But Since They Have Now No Churches At All, These
Venerable Fragments Do Not Prove The People Of Former Times To Have
Been More Numerous, But To Have Been More Devout.
If the
inhabitants were doubled with their present principles, it appears
not that any provision for publick worship would be made.
Where
the religion of a country enforces consecrated buildings, the
number of those buildings may be supposed to afford some
indication, however uncertain, of the populousness of the place;
but where by a change of manners a nation is contented to live
without them, their decay implies no diminution of inhabitants.
Some of these dilapidations are said to be found in islands now
uninhabited; but I doubt whether we can thence infer that they were
ever peopled. The religion of the middle age, is well known to
have placed too much hope in lonely austerities. Voluntary
solitude was the great act of propitiation, by which crimes were
effaced, and conscience was appeased; it is therefore not unlikely,
that oratories were often built in places where retirement was sure
to have no disturbance.
Raasay has little that can detain a traveller, except the Laird and
his family; but their power wants no auxiliaries. Such a seat of
hospitality, amidst the winds and waters, fills the imagination
with a delightful contrariety of images. Without is the rough
ocean and the rocky land, the beating billows and the howling
storm: within is plenty and elegance, beauty and gaiety, the song
and the dance.
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