THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

MARCH 1865.

ART. I. THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE SCOTTISH TOURIST. 1. A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, and Volume III., which completes this Work, and contains a Tour through Scotland. By a GENTLEMAN (known to be by DANIEL DEFOE). Printed and sold by G. STRAHAN, in Cornhill, 1727.

2. Toddles's Highland Tour. London: ROUTLEDGE, 1864.

MONTHS ago the summer tide of tourists has receded from our straths and glens townwards to the last drop. The Trossachs, the rich indented lochs of Argyle, the hoary peaks of Glencoe, the dusky forests of Braemar, the snowy and savage precipices. of the Cairngorms, a while ago all swarming with busy, noisy, intrusive citizens, are now as silent as much less than a century ago they were all the year round; more silent indeed, since the indigenous population of these regions has within the century notably and beneficially decreased. To live ever in crowds has a social influence on man. To live ever alone has also an influence, though to call it social might sound Irish. The fate of the chronic inhabitants of tourist districts, who are three months of the year in the midst of a throng, and have to pass the rest of it in solitude, must subject them to peculiar influences which no one has thought it worth while specially to study and elucidate. Those influences must have a special development in these actively concerned in ministering to the comforts and pleasures of the tourist: the faculties continuously strained to their utmost stretch for a few months-the strain then suddenly withdrawn till its periodical recurrence. One would expect this to have a kind of hibernating influence. We remember, for instance, a head-waiter of an establishment through which the throng of a great pleasure district passed all day and all night;

VOL. XLII.-NO. LXXXIII.

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whatever time you arrived or departed, early or late, midnight or dawn, he was ever in a state of brisk, civil activity. We asked him when he slept. "I sleep in winter," was the

answer.

Connected with this, however, is another and larger social phenomenon, the diagnosis of which, whatever we may say of its cause, is more accessible to us, and is seen by all of us. A century ago, a sensible man, residing in "the West end," would have as soon thought of going for change of air to Whitechapel or Wapping as to Glencoe or Braemar, where he and his neighbours now crowd in until they almost carry London with them, and where they profess to imbibe a vast amount of enjoyment. Whence has come this social change? We profess not to go into its depths, and display its hidden causes. But as the matter is really one worth looking at, the holiday-seekers of the last year who have returned from the poetry to the prose of life, in the interval when the recollections of last year's tour are mingling with the projects for the coming summer, may perhaps peruse with interest at the domestic hearth some notice of the conditions under which the scenery of Scotland, and especially of the Highlands, became fashionable. The literature connected with its rise in the world we consider especially deserving of attention. Some day or other it may tax the powers of some mighty compiler in the production of a "Bibliotheca Itineraria." Meanwhile we believe that in a few casual notices of it we shall be breaking new ground.

"Tourist" is a new word; it is not to be found in Johnson, who, however, defines "tour" as a "ramble or roving journey." To this Webster adds "circuit," "excursion," "trip," and tells us that a tourist is one who makes a tour. This seems to be coming something near the point, as indicating locomotion for the purposes of enjoyment, not of business or duty. And as among by far the greater portion of mankind no such enjoyment exists, or is capable of being conceived, and even among ourselves it is a comparatively recently discovered source of enjoyment, the various phenomena indicating its origin and progress onwards to its present vast influence as an institution of our country and age, seem sufficiently important for a little special attention.

We may trace its beginnings in something more subtle than by putting the finger on the name of the first man who actually made a journey for pleasure. Indications of the enjoyment of scenery and variety among those who moved about on duty or business are the germs of the tourist's passion. Our history gets far on before we have much of this. The first strangers from the civilized world who are recorded as visiting us—Julius

Agricola and his followers-came on stern business. Tacitus, in his clear, rapid narrative of the transaction, sticks closely to that business, and permits not his pen to wander into devious paths. One would like to know what they thought of the scenery. There is a well-known tradition that as they marched northwards over the spur of the Ochils, and came to that nick called the Wicks of Beglie, and saw beneath them the broad strath of Tay, with its gleaming river and background of mountains, they exclaimed, "Behold the Tiber! behold the field of Mars!"--a comparison which Scott and many of his fellowcountrymen reprobate as a gross injustice to the northern river. It is necessary, however, to throw this story away as a modern invention. Indeed, from the invasion of Agricola to the present time, or even to the time of the first publishing of the exclamation, is far too long for tradition to live.

Just twice are there remarks in Tacitus which in any way connect themselves with the character of the scenery. When, as he describes it, the army marched northward, and the fleet sailed in sight of it, the land troops, when they recounted their adventures to their colleagues of the fleet, told of the dense forests they had penetrated, and the rough mountains they had scrambled over. In the speech of Agricola, so accurately reported, and, by the way, Tacitus is quite impartial, and makes room for the spirited speech of Galgacus, the leader of the Caledonians, although it would have been a far more important service had he just told us what language that eminent patriot used, in the speech of Agricola there is an allusion to fatiguing marches across fens, mountains, and rivers, Cum vos paludes montesve et flumina fatigarent. It is a pity that we have not something more palpable and critical than this, from some Roman pen, for the Romans knew good scenery. They are said to have even walked about for pleasure. In Strabo men

tion is made how two Roman legionaries, found in Spain at a distance from their post, who could give no better account of themselves than that they walked for enjoyment, were deemed to be two lunatics who had escaped from bondage, and were an object of considerable anxiety to the good people who desired to see them safe back to their camp.1

