And thus for hours may you be lost in the forest, nor all the while have wasted one thought on the outer-world, till with no other warning but an uncertain glimmer and a strange noise, you all at once issue forth into the open day, and are standing on the brink of a precipice above a flood. It comes tumbling down with a succession of falls, in a mile-long course, right opposite your stance--rocks, cliffs, and trees, all the way up on either side, majestically retiring back to afford ample channel, and showing an unobstructed vista, closed up by the purple mountain, that seems to send forth the river from a cavern in its breast. 'Tis the Glen of Pines. Nor ash nor oak is suffered to intrude on their dominion. Since the earthquake first shattered it out, this great chasm, with all its chasms, has been held by one race of trees. No other seed could there spring to life; for from the rocks has all soil, ages ago, been washed and swept by the tempests. But there they stand with glossy boles, spreading arms, and glittering crest; and those two by themselves on the summit, known all over Badenoch as "the Giants"--their "statures reach the sky."

We have been indulging in a dream of old. Before our day the immemorial gloom of Glenmore had perished, and it ceased to be a forest. But there bordered on it another region of night or twilight, and in its vast depths we first felt the sublimity of lonesome fear. Rothiemurchus! The very word blackens before our eyes with necromantic characters--again we plunge into its gulfs desirous of what we dread--again, "in pleasure high and turbulent," we climb the cliffs of Cairngorm.

Would you wish to know what is now the look of Glenmore? One now dead and gone--a man of wayward temper, but of genius--shall tell you--and think not the picture exaggerated--for you would not, if you were _there_. "It is the wreck of the ancient forest which arrests all the attention, and which renders Glenmore a melancholy, more than a melancholy, a terrific spectacle. Trees of enormous height, which have escaped alike the axe and the tempest, are still standing, stripped by the winds, even of the bark, and, like gigantic skeletons, throwing far and wide their white and bleached bones to the storms and rains of heaven; while others, broken by the violence of the gales, lift up their split and fractured trunks in a thousand shapes of resistance and of destruction, or still display some knotted and tortuous branches, stretched out, in sturdy and fantastic forms of defiance, to the whirlwind and the winter. Noble trunks also, which had long resisted, but resisted in vain, strew the ground; some lying on the declivity where they have fallen, others still adhering to the precipice where they were rooted, many upturned, with their twisted and entangled roots high in air; while not a few astonish us by the space which they cover, and by dimensions which we could not otherwise have estimated. It is one wide image of death, as if the angel of destruction had passed over the valley. The sight even of a felled tree is painful; still more is that of the fallen forest, with all its green branches on the ground, withering, silent, and at rest, where once they glittered in the dew and the sun, and trembled in the breeze. Yet this is but an image of vegetable death. It is familiar, and the impression passes away. It is the naked skeleton bleaching in the winds, the gigantic bones of the forest still erect, the speaking records of former life, and of strength still unsubdued, vigorous even in death, which renders Glenmore one enormous charnel-house."

What happened of old to the aboriginal Forests of Scotland, that long before these later destructions they had almost all perished, leaving, to bear witness what they were, such survivors? They were chiefly destroyed by fire. What power could extinguish chance-kindled conflagrations, when sailing before the wind? And no doubt fire was set to clear the country at once of Scotch firs, wolves, wild-boars, and outlaws. Tradition yet tells of such burnings; and, if we mistake not, the pines found in the Scottish mosses, the logs and the stocks, all show that they were destroyed by Vulcan, though Neptune buried them in the quagmires. Storms no doubt often levelled them by thousands; but had millions so fallen they had never been missed, and one Element only--which has been often fearfully commissioned--could achieve the work. In our own day the axe has indeed done wonders--and sixteen square miles of the Forest of Rothiemurchus "went to the ground." John of Ghent, Gilpin tells us, to avenge an inroad, set twenty-four thousand axes at work in the Caledonian Forest.

Yet Scotland has perhaps sufficient forests at this day. For more has been planted than cut down; Glenmore will soon be populous as ever with self-sown pines, and Rothiemurchus may revive; the shades are yet deep of Loch Arkaig, Glengarry, Glenmoriston, Strathglass, Glen-Strathfarrar, and Loch-Shiel; deeper still on the Findhorn--and deepest of all on the Dee, rejoicing in the magnificent pine-woods of Invercauld and Braemar.

We feel that we have spoken feebly of our Highland forests. Some, perhaps, who have never been off the high-roads, may accuse us of exaggeration too; but they contain wondrous beauties of which we have said not a word; and no imagination can conceive what they may be in another hundred years. But, apparently far apart from the forests, though still belonging to them, for they hold in fancy by the tenure of the olden time, how many woods, and groves, and sprinklings of fair trees, rise up during a day's journey, in almost every region of the North! And among them all, it may be, scarcely a pine. For the oak, and the ash, and the elm, are also all native trees; nowhere else does the rowan flush with more dazzling lustre; in spring, the alder with its vivid green stands well beside the birk--the yew was not neglected of yore, though the bow of the Celt was weak to that of the Saxon; and the holly, in winter emulating the brightness of the pine, flourished, and still flourishes on many a mountain-side. There is sufficient sylvan scenery for beauty in a land of mountains. More may be needed for shelter--but let the young plants and seedlings have time to grow--and as for the old trees, may they live for ever! Too many millions of larches are perhaps growing now behind the Tay and the Tilt; yet why should the hills of Perthshire be thought to be disfigured by what ennobles the Alps and the Apennines?

