Perthshire in bygone days

SECTION FIRST.
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
OF
PERTHSHIRE MEN.
CHAPTER I.
JOHN CAMPBELL, SECOND MAEQUIS OF
BEEADALBANE.
" What lack you 1 Follow me."— Shakespeare.
It is somewhat complacently asserted by "William Shakes-
peare, echoed by Alexander Pope that,
Man wants but little, nor that little long.
and re-echoed in more explicit terms by Oliver Goldsmith,
Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long.
but the assertion is not very well founded. It is the last term
of a syllogism without premisses. Individually, man's wants
may appear small, when set against this teeming earth, but
cumulatively they are prodigious. It will not do to set the
individual want against the cumulative supply, and say, with
self-satisfaction, it is little I require. Man is " a consuming
fire." The cargoes of the thousand argosies that stud every
arm of the sea, the millions of beeves that go pouring
into King's Cross and Euston, the cattle, deer, and sheep on
a thousand hills, he eats all but the bones; not a poor
hare crosses his path but he flies at it like a hungry wolf,
not a mute fish can swim peaceably in its vast ocean, but is in
peril of his greedy circumvallation. He ignores the landmarks
B