Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

88 BENBECULA.
It is the native land that constitutes the charm, be that
land what it may :
but still, it is only a charm to the un-
civilized and the uninformed. Pride, ignorance, and
habit will explain it all. As wealth and knowledge in-
crease, the charm is broken; and the man soon finds that
the sun shines as bright on other countries as on that
which gave him birtb, and that if he leaves the narrow
hut which fostered his infancy, it is easy to replace it by
a better. Thus the patriotism of ignorance and habit is
dissolved ;
and it is to far more refined feelings, perhaps
in a far different order of persons, that we must look for
that attachment which is founded on rational principles,
and which, it must be hoped, is not so easily extin-
guished as cosmopolists would wish us to believe. It is,
further, futile to imagine that the common people are sen-
sible of the peculiar charms of a mountainous and roman-
tic country. These are refinements that belong to edu-
cation, to the cultivated taste. If the Highlander would
show you a fine prospect, he does not lead you to the
torrent and the romantic rocky glen, to the storm-beaten
precipice or the cloud-capt mountain. It is to the Strath
covered with hamlets and cultivation, or to the extended
tract of fertile lowlands, where the luxuriance of vegeta-
tion and wood depends on the exertions of human labour.
But I must not tire you with moralities because Ben-
becula is empty of aught else. No antiquities except
Castle Wia, and that, nothing. Some rare plants, and
among the rest. Ranunculus gramineus, for which you
do not care; so that I have no opportunity of displaying
my botanical science : rocks, for which you care still less,
equally despising my geology ; water fowl which you
only care to eat and of which I could give you a long list,
with all the Linnecan names in regular order, from Pele-
canus carbo down to Tringa cyclus, besides all manner