The month of August is to the year what Sunday is to the week. During that month a section of the working world rests. _Bradshaw_ is consulted, portmanteaus are packed, knapsacks are strapped on, steamboats and railway carriages are crammed, and from Calais to Venice the tourist saunters and looks about him. It is absolutely necessary that the Briton should have, each year, one month's cessation from accustomed labour. He works hard, puts money in his purse, and it is his whim, when August comes, by way of recreation, to stalk deer on Highland corries, to kill salmon in Norwegian fiords, to stand on the summit of Mont Blanc, and to perambulate the pavements of Madrid, Naples, and St Petersburg. To rush over the world during vacation is a thing on which the respectable Briton sets his heart. To remain at home is to lose caste and self-respect. People do not care one rush for the Rhine; but that sacred stream they must behold each year or die. Of all the deities Fashion has the most zealous votaries. No one can boast a more extensive martyrology. Her worshippers are terribly sincere, and many a secret penance do they undergo, and many a flagellation do they inflict upon themselves in private. [Sidenote: Vacation in Skye.] Early in the month in which English tourists descend on the Continent in a shower of gold, it has been my custom, for several years back, to seek refuge in the Hebrides. I love Loch Snizort better than the Mediterranean, and consider Duntulme more impressive than the Drachenfels. I have never seen the Alps, but the Cuchullins content me. Haco interests me more than Charlemagne. I confess to a strong affection for those remote regions. Jaded and nervous with eleven months' labour or disappointment, there will a man find the medicine of silence and repose. Pleasant, after poring over books, to watch the cormorant at early morning flying with outstretched neck over the bright frith; pleasant, lying in some sunny hollow at noon, to hear the sheep bleating above; pleasant at evening to listen to wild stories of the isles told by the peat-fire; and pleasantest of all, lying awake at midnight, to catch, muffled by distance, the thunder of the northern sea, and to think of all the ears the sound has filled. In Skye one is free of one's century; the present wheels away into silence and remoteness; you see the ranges of brown shields, and hear the shoutings of the Bare Sarks.