...never any change of national manners so quick, so great, and so general, as that which has operated in the Highlands, by the last conquest, and the subsequent...depressed, their contempt of government subdued, and the reverence for their chiefs abated. Of what they had before the late conquest of their country,...

...and Boswell made their famous tour, they found that they were already too late to see what they had expected, 'a people of peculiar appearance and a system of antiquated life'. In the whole of their tour, Johnson recorded, they had never seen the tartan worn. The law (of which...

...in the Highlands in the summer of 1773, found conditions quite different from what he had expected: "We came thither too late to see what we expected,...depressed, their contempt of government subdued, and the reverence for their chiefs abated. Of what they had before the late conquest of their country,...

...coming to Scotland. Old relationships were being broken up; discontent and insecurity were widely felt. "We came thither too late to see what we expected,...peculiar appearance, and a system of antiquated life," bemoaned the celebrated traveler Dr. Samuel Johnson of his visit with James Boswell to the Hebrides...

...such constant attempts at escape to begin with. Waverley and the cultural politics of dispossession The clans retain little now of their original character,...depressed, their contempt of government subdued, and the reverence for their chiefs abated. Of what they had before the late conquest of their country,...

...will take them in turn, devoting this chapter to the Journey and the next to the Tour. 'We came hither too late to see what we expected, a people of peculiar appearance, and a system of antiquated life' (Journey, 46). The tour is motivated, at least for Johnson, by a desire to experience a different form...

...never any change of national manners so quick, so great, and so general, as that which has operated in the Highlands, by the last conquest, and the subsequent...peculiar appearance, and a system of antiquated life" (73). Appearing to compliment Scottish industry in this passage, Johnson really congratulates English...

...manners so quick, so great, and so general . . . We came thither too late to see what we expected ... a system of antiquated life. The clans retain little...depressed, their contempt of government subdued, and the reverence for their chiefs abated.72 Remarkable developments attended the post-Union decades. Early...

...Johnson was less sure. 'We came thither too late', he concluded in the Journey to the Western Islands, 'to see what we expected, a people of peculiar appearance, and a system of antiquated life.'135 The feudal lords had embraced money. 'For a pair of diamond buckles perhaps,' Adam Smith...

...of post- '45 occupation and legislation. Indeed, his famous appraisal of his trip's belatedness — "We came thither too late to see what we expected,...peculiar appearance, and a system of antiquated life" (51) — should be read, not as a statement expressing disappointment at the Highlands' relative tameness,...