the summit of an eminence, whence we descry
the sudden and wide prospect of the windings of the river that issues
from Loch Achray--and the Loch itself reposing--sleeping--dreaming on
its pastoral, its sylvan bed. Achray, being interpreted, signifies the
"Level Field," and gives its name to a delightful farm at the west end.
On "that happy, rural seat of various view," could we lie all day long;
and as all the beauty tends towards the west, each afternoon hour
deepens and also brightens it into mellower splendour. Not to keep
constantly seeing the lovely Loch is indeed impossible--yet its still
waters soothe the soul, without holding it away from the woods and
cliffs, that, forming of themselves a perfect picture, are yet all
united with the mountainous region of the setting sun. Many long years
have elapsed--at our time of life ten are many--since we passed one
delightful evening in the hospitable house that stands near the wooden
bridge over the Teith, just wheeling into Loch Achray. What a wilderness
of wooded rocks, containing a thousand little mossy glens, each large
enough for a fairy's kingdom! Between and Loch Katrine is the Place of
Roes--nor need the angler try to penetrate the underwood; for every
shallow, every linn, every pool is overshaded by its own canopy, and the
living fly and moth alone ever dip their wings in the checkered waters.
Safe there are all the little singing-birds from hawk or gled--and it is
indeed an Aviary in the wild. Pine-groves stand here and there amid the
natural woods--and among their tall gloom the cushat sits crooning in
beloved solitude, rarely startled by human footstep, and bearing at his
own pleasure through the forest the sound of his flapping wings.

But let us rise from the greensward, and before we pace along the sweet
shores of Loch Achray, for its nearest murmur is yet more than a mile
off, turn away up from the Brigg of Turk into Glenfinlas. A strong
mountain-torrent, in which a painter, even with the soul of Salvator
Rosa, might find studies inexhaustible for years, tumbles on the left of
a ravine, in which a small band of warriors might stop the march of a
numerous host. With what a loud voice it brawls through the silence,
freshening the hazels, the birches, and the oaks, that in that perpetual
spray need not the dew's refreshment. But the savage scene softens as
you advance, and you come out of that sylvan prison into a plain of
meadows and cornfields, alive with t