From Our Own Correspondent.
Edinburgh, Aug. 15.
Among the suggestive pronouncements made by Mr. Angus Robertson. on his return from Canada—where, as President of An Comunn Gaidhealach, he had been representing that body at the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the first landing of Highland emigrants at Pictou, Nova Scotia—the one which has excited the most interest is that which concerns the establishment of a Gaelic College on the Island of Jona. Whether or. not the idea will stand close examination, and however it may work out in practice, it certainly makes an instant and a powerful appeal to the imagination not only of Highlanders but of Scotsmen generally. We are nex surprised to Jearn from My, Robertson that the project of a cultural centre on Ilona evoked—enthusiasm among the Gads in Canada. The Highland centres in that Dominion form collectively, a kind of Magna Gadelica, where Highland traditions are kept alive, and where the Gaelic tongue is so loyally cultivated that in some instances it has actually become the daily speech of hero servants. Men and women who in those overseas regions stil] "'in dreams behold the Hebrides' are bound to welcome such a fitting expression of Highland sentiment as the erection, upon the most sacred and mest famous of the Hebrid Isles, of an institution devoted to the study of Gaelic literature and the perpetnation of Gaelic ideals.
The whole record of the Dal-radic mission—the strong yet tenderly human personality of St. Columba, his genius as a poet, the fidelity and heroism of his disciples, their genuinely civiliza ing influence among the wild tribes of Albyn, and the pam they played in the missionary work of the Scotie Church in Eng-Jand and on the Continent—all this, together with the Druidic legends of Lena, its place in ecclesias: ical annals until the reformation, and its consecration as the cemetery of Celtic kings, constitutes something which, in the regions outside of what are known, as the Bible lands, can be described as unique. Lena, tov, had ijittle connexion with Rome. Its Christianity was essentially a Celtic interpretation of—the Gospel. Ineffective in practical politics though they have proved, the Celts can fairly claim that their Scotic Church—whose spirit shines out-in Arthurian chivalrousness—was a prime agent in rescuing Northern Europe from the barbarism of the Dark Ages.
What, we understand, is contemplated is a college devoted mainly to the cultural side of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.