1 “ Τοὺς δὲ Οὐέττωνας, ὅτε πρῶτον εἰς τὸ τῶν ̔Ρωμαίων παρῆλθον στρατόπεδον, ἰδόντας τῶν ταξιαρχῶν τινας, ἀνακάμπτοντας ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς περιπάτου χάριν, μανίαν ὑπολαβόντες, ἡγεῖσθαι τὴν ὁδὸν αὐτοῖς ἐπὶ τὰς σκηνὰς ὡς ξέον ἤ μένειν καθ ̓ ἡσυχίαν Ιδρυθέντας, ἢ μάχεσθαι.”

"Et vettones, quo tempore primum in Romanorum venerunt castra, cum quosdam centuriones viderent, deambulandi causa viam hac illac flectere, opinatos insanire homines, duces se eis ad tabernacula præbuisse putabant enim aut in tabernaculo quiete sedenduni, aut pugnandum esse."-GEOG. L. III. cap. iv.

:

It would require very positive and distinct evidence, however, to prove that the Romans ever went so far from the indolent luxuriousness, in which alone they found true pleasure, as to seek it in the active and sometimes afflictive pursuits of the modern tourist. If Cicero or Atticus walked together in the shady avenues of Tusculum, while they discussed the difference between goodness and perfection, or Virgil enjoyed a saunter in his Mantuan farm, we may be assured that no citizen of the empire mounted his impedimenta on his shoulders to ramble about in Britain, even among such scenery within the walls as he could safely approach. Their sense of the noble in scenery advanced so far as to accept of the savage and terrible as worthy of enjoyment. This we see even in the selection of their villas; but they enjoyed it all in indolent contemplation, not in active vagabondage.

The next set of notable visitors were the Irish monks, who came over to re-convert us after the inroads of strangers from Scandinavia had swept Christianity as well as Roman civilisation out of the land. We have ample narratives of the ways and pursuits of these monks. We know that they went about a good deal. St. Columba, for instance, paid a memorable visit to Brude the King of the Picts at his lodge on the banks of the Ness; and St. Cormac on his way from Ireland to Iona to visit his old friends there, went so far astray among the Hebrides, that some people suppose he had gone to Iceland. to Iceland. But we get no notions of scenery from these monks; and, in fact, they speak so indistinctly of the nature of the country, that we might suppose from Adamnan's Life of the Master that Iona was a very fertile island, fruitful in corn and grass, if we did not know it to be a barren rock, and believe it to have been just as barren fourteen hundred years ago as it is now.

When King Edward came over, his mission was entirely on business. But whether or not he himself enjoyed the scenery of the territory he was so determined to take, he adorned it for the present day by planting in it the finest castles which the country possesses. On the other side of the War of Independence there probably was not much enjoyment of mere scenery. Wallace, according to tradition, frequented Cartland Craigs—a grand rocky cleft in the fruitful vale of Clyde-but it was rather for protection than to court the influence of sublimity in stringing the nerves to deeds of heroism. Bruce had to wander through the very finest scenery in Scotland. Part of it comes out with grand effect in the Lord of the Isles, but it is a different affair when we go to Barbour's epic. So when Bruce had to find a retreat in the fastnesses of the Cairngorm mountains,

here is all we have, when he might have taken his hero to the wondrous Loch Avon, and made him say as Scott makes him say at Coruisk-" St. Mary! what a scene is here," and so on. "The queen dwelt thus in Kildrummy, And the king and his company That war twa hundred an na ma, Fra they had sent their horse them fra, Wanderet amang the high mountains, Where he and his oft tholed pains, For it was to the winter near, And so fell foes about him were, That all the country them warred. So hard among them assailed Of hunger, cold, and showers snell,

That none that lives can well it tell."

Between the War of Independence and the great contest in the seventeenth century, the only considerable visits to Scotland were those of the French auxiliaries, who returned home terrified by the hungry sordidness of the land and the barbarous independence of the common people. Clarendon tells us that when the astounding intelligence of the signing of the Covenant, and the collection of a Scottish army, reached London,"the truth is, there was so little curiosity either in the Court or the country to know anything of Scotland, or what was done there, that when the whole nation was solicitous to know what passed weekly in Germany and Poland, and all other parts of Europe, no man ever inquired what was doing in Scotland, nor had that kingdom a place or mention in one page of any Gazette."

Oliver Cromwell paid a visit to Scotland, a visit decidedly on business of a very engrossing kind. In one of his despatches he noticed the character of one morsel of our scenery in his own professional way. The finest of those deep ravines cut into the rock of St. Abb's Head, he calls a place "where ten men to hinder are better than forty to make their way." He left his mark on the country; not such a brand as he put on Ireland, for only a portion of the Scots people were at enmity with him. From the railway, however, in passing the great square tower of Borthwick, one can see a portion of the stone facing, beautifully peeled by his ordnance from the neighbouring height. It gives one a lively notion of how

"Oliver Crummell,

He did her pummel,

And made a breach in her battlement."

Cromwell noted what he saw in Scotland for his own utili