'I have a desire to instruct myself in the whole system of pastoral
life; but I know not whether I shall be able to perfect the idea.
However, I have many pictures in my mind, which I could not have had
without this journey; and should have passed it with great pleasure had
you, and Master, and Queeney been in the party. We should have excited
the attention and enlarged the observation of each other, and obtained
many pleasing topicks of future conversation.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 159.
'We travelled with very little light in a storm of wind and rain; we
passed about fifty-five streams that crossed our way, and fell into a
river that, for a very great part of our road, foamed and roared beside
us; all the rougher powers of nature except thunder were in motion, but
there was no danger. I should have been sorry to have missed any of the
inconveniencies, to have had more light or less rain, for their
co-operation crowded the scene and filled the mind.' _Ib_. p. 177.
See _post_, v. 334 for the splendid passage in which, describing the
emotions raised in his mind by the sight of Iona, he says:--
'Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the
past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances
us in the dignity of thinking beings.... That man is little to be envied
whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or
whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.'
Macaulay seems to have had the echo of these lines still in his ear,
when he described imagination as 'that noble faculty whereby man is able
to live in the past and in the future, in the distant and in the
unreal.' _Essays_, ed. 1853, iii. 167.