Talk:Krystyn Lach-Szyrma

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I have moved this from main, at the current size, it takes more than half of the article. Such quotes do not belong on Wikipedia, perhaps it should be moved to wikiquote? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk 18:53, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

"I was surprised to find that Krystyn was not a woman, but a man, an army Colonel. When Krystyn Lach-Szyrma reached Edinburgh from Poland in 1820 the embers of the Scottish Enlightenment were still glowing. Dugald Stewart was alive and at dinner parties Lach-Szyrma could meet men like Francis Jeffrey, Walter Scott and James Hogg.  As tutor to three Czartoryski princes on their Grand Tour, he found all doors open to him.  With his pupils he attended classes at the University in medicine, philosophy, rhetoric and economics and graduated with a Doctorate in Philosophy.  In the summer months he visited Glasgow, Dumfries and the Borders or stayed with landowning friends in the Lothians.  His interests raged from fashionable balls and supper parties to prison, lunatic asylums and gas works.  In search of the land of Ossian, he walked from Loch to Oban and sailed around the north coast of Mull. He fell in love with Scotland, but his shrewd and witty observations embrace as much as the poverty of the Highland peasantry as much as the manners of the upper classes.

I did not expect to find much on caves and I was not disappointed. A couple of paragraphs on Rob Roy’s Cave, Massacre Cave [MacDonald’s Cave, Eigg] Cruachan Cave, Ossian’s Cave, Urisk’s Cave and of course Fingal’s Cave. At Fingal’s Cave he impulsively jumped into the sea to swim into the cave. He nearly drowned and had to be dragged out by his boatman.

All honour to Mona McLeod, herself descended from Scottish settlers in Poland, for letting Lach-Szyrma at last thank in person the country he enjoyed so intensely.

TO"