Hitherto we have hardly said a word about Lochs, and have been doing our best to forget them, while imagining scenes that were chiefly characterised by other great features of Highland Landscape. A country thus constituted, and with such an aspect, even if we could suppose it without lochs, would still be a glorious region; but its lochs are indeed its greatest glory: by them its glens, its mountains, and its woods, are all illumined, and its rivers made to sing aloud for joy. In the pure element, overflowing so many spacious vales and glens profound, the great and stern objects of nature look even more sublime or more beautiful in their reflected shadows, which appear in that stillness to belong rather to heaven than earth. Or the evanescence of all that imagery at a breath may touch us with the thought, that all it represents, steadfast as seems its endurance, will as utterly pass away.

Such visions, when gazed on in that wondrous depth and purity they are sometimes seen to assume on a still summer day, always inspire some such faint feeling as this; and we sigh to think how transitory must be all things, when the setting sun is seen to sink beneath the mountain, and all its golden pomp at the same instant to evanish from the lake.

The first that takes possession of the imagination, dreaming of the Highlands as the region of Lochs, is the Queen of them all, Loch Lomond.

A great poet has said that, "in Scotland, the proportion of diffused water is often too great, as at the Lake of Geneva, for instance, and in most of the Scottish lakes. No doubt it sounds magnificent, and flatters the imagination, to hear at a distance of masses of water, so many leagues in length and miles in width; and such ample room may be delightful to the fresh-water sailor, scudding with a lively breeze amid the rapidly-shifting scenery. But who ever travelled along the banks of Loch Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feeling that a speedier termination of the long vista of blank water would be acceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows, trees, and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side? In fact, a notion of grandeur, as connected with magnitude, has seduced persons of taste into a general mistake upon this subject. It is much more desirable, for the purposes of pleasure, that lakes should be numerous and small or middle-sized, than large, not only for communication by walks and rides, but for variety, and for recurrence of similar appearances. To illustrate this by one instance: how pleasing is it to have a ready and frequent opportunity of watching, at the outlet of a lake, the stream, pushing its way among the rocks, in lively contrast with the stillness from which it has escaped! and how amusing to compare its noisy and turbulent motions with the gentle playfulness of the breezes that may be starting up, or wandering here and there, over the faintly-rippled surface of the broad water! I may add, as a general remark, that in lakes of great width the shores cannot be distinctly seen at the same time, and therefore contribute little to mutual illustration and ornament; and if the opposite shores are out of sight of each other, like those of the American and Asiatic lakes, then unfortunately the traveller is reminded of a nobler object--he has the blankness of a sea-prospect without the grandeur and accompanying sense of power."

We shall not be suspected of an inclination to dissent, on light grounds, from any sentiments of Wordsworth. But finely felt and expressed as all this is, we do not hesitate to say that it is not applicable to Loch Lomond. Far be it from us to criticise this passage sentence by sentence; for we have quoted it not in a captious, but a reverent spirit, as we have ever done with the works of this illustrious man. He has studied nature more widely and profoundly than we have; but it is out of our power to look on Loch Lomond without a feeling of perfection. The "diffusion of water" is indeed great; but in what a world it floats! At first sight of it, how our soul expands! The sudden revelation of such majestic beauty, wide as it is and extending afar, inspires us with a power of comprehending it all. Sea-like indeed it is--a Mediterranean Sea--enclosed with lofty hills and as lofty mountains--and these indeed are the Fortunate Isles! We shall not dwell on the feeling which all must have experienced on the first sight of such a vision--the feeling of a lovely and a mighty calm; it is manifest that the spacious "diffusion of water" more than conspires with the other components of such a scene to produce the feeling; that to it belongs the spell that makes our spirit serene, still, and bright, as its own. Nor when such feeling ceases so entirely to possess, and so deeply to affect us, does the softened and subdued charm of the scene before us depend less on the expanse of the "diffusion of water." The islands, that before had lain we knew not how--or we had only felt that they were all most lovely--begin to show themselves in the order of their relation to one another and to the shores. The eye rests on the largest, and with them the lesser combine; or we look at one or two of the least, away by themselves, or remote from all a tufted rock; and many as they are, they break not the breadth of the liquid plain, for it is ample as the sky. They show its amplitude, as masses and sprinklings of clouds, and single clouds, show the amplitude of the cerulean vault. And then the long promontories--stretching out from opposite mainlands, and enclosing bays that in themselves are lakes--they too magnify the empire of water; for long as they are, they seem so only as our eye attends them with their cliffs and woods from the retiring shores, and far distant are their shadows from the central light. Then what shores! On one side, where the lake is widest, low-lying they seem, and therefore lovelier--undulating with fields and groves, where many a pleasant dwelling is embowered, into lines of hills that gradually soften away into another land. On the other side, sloping back, or overhanging, mounts beautiful in their bareness, for they are green as emerald; others, scarcely more beautiful, studded with fair trees--some altogether woods. They soon form into mountains--and the mountains become more and more majestical, yet beauty never deserts them, and her spirit continues to tame that of the frowning cliffs. Far off as they are, Benlomond and Benvorlich are seen to be giants; magnificent is their retinue, but they two are supreme, each in his own dominion; and clear as the day is here, they are diadem'd with clouds.

