Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

STOKNOWAY. 281
land nymphs to whom the luxury of a shoe was known.
Such is the consequence of that laudable ambition which
causes the toe of the clown to trespass on the courtier's
heel, and which produces many more important effects
than the galling- of his kibe. The beau or prodigal of the
tiers etat who cannot rival the kingdom's peer in wealth
and address, may at least emulate him in expense and
dress ; and she of Stornoway or St. Kilda, who only
knows of a Duchess that her bonnet is three yards in di-
ameter and her pelisse trimmed with frivolity, feels as
great in the acquisition of the same insignia, as if, like
the old Scythians, who expected to inherit their antago-
nist's brains by cutting off his head, the honours and the
note had been included in the delicious bandbox. And
as distance and obscurity give consequence to spectral
images, so that last new fashion, which might wing its
way across Smithfield or Portsoken ward unnoticed, is
assuredly arrested at Penzance, where every fair one is
expected to wear it unless she would be condemned, as
Dogberry says, to eternal reden)ption. Despise not these
important facts; as I shall show you at some future day,
that there is more virtue in the cut of the last invented
female shoe, or the newest bonnet, in these cases, than
superficial philosophers are aware of.
The country every where in Lewis, except along the
margins of the sea, and in the immediate neighbourhood
of this town, is open, brown, bare, and uninteresting.
Perhaps I was wrong to question its producing double
crops in the days of Abaris and Pythagoras, as it cer-
tainly produces double crops still ; the rushes of spring
being succeeded by the peat of autumn. As usual in
the islands, there is a green line round the sea shores
but, throughout the interior, it is now black as ink, and
bare of every thing, almost of heath itself; whatever it
might have been in happier times, Avhen Apollo paid it more
;