RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 391 



or of its " suppression-of-vice sisterhood of moral old maids," 

 who kept all their neighbours right by the terror of their 

 tongues. I was somewhat in a mood, after my chill and 

 hungry voyage, to recall with a hankering of regret the vision 

 of its departed suppers, so luxuriously described in the 

 " Sketch," suppers at which " large rounds of boiled beef 

 smothered in cabbage, smoked geese, mutton hams, roasts of 

 pork, and dishes of dog-fish and of Welsh rabbits melted in 

 their own fat, were diluted by copious draughts of strong 

 home-brewed ale, and etherealized by gigantic bowls of rum 

 punch." But the past, which is not ours, who, alas, can re- 

 call ! And, after discussing a juicy steak and a modest cup 

 of tea, I found I could regard with the indifferency of a phi- 

 losopher, the perished suppers of KirkwalL 



I quitted my lodgings for church next morning about three 

 quarters of an hour ere the service commenced j and, finding 

 the doors shut, sauntered up the hill that rises immediately 

 over the town. The thick gloomy weather had passed with 

 the night; and a still, bright, clear-eyed Sabbath looked 

 cheerily down on green isle and blue sea. I was quite un- 

 prepared by any previous description, for the imposing as- 

 semblage of ancient buildings which Kirkwall presents full 

 in the foreground, when viewed from the road which ascends 

 along this hilly slope to the uplands. So thickly are they 

 massed together, that, seen from one special point of view, 

 they seem a portion of some magnificent city in ruins, some 

 such city, though in a widely different style of architecture, 

 as Palmyra or Baalbec. The Cathedral of St Magnus rises 

 on the right, the castle-palace of Earl Patrick Stuart on the 

 left, the bishop's palace in the space between ; and all three 

 occupy sites so contiguous, that a distance of some two or 

 three hundred yards abreast gives the proper angle for tak- 

 ing in the whole group at a glance. I know no such group 

 elsewhere in Scotland. The church and palace of Linlith- 



