From the Academy

At this season, when myriads of my compatriots make their way to foreign parts (returning, about Labor Day, empty- pocketed but refreshed), various readers of this page inquire of me what they ought to see in Scotland. Knowing that I possess a little haunted old house on the Firth of Forth, they take it that I may be able to suggest something less routine than that standard three-day tour of Edinburgh, the Trossachs and Loch Lomond so favored by the tourist agencies.

Aye, I can suggest Scottish scenes less frequented but no less deserving of the connoisseur of the picturesque. For this summer, I commend a Lost Cause Tour. Scotland is rich in memorials of Lost Causes—from those strange towers the prehistoric brochs of Shetland (probably the refuge of a forgotten aristocracy that fled out of southern parts to escape Roman slave-raiders) to St. Ninian’s Cave on the western shore of Galloway (the first Scottish foothold of Columban Christianity, fated to give place to the Latin rite).