Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

110
HOSPITALITY.
care of the Dii viales, Venus, Minerva, Castor, Pollux,
and Hercules. Such was Roman hospitality : such was
Greek hospitality. This admits of no dispute : it was
the virtue of civilized not of barbarous life.
But after all, the law of civil life is, that hewhoeats
his neighbour's dinner gives an equivalent, at least, in
his society : politeness says that he confers the favour
and really, in the Highlands, politeness apart, he who
has seen nothing but calves and stots and drovers for
six months, gains something more than an equivalent for
his mutton and his kindness, in the visit of the unlucky
and ill-advised stranger who gives up his time and his
freedom for a dinner. But I have another word yet to
say in defence of the hospitality of the lower classes of
Highlanders, if others have not found it what I have. If
it has been diminished by the money which English tra-
vellers lavish, often grumbling and lavishing at the same
time, and if the Highlanders have thus adopted, in too
many places, the maxim of " no penny no paternoster,"
so it has been checked by the frequency of visitors in
these latter days. Thus it may have become an inconve-
nience; as it has become less needed, from the establish-
ment of inns : while it has naturally also withdrawn itself,
as these visits ceased to be a novelty. Most of all, per-
haps, it has suffered from the supercilious manners and
the affectation of superior wealth and superiority of all
kinds, too common with the swarms of idle and pert
young men, often vulgar cockneys and students, who visit
this country, and who, from their ignorance of the man-
ners and feelings of the people, display conduct alike con-
temptuous and contemptible. The Highlander is acute
in his judgment, of sense and of manners equally; and
his own manners, though his coat be bare and his house
dark, might often shame those who look down on him with
;