' BOSWELL. 'Ay, to Dr. M'Gregor[403].' We got safely to
Inverness, and put up at Mackenzie's inn. Mr. Keith, the collector of
Excise here, my old acquaintance at Ayr, who had seen us at the Fort,
visited us in the evening, and engaged us to dine with him next day,
promising to breakfast with us, and take us to the English chapel; so
that we were at once commodiously arranged.
Not finding a letter here that I expected, I felt a momentary impatience
to be at home. Transient clouds darkened my imagination, and in those
clouds I saw events from which I shrunk; but a sentence or two of the
_Rambler's_ conversation gave me firmness, and I considered that I was
upon an expedition for which I had wished for years, and the
recollection of which would be a treasure to me for life.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 29.
Mr. Keith breakfasted with us. Dr. Johnson expatiated rather too
strongly upon the benefits derived to Scotland from the Union[404], and
the bad state of our people before it. I am entertained with his copious
exaggeration upon that subject; but I am uneasy when people are by, who
do not know him as well as I do, and may be apt to think him
narrow-minded[405]. I therefore diverted the subject.
The English chapel, to which we went this morning, was but mean. The
altar was a bare fir table, with a coarse stool for kneeling on, covered
with a piece of thick sail-cloth doubled, by way of cushion.
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