was ranked as one of the most learned men in Europe, and he lectured at the University of Oxford to 30,000 students who attended the University in his time; and Scotchmen were famed throughout Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for their knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy.

The virtues which distinguish Scotchmen are characteristic of the Gael; and although the language of the Gael has gradually given way to the Saxon tongue throughout the greater part of Scotland, the character of the Scotchman has not become assimilated to that of his southern neighbour. The canny Scot is but the shrewd observant and sharp-witted Celt in English character. Communities, like individuals, are the creatures of circumstances. From the fact of their occupying a less favourable field for commercial enterprise a portion of the community has continued longer beyond the reach of Southern influence; and this portion it has become fashionable to stigmatise as ignorant, lazy, and unworthy to be classed with their more opulent neighbours. The mountaineers or Highlanders, as their very name indicates, are debarred from prosecuting those industries which have proved a source of wealth to their neighbours who are placed in more favourable circumstances. The Highlanders have been harshly dealt with. Slow to abandon those feelings of attachment and loyalty to their chiefs and superiors, inherited through ages of patriarchal customs and social usages, they found themselves ignored, abandoned, and expatriated by those very men whom they were taught to obey, to serve, to love, even unto death.

When the cry came to be, "Mak' money, Jock, mak' money; honourably if you can, but mak' money," and when money and not men became the object of many a landlord's ambition and aim, his devoted subjects were ruthlessly driven from their dearly cherished homes and forced to seek that shelter in foreign lands, which they were denied in their own. Instead of giving their subjects the chances and the encouragement to husband their resources and to turn their native hills and glens to the best of profit, strangers were invited to speculate in the industries for which the country was found best suited, viz., pastoral farming. What would be thought at the present day if a similar process were adopted to remedy the evil of congested fishing communities on the West Coast and throughout the Western Isles? Would the suggestion to drive the population away to the Soudan or Afghanistan, and to invite south country trawlers to take possession of the whole fishing ground, be for a moment entertained? The idea would give rise to horror and scorn, and would not be

for an instant tolerated. Yet this is akin to the Highland Clear

ances.

The Education Act of 1872, and the presence in Skye of about 500 marines mark an epoch in the history of the Gael. Education will create laudable ambition, and incite enterprise, while the present agitation in Skye and throughout the Highlands, however much we must condemn the manner in which it is partly conducted, will, I believe, have the effect of teaching the Highlander a more manly independence.

22ND APRIL 1885.

On this date, H. Mackenzie Munro, 42 Union Street, Inverness, was elected an ordinary member. Some routine business having been transacted, Mr George J. Campbell, solicitor, Inverness, on behalf of Mr Hew Morrison, F.S.A., Scot., Andover House, Brechin, read a paper on the diary of a Sutherland Minister—(the Maighstear Murchadh" of Rob Donn)-between 1726 and 1763. Mr Morrison's paper was as follows:

NOTICES OF THE MINISTERS OF THE PRESBYTERY
OF TONGUE FROM 1726 TO 1763:

FROM THE DIARY OF THE REV. MURDOCH
MACDONALD OF DURNESS.

In this paper I propose to give you a brief notice of the Diary kept by the Rev. Murdoch Macdonald of Durness, and a few notes upon the ministers of the Presbytery of Tongue from 1726 to 1763, with occasional references to other ministers in the North.

First, then, as to the Diary itself:-It may not be out of place for me to state that in the winter of 1881, I wrote a short essay on "Rob Donn," which was read at a meeting of the Glasgow Sutherland Association, and which gave rise to a lengthened controversy as to whether Rob Donn was a Mackay or not. From researches I made in the Register House and the records of the Presbytery of Tongue, and from information obtained from other sources, I came to the conclusion that Rob was surnamed Calder and not Mackay. In the course of a visit to the Rev. Mr Findlater of Lochearnhead, who has a duplicate of the MS. from which Rob's poems were edited, I learned that in 1840 Mr

Findlater, while acting as Probationer in Cantyre, had come to the knowledge of the existence of a diary kept by the Rev. Mr Macdonald of Durness (Rob Donn's "Mr Murchadh.") He made several attempts to get a perusal of it, but in vain, and for many years could not find what had become of it.

I at once telegraphed to the Rev. Mr Graham of Campbeltown, who assured me of the existence of the diary in the possession of a gentleman whose address I got. I proceeded next morning to Cantyre, and I have now the diary before me. I may say that there is no mention by name of Rob Donn in it at all, though there are several references to events which Rob has commemorated in verse, which serve to throw light in a highly interesting manner upon the songs of our great northern bard. The MS. is in eight octavo volumes, extending to over 4000 pages in all. The writing is very legible and regular, and very small and close, so that each page contains more than a page of twice the size of the ordinary writing of to-day.

It is somewhat disappointing to find that the greater part of it is taken up with religion, that is, as a record of the spiritual experiences of the writer. It is an indicator of the rises and falls of the religious barometer. Each day's sins are lamented and confessed, and the feelings which are supposed to indicate a retrogression are as carefully, though sorrowfully, recorded as are those which show an upward and forward advance in the higher life.

