such man is to be found. Tell not me, Sir, of impeccability and perfection; such talk is for those that are strangers in the world: I have seen several nations, and conversed with all ranks of people: I have known the great and the mean, the learned and the ignorant, the old and the young, the clerical and the lay; but I have never found a man without a fault; and I suppose shall die in the opinion that to be human is to be frail.' To all this nothing could be opposed. I listened with a hanging head; Mr Steady looked round on the hearers with triumph, and saw every eye congratulating his victory."
Before passing from Johnson's literary style, let me give one or two other examples of it, which, like the last, show him in an unfamiliar light. We know how devoted he was to the town: "A man who is tired of London," he said, "is tired of life"; again, he said, "No wise man will go to live in the country unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance: if he is to shut himself up for a year to study a science, it is better to look out to the fields than to an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there is nobody to keep him from walking in again; but if a man walks out in London he is not sure when he shall walk in again." The estimate of rural nature implied here was not very promising for the Tour in the Hebrides; and it is all the more interesting to find, in his record of that journey, such passages as these:—
He is in a valley in the Highlands:—"I sat
