Perhaps, if this noble family had still preserved that
sequestered magnificence which they maintained when catholicks,
corresponding with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, we might have been induced
to have procured proper letters of introduction, and devoted some time
to the contemplation of venerable superstitious state. BOSWELL. Burnet
(_History of his own Times_, ii. 443, and iii. 23) mentions the Duke of
Gordon, a papist, as holding Edinburgh Castle for James II. in 1689.
[355] 'In the way, we saw for the first time some houses with
fruit-trees about them. The improvements of the Scotch are for immediate
profit; they do not yet think it quite worth their while to plant what
will not produce something to be eaten or sold in a very little time.'
_Piozzi Letters_, i. 121.
[356] 'This was the first time, and except one the last, that I found
any reason to complain of a Scottish table.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 19.
[357] The following year Johnson told Hannah More that 'when he and
Boswell stopt a night at the spot (as they imagined) where the Weird
Sisters appeared to Macbeth, the idea so worked upon their enthusiasm,
that it quite deprived them of rest. However they learnt the next
morning, to their mortification, that they had been deceived, and were
quite in another part of the country' H. More's _Memoirs_, i. 50.
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