Poverty of soul, the want of spiritual appetite, indolence in the performance of duties, and a relish for the things of the world, as well as a concern for the proper ordering of his own wordly affairs have each their value placed upon them in the sliding scale, which indicates the retrograde motion, while the experiences of the opposite nature are as carefully reflected upon, and ascribed their due place in the Christian life.

Things secular were of importance only in so far as they served spiritual ends, a treatment of them which has unquestionably deprived us of much of what we should wish had been recorded regarding the events of the time over which the diary extends. Here, for example, is an instance :

Under the date, Sabbath evening 19th December 1740, we have the following:-"There is something just now on the wheels in this place of no small importance, which, therefore, I have been laying before Thee, O, my God, for a good issue;" and a little further on, under the date April 3, we have the same matter referred to in much the same manner- "This morning acquainted

that a certain project in which I was somewhat concerned, is blown up: I have the more Peace in this, that I did put a Blank in God's Hand, with respect to it, and thus I am bound in the event to submit to His better Will. There are many, perhaps, who are pleased at the Disappointment who probably will make no better of the matter than I meant to all concerned." This project, whatever it was, was set on foot by Mr Pope, the minister of Reay, as appears from a marginal note.

It would be unfair, however, to suppose that all secular topics were thus scantily treated, for many are taken and dwelt upon at great length.

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Mr Macdonald was a great reader, and a close student of the works of men of his time, especially of those who wrote on religious questions. We find him writing long criticisms of such books as Henry Scougall's "Life of God in the Soul of Man," Boyle's "Seraphic Love," Gurnal's " Directory," Boston's (who, he says, borrowed from Gurnall) "Fourfold State," Bennet's "Christian Oratory," which he read in public, and Hervey's "Meditations," &c., &c.

It would be not only interesting, but useful, in judging of the clerical cast of mind a hundred and fifty years ago, to make a list of the books read, together with the criticisms upon them by Mr Macdonald. Such a thing would be too tedious for a paper of this nature, but we do not find him confining himself so much as one would be inclined to think to such works as those mentioned. We find him spending the greater part of three day's in reading "The History of a Foundling" by Henry Fielding, of which he notes "a performance which tho' it has the air of romance, or some other such fiction, yet contains rules and models of human nature, which may greatly contribute to the improvement of mankind in virtue, and particularly it is calculated to form the manners of those who despise instruction in a more serious dress." He was also very fond of poetry, and an admirer of Pope, of whom and of his works, as they come to hand, notices frequently occur. So much was he taken up with Pope's

"Messiah" that he translated it into Gaelic and recited it to his parishoners in the course of his visits to them, and when they, as was their custom, after having a fellowship meeting on the first Monday of the month, adjourned from the church to his house. It has often been a matter of some surprise to students of Rob Donn's poems, that so many of his ideas are SO nearly related to those of Pope. This, to which we have referred, is the explanation of it, for Rob Donn was for many

years living at Balnacille, near the manse of Durness, and had many opportunities of hearing his minister discourse on Pope.

In the latter part of his life he was much taken up with Young's "Night Thoughts," and carried the book with him everywhere, frequently reading as he went. He committed the greater part of it to memory, and so much was he enamoured of it that on the 26th November 1762 he addressed a long letter to the author which he signed "Phila Gathos," but in which he tells that he has the pastoral charge of the parish in the North of Scotland, in which Farout Head was situated, as he might see by the map. Dr Young replied, and as this production of that writer has never been published, we give it here:

"27th January 1763.

"Rev. Sir, I thank you much for your very obliging letter, and should be extremely glad of your further correspondence, if my correspondence with this world was not so near an end. Such is my age and indisposition that I cannot show you that respect, which I cannot but collect from your pious pages, to be greatly your due. God prosper your wise pursuit of higher correspondence than this world can afford, and grant that after the fullest happiness this scene admits of, you may attain the glorious reward of your having here your conversation in Heaven.-I am, Sir, with great truth and gratitude, your most faithful and most humble servant, E. YOUNG."

When his son Patrick was studying in Edinburgh we find him asking him to procure some new work or other. He complains of the little interest taken in books in that part of the country, and declares that in the Presbytery bounds there is only one reader in the proper sense of the word, and that was Mackay of Strathy. Few of the common people could read at all, and he had great difficulty in getting them to do anything in that way, but the middlemen, or tacksmen, were not only men of intelligence, but of good education. The tacksman of Ribigill in Tongue was a writer, and as a lawyer was known among the common people as "Forbes of the Quirks." Then the Popes of Eddrachillis were lawyers also. The tacksman of Skerray, and the Gordons of Skelpick, Langdale, and other places in Strathnaver, were the counsellors and leaders of the people. Mr Charles Gordon of Skelpick is referred to in this diary as a gentlemen of a charitably liberal mind, and from an example of his writing in a deed of renunciation of Wadset, in Dunrobin charter chest, by Mr George Gordon of Langdale, in favour of the Earl of Sutherland, we conclude that his educa tion was "liberal" also.