(no subject)

I've remembered to bring my copy of Boswell's tour to the Hebrides to the computer. I'm reading it in between reading accounts of Franklin's disastrous Arctic exploration and accounts of what happened to it and it sruck me that not all the English in the British age of glory were equally adventurous.

Boswell, for instance, was worried about the trip to Scotland. He expected to find in Scotland "simplicity and wildness, and all the circumstances of remote time or place" and, of his discussions with the estimable Dr. Johnson on the subject "We reckoned there would be some inconveniences and hardships, and perhaps a litle danger" and Voltaire said to them "You do not insist on me accompanying you?" He then explains that he has welcomes from lots of people and that Edinburgh was part of the planned tour. And London at that time was such a haven of safety and well-being. (I have a selection of Boswell's London diaries too, and he seems to have led a fairly adventurous life there, so that last sentence is not to be read literally.)

I'm reading this in dribs and drabs, but I promise to report any wildness Boswell observed in the major cities of a long-civilised region.