It cannot be that the "proportion of diffused water is here too great;"

and is it then true that no one "ever travelled along the banks of Loch Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feeling that a speedier termination to the long vista of blank water would be acceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows, trees, and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side?" We have travelled along them in all weathers and never felt such a wish. For there they all are--all but the "sparkling stream to run by our side,"

and we see not how that well could be in nature. "Streams that sparkle as they run," cross our path on their own; and brighter never issued from the woods. Along the margin of the water, as far as Luss--ay, and much farther--the variations of the foreground are incessant; "had it no other beauties," it has been truly said, "but those of its shores, it would still be an object of prime attraction; whether from the bright-green meadows sprinkled with luxuriant ash-trees, that sometimes skirt its margin, or its white pebbled shores on which its gentle billows murmur, like a miniature ocean, or its bold rocky promontories rising from the dark water, rich in wildflowers and ferns, and tangled with wild roses and honeysuckles, or its retired bays where the waves dash, reflecting, like a mirror, the trees which hang over them, an inverted landscape." The islands are for ever arranging themselves into new forms, every one more and more beautiful; at least so they seem to be, perpetually occurring, yet always unexpected, and there is a pleasure even in such a series of slight surprises that enhances the delight of admiration. And alongside, or behind us, all the while, are the sylvan mountains, "laden with beauty;" and ever and anon open glens widen down upon us from chasms; or forest-glades lead our hearts away into the inner gloom--perhaps our feet; and there, in a field that looks not as if it had been cleared by his own hands, but left clear by nature, a woodsman's hut.

Half-way between Luss and Tarbet the water narrows, but it is still wide; the new road, we believe, winds round the point of Firkin, the old road boldly scaled the height, as all old roads loved to do; ascend it, and bid the many-isled vision, in all its greatest glory, farewell.

Thence upwards prevails the spirit of the mountains. The lake is felt to belong to them--to be subjected to their will--and that is capricious; for sometimes they suddenly blacken it when at its brightest, and sometimes when its gloom is like that of the grave, as if at their biding, all is light. We cannot help attributing the "skyey influences"

which occasion such wonderful effects on the water, to prodigious mountains; for we cannot look on them without feeling that they reign over the solitude they compose; the lights and shadows flung by the sun and the clouds imagination assuredly regards as put forth by the vast objects which they colour; and we are inclined to think some such belief is essential in the profound awe, often amounting to dread, with which we are inspired by the presences of mere material forms. But be this as it may, the upper portion of Loch Lomond is felt by all to be most sublime. Near the head, all the manifold impressions of the beautiful which for hours our mind had been receiving, begin to fade; if some gloomy change has taken place in the air, there is a total obliteration, and the mighty scene before us is felt to possess not the hour merely, but the day. Yet should sunshine come, and abide a while, beauty will glimpse upon us even here, for green pastures will smile vividly high up among the rocks; the sylvan spirit is serene the moment it is touched with light, and here there is not only many a fair tree by the water-side, but yon old oak-wood will look joyful on the mountain, and the gloom become glimmer in the profound abyss.

Wordsworth says that "it must be more desirable, for the purposes of pleasure, that lakes should be numerous, and small or middle-sized, than large, not only for communication by walks and rides, but for variety, and for recurrence of similar appearances." The Highlands have them of all sizes--and that surely is best. But here is one which, it has been truly said, is not only "incomparable in its beauty as in its dimensions, exceeding all others in variety as it does in extent and splendour, but unites in itself every style of scenery which is found in the other lakes of the Highlands." He who has studied, and understood, and felt all Loch Lomond, will be prepared at once to enjoy any other fine lake he looks on; nor will he admire nor love it the less, though its chief character should consist in what forms but one part of that of the Wonder in which all kinds of beauty and sublimity are combined.

We feel that it would be idle, and worse than idle, to describe any number of the Highland lochs, for so many of the finest have been seen by so many eyes that few persons probably will ever read these pages to whom such descriptions would be, at the best, more than shadowings of scenery that their own imaginations can more vividly re-create. There are other reasons for not saying a single word about some of the most beautiful; for genius has pictured and peopled them and the surrounding regions in colours that will never fade. Besides, in the volumes to which these "Remarks" are a preface--contributed with pleasure, somewhat impaired indeed by the consciousness of their many defects and imperfections--views of them all are submitted to the eye; and it is not to be thought that we could by words add to the effect of the works of such artists. These objections do not apply to what we have written respecting the character of the Scenery of the Highlands, apart, as far as that may be, from their lochs; and it may have in some measure illustrated them also, if it has at all truly characterised the mountains, the glens, the rivers, the forests, and the woods.

