Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

288 MARRIAGE.
safety ; " tu equum habes—tu uxorem babes," since if
he is never without a wife, he is equally sure of having
three or four horses. That is an additional reason against
riding his wife over the fords.
But if there is thus much of the harmony of the num-
ber two in the Highlands, it would not be amiss, consi-
dering the present comparative balance of potatoes and
children, if these good people would follow the matter up
a little further, and stick to the harmony of the number
three. It would be an act worthy of the divine Plato, if,
for some time to come, he would teach them how to pro-
duce but the one child necessary to complete the triangle.
For the divine Plato says, (if you doubt me read his Ti-
maeus,) that the object of marriage is to produce a tri-
angle. Such is the harmonic law of three, imprinted on
the prolongation of the universe. " Lee Grecs, qui ont
6crit tant de phrases et si peu de choses" were a great
people ; and Plato was greater still, as he never wrote
" des phrases." They possessed some effectual schemes,
it cannot be denied, for preventing the two angles from
producing more than one ; but if marriages did not ter-
minate in a polygon now and then, the harmony of the
world, as well as of the nursery, would soon come to a
close. Nevertheless, Benbecula and a few other places
might profit by the Law of the Triangle. And this is
called sublime, and the Timseus is philosophy. It is a
fine thing to be Divine, and a Greek, and a Poet, and a
Philosopher, and Plato.
There is an old town of Stornoway, as well as a
new one ; it is a black town, and it is black enough.
The two, standing cheek by jowl, offer an admirable
illustration of the misfortunes which improvements have
brought upon the Highlands : not but what the anti-
reformists would be glad enough to take the new fashions
while they retain the old ones, to have thus the irrecon-