilating 

 at the neck the busts of other people, and multiplying casts 

 and medals of his own ; and we found it, explored in mode- 

 ration, no bad study for geologists, especially in coarse wea- 

 ther, when they had got wet and somewhat fatigued. It 

 was like Landlord Boniface's ale, mild as milk, had exchanged 

 its distinctive flavour as Madeira for a better one, and filled 

 the cabin with fragrance every time the cork was drawn. 

 Old observant Homer must have smelt some such liquor some- 

 where, or he could never have described so well the still more 

 ancient and venerable wine with which wily Ulysses beguiled 

 one-eyed Polypheme : 



" Unmingled wine. 

 Mellifluous, undecaying, and divine, 