We may be allowed, however, to say, that there cannot be a greater mistake than to think, as many, we believe, do who have only heard of the Highland Lochs, that, with the exception of those famous for their beauty as well as their grandeur, beauty is not only not the quality by which they are distinguished, but that it is rarely found in them at all. There are few, possessing any very marked character, in which beauty is not either an ingredient or an accompaniment; and there are many "beautiful exceedingly," which, lying out of the way even of somewhat adventurous travellers, or very remote, are known, if even by that, only by name. It does not, indeed, require much, in some situations, to give a very touching beauty to water. A few trees, a few knolls, a few tufted rocks, will do it, where all around and above is stern or sterile; and how strong may be the gentle charm, if the torrent that feeds the little loch chance to flow into it from a lucid pool formed by a waterfall, and to flow out of it in a rivulet that enlivens the dark heather with a vale of verdure over which a stag might bound--and more especially if there be two or three huts in which it is perceived there is human life! We believe we slightly touched before on such scenes; but any little repetition will be excused for the sake of a very picturesque passage, which we have much pleasure in quoting from the very valuable "Guide to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland," by the brothers Anderson. We well remember walking into the scene here so well painted, many long years ago, and have indeed, somewhere or other, described it. The Fall of Foyers is the most magnificent cataract, out of all sight and hearing, in Britain. The din is quite loud enough in ordinary weather--and it is only in ordinary weather that you can approach the place from which you have a full view of all its grandeur.

When the Fall is in flood--to say nothing of being drenched to the skin--you are so blinded by the sharp spray-smoke, and so deafened by the dashing and clashing, and tumbling and rumbling thunder, that your condition is far from enviable, as you cling, "lonely lover of nature,"

to a shelf by no means eminent for safety, above the horrid gulf. Nor in former times was there any likelihood of your being comforted by the accommodations of the General's Hut. In ordinary Highland weather--meaning thereby weather neither very wet nor very dry--it is worth walking a thousand miles for one hour to behold the Fall of Foyers. The spacious cavity is enclosed by "complicated cliffs and perpendicular precipices" of immense height, and though for a while it wears to the eye a savage aspect, yet beauty fears not to dwell even there, and the horror is softened by what appears to be masses of tall shrubs, or single shrubs almost like trees. And they are trees, which on the level plain would look even stately; but as they ascend ledge above ledge the walls of that awful chasm, it takes the eye time to see them as they really are, while on our first discernment of their character, serenely standing among the tumult, they are felt on such sites to be sublime.

"Between the Falls and the Strath of Stratherrik," says the Book we were about to quote, "a space of three or four miles, the river Foyers flows through a series of low rocky hills clothed with birch. They present various quiet glades and open spaces, where little patches of cultivated ground are encircled by wooded hillocks, whose surface is pleasingly diversified by nodding trees, bare rocks, empurpled heath, and bracken bearing herbage." It was the excessive loveliness of some of the scenery there that suggested to us the thought of going to look what kind of a stream the Foyers was above the Fall. We went, and in the quiet of a summer evening, found it

"Was even the gentlest of all gentle things."

But here is the promised description of it. "Before pursuing our way westward, we would wish to direct the traveller's attention to a sequestered spot of peculiar beauty on the river Foyers. This is a secluded vale, called Killean, which, besides its natural attractions--and these are many--is distinguished as one of the few places where the old practice of resorting to the 'shieling' for summer grazing of cattle is still observed. It is encompassed on all sides by steep mountains; but at the north end there is a small lake, about a mile and a half in length, and from one-third to half a mile in breadth.

The remainder of the bottom of the glen is a perfectly level tract, of the same width with the lake, and about two miles and a half in length, covered with the richest herbage, and traversed by a small meandering river flowing through it into the lake. The surface of this flat is bedecked with the little huts or bothies which afford temporary accommodation to the herdsmen and others in charge of the cattle. This portion of the glen is bordered on the west by continuous hills rising abruptly in a uniformly steep acclivity, and passing above into a perpendicular range of precipices, the whole covered with a scanty verdure sprouted with heath. At a bend of the lake near its middle, where it inclines from a northernly course towards the west, a magnificent rounded precipice, which, like the continuous ranges, may be about 1200 feet in height, rises immediately out of the water; and a few narrow and inclined verdant stripes alone preserve it from exhibiting a perfectly mural character. To this noble rock succeeds, along the rest of the lake, a beautiful, lofty, and nearly vertical hill-side, clothed with birch, intermingled with hanging mossy banks, shaded over with the deeper-tinted bracken. The eastern side of the plain, and the adjoining portion of the lake, are lined by mountains corresponding in height with those opposed to them; but their lower extremities are, to a considerable extent, strewed with broken fragments of rock, to which succeeds an uninterrupted zone of birch and alder, which is again overtopped in its turn by naked cliffs. An elevated terrace occupies the remainder of this side of the lake; above the wooded face of which is seen a sloping expanse of mingled heath and herbage. About half a mile from the south end, Mr Fraser of Lovat, the proprietor, has erected a shooting-lodge; viewed from which, or from either end, or from the top of the platform on the north-east side of the lake, fancy could scarcely picture a more attractive and fairy landscape than is unfolded by this sequestered vale, to which Dr Johnson's description of the 'Happy Valley' not inaptly applies. The milch cows, to the number of several hundreds, are generally kept here from the beginning of June to the middle of August, when they are replaced by the yeld cattle. The river sweeps to the northward from Loch Killean through richly birch-clad hills, which rise in swelling slopes from its banks. A large tarn which immediately joins it from the east is crossed at its mouth by a rustic bridge, from which a single footpath conducts across the brow of the hill to Whitebridge, a small public-house or inn, four miles distant."

