s, as any isle that sees its
shadow in the deeps; but human sorrows have steeped it in eternal gloom,
and terribly is it haunted to our imagination. Here no woodman's hut
peeps from the glade--here are not seen the branching antlers of the
deer moving among the boughs that stir not--no place of peace is this
where the world-wearied hermit sits penitent in his cell, and prepares
his soul for Heaven. Its inhabitants are a woeful people, and all its
various charms are hidden from their eyes, or seen in ghastly
transfiguration; for here, beneath the yew-tree's shade, sit moping, or
roam about with rueful lamentation, the soul-distracted and the insane!
Ay--these sweet and pleasant murmurs break round a Lunatic Asylum! And
the shadows that are now and then seen among the umbrage are laughing or
weeping in the eclipse of reason, and may never know again aught of the
real character of this world, to which, exiled as they are from it, they
are yet bound by the ties of a common nature that, though sorely
deranged, are not wholly broken, and still separate them by an awful
depth of darkness from the beasts that perish.

Thither love, yielding reluctantly at last to despair, has consented
that the object on which all its wise solicitudes had for years been
unavailably bestowed both night and day, should be rowed over, perhaps
at midnight, and when asleep, and left there with beings like itself,
all dimly conscious of their doom. To many such the change may often
bring little or no heed--for outward things may have ceased to impress,
and they may be living in their own rueful world, different from all
that we hear or behold. To some it may seem that they have been
spirited away to another state of existence--beautiful, indeed, and fair
to see, with all those lovely trees and shadows of trees; but still a
miserable, a most miserable place, without one face they ever saw
before, and haunted by glaring eyes that shoot forth fear, suspicion,
and hatred. Others, again, there are, who know well the misty head of
Ben Lomond, which, with joyful pleasure-parties set free from the city,
they had in other years exultingly scaled, and looked down, perhaps, in
a solemn pause of their youthful ecstasy, on the far-off and melancholy
Inch-Cruin! Thankful are they for such a haven at last--for they are
remote from the disturbance of the incomprehensible life that bewildered
them, and from the pity of familiar faces that was more than could be
borne