158 
A SCIENTIFIC APPRECIATION [oh. yi. 
has sunk behind the ocean’s verge, on which project 
the dark masses of the St Kilda Isles, you are left 
in peace, to the communings of your own spirit, 
which, if in such circumstances it can harbour an 
unholy thought, must be desperately depraved. 
Who, in such a case, could wish to be back to 
society, to encounter the discords of an evil world, 
whose very zeal for the holiest of causes exhibits 
itself in animosities, hatreds, envies, jealousies, 
wranglings and strifes; when your most simple 
word or act is misrepresented, your beneficence 
repaid by ingratitude and calumny, your feelings 
heedlessly or gratuitously lacerated; your whole 
life spent in a perpetual struggle with the evils that 
assail you from without and from within. 
“No, let me live here in peace, and die in hope, 
and let the green* turf, in^which the shamrock and 
the centaury rear their simple forms, cover the dust 
of one who is weary of the world, and like the 
captive falcon, would spread his pinions to the 
breeze, and joyously hasten to the rock of refuge. 
“But other thoughts succeed, and the mind 
resumes its wonted tone. Another country, in¬ 
habited by a more enlightened and industrious 
race, has attractions of a different kind. There the 
natural pastures are of less importance, because 
the united labour and science of a civilised people 
have converted the barren moors into fertile fields, 
rendering of little trust the precarious supply of 
Nature’s bounties, on which the Hebrideans chiefly 
live. Leaving these lonely shores of the west, I 
therefore hasten eastwards, where kind friends and 
intelligent pupils invite me to an excursion along 
the links of Belhelvie.” 