There is a loch of a very different character from Killean, almost as little known (one view of it is given in the book), equal to anything in the Highlands, only two miles distant from Loch Lochy, in the Great Glen--Loch Arkaig. We first visited it many years since, having been induced to do so by a passage in John Stoddart's "Remarks on the Local Scenery and Manners of Scotland;" and it was then a very noble oak and pine forest loch. The axe went to work and kept steadily at it; and a great change was wrought; but it is still a grand scene, with a larger infusion of beauty than it possessed of old. The scenery of the valley separating it from Loch Lochy is very similar to that of the Trossachs; through it there are two approaches to the loch, and the _Mile-Dubh_, or the Dark Mile, according to our feeling, is more impressive than any part of the approach to Loch Katrine. The woods and rocks are very solemn, and yet very sweet; for though many old pines and oaks and ashes are there, and the wall of rocks is immense, young trees prevail now on many places, as well along the heights as among the knolls and hillocks below, where alders and hawthorns are thick; almost everywhere the young are intermingled with the old, and look cheerful under their protection, without danger of being chilled by their shade. The loch, more or less sylvan from end to end, shows on its nearer shores some magnificent remains of the ancient forest, and makes a noble sweep like some great river. There may be more, but we remember but one island--not large, but wooded as it should be--the burying-place of the family of Lochiel. What rest! It is a long journey from Loch Lochy to Kinloch Arkaig--and by the silent waters we walked or sat all a summer's day. There was nothing like a road that we observed, but the shores are easily travelled, and there it is you may be almost sure of seeing some red-deer. They are no better worth looking at from a window than Fallow--no offence to Fallow, who are fine creatures; indeed, we had rather not see them so at all; but on the shores or steeps of Loch Arkaig, with hardly a human habitation within many, many miles, and these few rather known than seen to be there, the huts of Highlanders contented to cultivate here and there some spot that seems cultivatable, but probably is found not to be so after some laborious years--there they are at home; and you, if young, looking on them, feel at home too, and go bounding, like one of themselves, over what, did you choose, were an evitable steep. Roe, too, frequent the copses, but to be seen they must be started; grouse spring up before you oftener than you might expect in a deer forest; but, to be sure, it is a rough and shaggy one, though lovelier lines of verdure never lay in the sunshine than we think we see now lying for miles along the margin of that loch. The numerous mountains towards the head of the loch are very lofty, and glens diverge in grand style into opposite and distant regions. Glen Dessary, with its beautiful pastures, opens on the loch, and leads to Loch Nevish on the coast of Knoidart--Glen Paean to Oben-a-Cave on Loch Morer, Glen Canagorie into Glenfinnan and Loch Shiel; and Glen Kingie to Glengarry and Loch Quoich. There is a choice!

We chose Glen Kingie, and after a long climb found a torrent that took us down to Glengarry before sunset. It is a loch little known, and in grandeur not equal to Loch Arkaig; but at the close of such a day's journey, the mind, elevated by the long contemplation of the great objects of nature, cannot fail to feel aright, whatever it may be, the spirit of the scene, that seems to usher in the grateful hour of rest.

It is surpassing fair--and having lain all night long on its gentle banks, sleeping or waking we know not, we have never remembered it since but as the Land of Dreams.

Which is the dreariest, most desolate, and dismal of the Highland Lochs?

We should say Loch Ericht. It lies in a prodigious wilderness, with which perhaps no man alive is conversant, and in which you may travel for days without seeing even any symptoms of human life. We speak of the regions comprehended between the Forest of Atholl and Ben-nevis, the Moor of Rannoch and Glen Spean. There are many lochs--and Loch Ericht is their griesly Queen. Herdsmen, shepherds, hunters, fowlers, anglers, traverse its borders, but few have been far in the interior, and we never knew anybody who had crossed it from south to north, from east to west. We have ourselves seen more of it, perhaps, than any other Lowlander; and had traversed many of its vast glens and moors, before we found our way to the southern solitude of Loch Ericht. We came into the western gloom of Ben Auler from Loch Ouchan, and up and down for hours dismal but not dangerous precipices that opened out into what might almost be called passes--but we had frequently to go back, for they were blind--contrived to clamber to the edge of one of the mountains that rose from the water a few miles down the loch. All was vast, shapeless, savage, black, and wrathfully grim; for it was one of those days that keep frowning and lowering, yet will not thunder; such as one conceives of on the eve of an earthquake. At first the sight was dreadful, but there was no reason for dread; imagination remains not longer than she chooses the slave of her own eyes, and we soon began to enjoy the gloom, and to feel how congenial it was in nature with the character of all those lifeless cliffs. Silence and darkness suit well together in solitude at noonday, and settled on huge objects make them sublime. And they were huge; all ranged together, and stretching away to a great distance, with the pitchy water, still as if frozen, covering their feet.

