Page:A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland - Johnson (1775).djvu/376

 The buildings in different parts of the Island shew their degrees of wealth and power. I believe that for all the castles which I have seen beyond the, the ruins yet remaining of some one of those which the built in , would supply materials.

These castles afford another evidence that the fictions of romantick chivalry had for their basis the real manners of the feudal times, when every Lord of a seignory lived in his hold lawless and unaccountable, with all the licentiousness and insolence of uncontested superiority and unprincipled power. The traveller, whoever he might be, coming to the fortified habitation of a Chieftain, would, probably, have been interrogated from the battlements, admitted with caution at the gate, introduced to a petty Monarch, fierce with habitual hostility, and vigilant with ignorant suspicion; who, according to his general temper, or