RAASAY.

��steps had not been even cut in the natural rock. " The crags," Johnson complained, " were irregularly broken, and a false step would have been very mischievous." Yet " a few men with pick- axes might have cut an ascent of stairs out of any part of the rock in a week's time." There is now a small stone pier. The hayfield, in the memory of people still living, was all heathland down to the water's edge, with a rough cart-track running across it. Trees have been everywhere planted, and the hill-sides are beautifully wooded. Even before Johnson's time something had been done in the way mentions " an orchard with several sorts of berries, pot-herbs, &c." In the copy of Martin's work in the Bodleian Library, Toland has entered in the margin : " Wonderful in Scotland anywhere." Bos- well mentions " a good garden, plentifully stocked with vegetables, and strawberries, raspberries, currants, &c." The house that "neat modern fabric," which Johnson praises as "the seat of plenty, civility, and cheerfulness " still remains, but it is almost hidden beneath the great additions which have in later years been made. In a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he says : " It is not large, though we

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