Loch Ericht is many miles long--nearly twenty; but there is a loch among the Grampians not more than two miles round, if so much, which is sublimer far--Loch Aven. You come upon the sight of it at once, a short way down from the summit of Cairngorm, and then it is some two thousand feet below you, itself being as many above the level of the sea. But to come upon it so as to feel best its transcendent grandeur, you should approach it up Glenaven--and from as far down as Inch-Rouran, which is about half-way between Loch Aven and Tomantoul. Between Inch-Rouran and Tomantoul the glen is wild, but it is inhabited; above that house there is but one other; and for about a dozen miles--we have heard it called far more--there is utter solitude. But never was there a solitude at once so wild, so solemn, so serene, so sweet! The glen is narrow; but on one side there are openings into several wider glens, that show you mighty coves as you pass on; on the other side the mountains are without a break, and the only variation with them is from smooth to shaggy, from dark to bright; but their prevailing character is that of pastoral or of forest peace. The mountains that show the coves belong to the bases of Ben-Aven and Ben-y-buird. The heads of those giants are not seen--but it sublimes the long glen to know that it belongs to their dominion, and that it is leading us on to an elevation that ere long will be on a level with the roots of their topmost cliffs. The Aven is so clear--on account of the nature of its channel--that you see the fishes hanging in every pool; and 'tis not possible to imagine how beautiful in such transparencies are the reflections of its green ferny banks. For miles they are composed of knolls, seldom interspersed with rocks, and there cease to be any trees. But ever and anon we walk for a while on a level floor, and the voice of the stream is mute. Hitherto sheep have been noticed on the hill, but not many, and red and black cattle grazing on the lower pastures; but they disappear, and we find ourselves all at once in a desert. So it is felt to be, coming so suddenly with its black heather on that greenest grass; but 'tis such a desert as the red-deer love. We are now high up on the breast of the mountain, which appears to be Cairngorm; but such heights are deceptive, and it is not till we again see the bed of the Aven that we are assured we are still in the glen. Prodigious precipices, belonging to several different mountains, for between mass and mass there is blue sky, suddenly arise, forming themselves more and more regularly into circular order, as we near; and now we have sight of the whole magnificence; yet vast as it is, we know not yet how vast; it grows as we gaze, till in a while we feel that sublimer it may not be; and then so quiet in all its horrid grandeur we feel too that it is beautiful, and think of the Maker.

This is Loch Aven. How different the whole region round from that enclosing Loch Ericht! There, vast wildernesses of more than melancholy moors--huge hollows hating their own gloom that keeps them herbless--disconsolate glens left far away by themselves, without any sign of life--cliffs that frown back the sunshine--and mountains, as if they were all dead, insensible to the heavens. Is this all mere imagination--or the truth? We deceive ourselves in what we call a desert. For we have so associated our own being with the appearances of outward things, that we attribute to them, with an uninquiring faith, the very feelings and the very thoughts, of which we have chosen to make them emblems. But here the sources of the Dee seem to lie in a region as happy as it is high; for the bases of the mountains are all such as the soul has chosen to make sublime--the colouring of the mountains all such, as the soul has chosen to make beautiful; and the whole region, thus imbued with a power to inspire elevation and delight, is felt to be indeed one of the very noblest in nature.

We have now nearly reached the limits assigned to our "Remarks on the Character of the Scenery of the Highlands;" and we feel that the sketches we have drawn of its component qualities--occasionally filled up with some details--must be very imperfect indeed without comprehending some parts of the coast, and some of the sea-arms that stretch into the interior. But even had our limits allowed, we do not think we could have ventured on such an attempt; for though we have sailed along most of the western shores, and through some of its sounds, and into many of its bays, and up not a few of its reaches, yet they contain such an endless variety of all the fairest and greatest objects of nature, that we feel it would be far beyond our powers to give anything like an adequate idea of the beauty and the grandeur that for ever kept unfolding themselves around our summer voyagings in calm or storm. Who can say that he knows a thousandth part of the wonders of "the marine" between the Mull of Cantire and Cape Wrath? He may have gathered many an extensive shore--threaded many a mazy multitude of isles--sailed up many a spacious bay--and cast anchor at the head of many a haven land-locked so as no more to seem to belong to the sea--yet other voyagers shall speak to him of innumerable sights which he has never witnessed; and they who are most conversant with those coasts, best know how much they have left and must leave for ever unexplored.

Look now only at the Linnhe Loch--how it gladdens Argyll! Without it and the Sound of Mull how sad would be the shadows of Morvern! Eclipsed the splendours of Lorn! Ascend one of the heights of Appin, and as the waves roll in light, you will see how the mountains are beautified by the sea.

There is a majestic rolling onwards there that belongs to no land-loch--only to the world of waves. There is no nobler image of ordered power than the tide, whether in flow or in ebb; and on all now it is felt to be beneficent, coming and going daily, to enrich and adorn. Or in fancy will you embark, and let the Amethyst bound away "at her own sweet will," accordant with yours, till she reach the distant and long-desired loch.

"Loch-Sunart! who, when tides and tempests roar, Comes in among these mountains from the main, 'Twixt wooded Ardnamurchan's rocky cape And Ardmore's shingly beach of hissing spray; And while his thunders bid the sound of Mull Be dumb, sweeps onwards past a hundred bays Hill-shelter'd from the wrath that foams along The mad mid-channel,--All as quiet they As little separate worlds of summer dreams,-- And by storm-loving birds attended up The mountain-hollow, white in their career As are the breaking billows, spurns the Isles Of craggy Carnich, and green Oronsay Drench'd in that sea-horn shower o'er tree-tops driven, And ivied stones of what was once a tower, Now hardly known from rocks--and gathering might In the long reach between Dungallan caves And point of Arderinis ever fair With her Elysian groves, bursts through that strait Into another ampler inland sea; Till lo! subdued by some sweet influence,-- And potent is she, though so meek the Eve,-- Down sinketh wearied the old Ocean Insensibly into a solemn calm,-- And all along that ancient burial-ground (Its kirk is gone), that seemeth now to lend Its own eternal quiet to the waves, Restless no more, into a perfect peace Lulling and lull'd at last, while drop the airs Away as they were dead, the first-risen star Beholds that lovely Archipelago, All shadow'd there as in a spiritual world, Where time's mutations shall come never more!"

