Note 906 — WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20.

'The fruitfulness of Iona is now its whole prosperity. The inhabitants are remarkably gross, and remarkably neglected; I know not if they are visited by any minister. The island, which was once the metropolis of learning and piety, has now no school for education, nor temple for worship, only two inhabitants that can speak English, and not one that can write or read.' Johnson's Works, ix. 149. Scott, who visited it in 1810, writes:—'There are many monuments of singular curiosity, forming a strange contrast to the squalid and dejected poverty of the present inhabitants.' Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, iii. 285. In 1814, on a second visit, he writes:—'Iona, the last time I saw it, seemed to me to contain the most wretched people I had anywhere seen. But either they have got better since I was here, or my eyes, familiarized with the wretchedness of Zetland and the Harris, are less shocked with that of Iona.' He found a schoolmaster there. Ib. iv. 324.