Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

ST. KItDA. 187
his social circle; lie Ims the liberfy of his thoughts, his
actions, and his kingdom, and all his world are his
equals. His climate is mild and his island is green ; and,
like that of Calj^pso, the stranger who might corrupt him
shuns its shores. If happiness is not a dweller in St.
Kilda, where shall it be sought.
With a constitution in Church and State so enviably
perfect, nothing- seems wanting- to render this island an
absolute Utopia but an Academy, I do not mean the
new Gaelic school, nor '* Academus' sacred groves," be-
cause, unluckily, groves will not grow in Hirta's green
isle ; no, nor that thing- called an Academy by the title
of Islington House or any other House, where young
gentlemen are taught all the arts, sciences, languages,
and much more, besides drawing and dancing at two
guineas extra, by somebody's butler who has married
somebody's cook ; and where the money which cannot
be gained by cramming the head, is secured by stuffing
the stomach with Norfolk dumplings and other less di-
gestible matters than Greek or Gannets. No, Sir Walter,
I mean an Academic, an Academia, a kind of a Royal
Society in short; for now, alas, a philosopher in St.
Kilda, is " rien, pas merae academicien." Were this
laudable project put in execution, who knows what
learned papers we might shortly have on the winds, and
on the laws of the Gannets, and on the gravity of
feathers ; besides which my half-occupied friends who
are now obliged to doze away the fat which they have
swallowed till it evaporates from them in the form of gas
light, might find noble opportunities of going together
by the ears, of electing presidents, sitting in councils,
rejecting the papers which some one else ought to have
written, and finally, of rivalling in a Bibliotheque Uni-
verselle Kildense, the superhuman efiforts of all those
Republics of Mind which cannot fail to be replete with