These lines describe but one of innumerable lochs that owe their greatest charm to the sea. It is indeed one of those on which nature has lavished all her infinite varieties of loveliness; but Loch Leven is scarcely less fair, and perhaps grander; and there is matchless magnificence above Loch Etive. All round about Ballahulish and Inverco the scenery of Loch Leven is the sweetest ever seen overshadowed by such mountains; the deeper their gloom, the brighter its lustre; in all weathers it wears a cheerful smile; and often while tip among the rocks the tall trees are tossing in the storm, the heart of the woods beneath is calm, and the vivid fields they shelter look as if they still enjoyed the sun. Nor closes the beauty there, but even animates the entrance into that dreadful glen--Glencoe. All the way up its river, Loch Leven would be fair, were it only for her hanging woods. But though the glen narrows, it still continues broad, and there are green plains between her waters and the mountains, on which stately trees stand single, and there is ample room for groves. The returning tide tells us, should we forget it, that this is no inland loch, for it hurries away back to the sea, not turbulent, but fast as a river in flood. The river Leven is one of the finest in the Highlands, and there is no other such series of waterfalls, all seen at once, one above the other, along an immense vista; and all the way up to the furthest there are noble assemblages of rocks--nowhere any want of wood--and in places, trees that seem to have belonged to some old forest. Beyond, the opening in the sky seems to lead into another region, and it does so; for we have gone that way, past some small lochs, across a wide wilderness, with mountains on all sides, and descended on Loch Treag,

"A loch whom there are none to praise, And very few to love,"

but overflowing in our memory with all pleasantest images of pastoral contentment and peace.

Loch Etive, between the ferries of Connel and Bunawe, has been seen by almost all who have visited the Highlands--but very imperfectly; to know what it is, you must row or sail up it, for the banks on both sides are often richly wooded, assume many fine forms, and are frequently well embayed, while the expanse of water is sufficiently wide to allow you from its centre to command a view of many of the distant heights. But above Bunawe it is not like the same loch. For a couple of miles it is not wide, and it is so darkened by enormous shadows that it looks even less like a strait than a gulf--huge overhanging rocks on both sides ascending high, and yet felt to belong but to the bases of mountains that sloping far back have their summits among clouds of their own in another region of the sky. Yet are they not all horrid; for nowhere else is there such lofty heather--it seems a wild sort of brushwood; tall trees flourish, single or in groves, chiefly birches, with now and then an oak--and they are in their youth or their prime--and even the prodigious trunks, some of which have been dead for centuries, are not all dead, but shoot from their knotted rind symptoms of life inextinguishable by time and tempest. Out of this gulf we emerge into the Upper Loch, and its amplitude sustains the majesty of the mountains, all of the highest order, and seen from their feet to their crests.

Cruachan wears the crown, and reigns over them all--king at once of Loch Etive and of Loch Awe. But Buachaille Etive, though afar off, is still a giant, and in some lights comes forwards, bringing with him the Black Mount and its dependents, so that they all seem to belong to this most magnificent of all Highland lochs. "I know not," says Macculloch, "that Loch Etive could bear an ornament without an infringement on that aspect of solitary vastness which it presents throughout. Nor is there one. The rocks and bays on the shore, which might elsewhere attract attention, are here swallowed up in the enormous dimensions of the surrounding mountains, and the wide and ample expanse of the lake. A solitary house, here fearfully solitary, situated far up in Glen Etive, is only visible when at the upper extremity; and if there be a tree, as there are in a few places on the shore, it is unseen; extinguished as if it were a humble mountain flower, by the universal magnitude around." This is finely felt and expressed; but even on the shores of Loch Etive there is much of the beautiful; Ardmatty smiles with its meadows, and woods, and bay, and sylvan stream; other sunny nooks repose among the grey granite masses; the colouring of the banks and braes is often bright; several houses or huts become visible no long way up the glen; and though that long hollow--half a day's journey--till you reach the wild road between Inveruran and King's House--lies in gloom, yet the hillsides are cheerful, and you delight in the greensward, wide and rock-broken, should you ascend the passes that lead into Glencreran or Glencoe. But to feel the full power of Glen Etive you must walk up it till it ceases to be a glen. When in the middle of the moor, you see far off a solitary dwelling indeed--perhaps the loneliest house in all the Highlands--and the solitude is made profounder, as you pass by, by the voice of a cataract, hidden in an awful chasm, bridged by two or three stems of trees, along which the red-deer might fear to venture--but we have seen them and the deer-hounds glide over it, followed by other fearless feet, when far and wide the Forest of Dalness was echoing to the hunter's horn.

We have now brought our Remarks on the Scenery of the Highlands to a close, and would fain have said a few words on the character and life of the people; but are precluded from even touching on that most interesting subject. It is impossible that the minds of travellers through those wonderful regions, can be so occupied with the contemplation of mere inanimate nature, as not to give many a thought to their inhabitants, now and in the olden time. Indeed, without such thoughts, they would often seem to be but blank and barren wildernesses, in which the heart would languish, and imagination itself recoil; but they cannot long be so looked at, for houseless as are many extensive tracts, and therefore at times felt to be too dreary even for moods that for a while enjoyed the absence of all that might tell of human life, yet symptoms and traces of human life are noticeable to the instructed eye almost everywhere, and in them often lies the spell that charms us, even while we think that we are wholly delivered up to the influence of "dead insensate things." None will visit the Highlands without having some knowledge of their history; and the changes that have long been taking place in the condition of the people will be affectingly recognised wherever they go, in spite even of what might have appeared the insuperable barriers of nature.

"Time and Tide Have washed away, like weeds upon the sands, Crowds of the olden life's memorials; And 'mid the mountains you as well might seek For the lone site of fancy's filmy dreams.

Towers have decay'd and moulder'd from the cliffs, Or their green age, or grey, has help'd to build New dwellings sending up their household smoke From treeless places once inhabited But by the secret sylvans. On the moors The pillar-stone, reared to perpetuate The fame of some great battle, or the power Of storied necromancer in the wild, Among the wide change on the heather-bloom By power more wondrous wrought than his, its name Has lost, or fallen itself has disappear'd; No broken fragment suffer'd to impede The glancing ploughshare. All the ancient woods Are thinn'd and let in floods of daylight now, Then dark and dern as when the Druids lived.

Narrow'd is now the red-deer's forest reign; The royal race of eagles is extinct.

But other changes than on moor and cliff Have tamed the aspect of the wilderness; The simple system of primeval life, Simple but stately, hath been broken down; The clans are scatter'd, and the chieftain's power Is dead, or dying--but a name--though yet It sometimes stirs the desert; to the winds The tall plumes wave no more--the tartan green With fiery streaks among the heather-bells Now glows unfrequent; and the echoes mourn The silence of the music that of old Kept war-thoughts stern amid the calm of peace.

Yet to far battle plains still Morven sends Her heroes, and still glittering in the sun, Or blood-dimm'd, her dread line of bayonets Marches with loud shouts straight to victory.

A soften'd radiance now floats o'er her glens; No rare sight now upon her sea-arm lochs The sail oft-veering up the solitude; And from afar the noise of life is brought Within the thunders of her cataracts.

These will flow on for ever; and the crests, Gold-tipt by rising and by setting suns, Of her old mountains inaccessible Glance down their scorn for ever on the toils That load with harvests now the humbler hills, Now shorn of all their heather bloom, and green Or yellow as the gleam of lowland fields.

And bold hearts in broad bosoms still are there, Living and dying peacefully; the huts Abodes are still of high-soul'd poverty; And underneath their lintels beauty stoops Her silken-snooded head, when singing goes The maiden to her father at his work Among the woods, or joins the scanty line Of barley-reapers on their narrow ridge, In some small field among the pastoral braes.

Still fragments dim of ancient poetry In melancholy music down the glens Go floating; and from shieling roof'd with boughs, And turf-wall'd, high up in some lonely place Where flocks of sheep are nibbling the sweet grass Of mid-summer, and browsing on the plants On the cliff mosses a few goats are seen Among their kids, you hear sweet melodies Attuned to some traditionary tale, By young wife sitting all alone, aware From shadow on the mountain horologe Of the glad hour that brings her husband home Before the gloaming, from the far-off moor Where the black cattle feed; there all alone She sits and sings, except that on her knees Sleeps the sweet offspring of their faithful loves."

We love the people too well to praise them--we have had too heartfelt experience of their virtues. In castle, hall, house, manse, hut, hovel, shieling--on mountain and moor, we have known, without having to study their character. It manifests itself in their manners, and in their whole frame of life. They are now, as they ever were, affectionate, faithful, and fearless; and far more delightful surely it is to see such qualities in all their pristine strength--for civilisation has not weakened, nor ever will weaken them--without that alloy of fierceness and ferocity which was inseparable from them in the turbulence of feudal times. They are now indeed a peaceful people; severe as are the hardships of their condition, they are, in the main, contented with it; and nothing short of necessity can dissever them from their dear mountains. We devoutly trust that there need be no more forced emigration--that henceforth it will be free--at the option of the adventurous--and that all who will, when the day cometh, may be gathered to their fathers in the land that gave them birth. Much remains to be done not only to relieve but enlighten; yet Christian benevolence has not been forgetful of their wants; schools and churches are arising in remote places; and that they are in good truth a religious as well as a moral people is proved by the passionate earnestness with which, in their worst destitution, they embrace every offer of instruction in the knowledge that leads to everlasting life. The blessing of Heaven will lie on all such missions as these; and the time will come when we shall be able to contemplate, without any pain, the condition of a race who, to use the noble language of one, though often scornful and sarcastic overmuch, yet at heart their friend, "almost in an hour subsided into peace and virtue, retaining their places, their possessions, their chiefs, their songs, their traditions, their superstitions and peculiar usages--even that language and those recollections which still separate them from the rest of the nation. They retained even their pride, and they retained their contempt of those who imposed that order on them, and still they settled into a state of obedience to that government, of which the world produces no other instance! It is a splendid moral phenomenon, and reflects a lustre on the Highland character, whether of the chiefs or the people, which extinguishes all past faults, and which atones for what little remains to be amended. A peculiar political situation was the cause of their faults; and that which swept away the cause, has rendered the effects a tale of other times."

END OF VOL. II.