etest and serenest afternoons that ever
breathed a hush over the face and bosom of August woods. Can we find it
in our mind to think, in our heart to feel, in our hand to write, that
Scotland is now even more beautiful than in our youth! No--not in our
heart to feel--but in our eyes to see--for they tell us it is the truth.
The people have cared for the land which the Lord their God hath given
them, and have made the wilderness to blossom like the rose. The same
Arts that have raised their condition have brightened their habitation;
Agriculture, by fertilising the loveliness of the low-lying vales, has
sublimed the sterility of the stupendous mountain heights--and the
thundrous tides, flowing up the lochs, bring power to the cornfields and
pastures created on hill-sides once horrid with rocks. The whole country
laughs with a more vivid verdure--more pure the flow of her streams and
rivers--for many a fen and marsh has been made dry, and the rainbow
pictures itself on clearer cataracts.

The Highlands were, in our memory, overspread with a too dreary gloom.
Vast tracts there were in which Nature herself seemed miserable; and if
the heart find no human happiness to repose on, Imagination will fold
her wings, or flee away to other regions, where in her own visionary
world she may soar at will, and at will stoop down to the homes of this
real earth. Assuredly the inhabitants are happier than they then
were--_better off_--and therefore the change, whatever loss it may
comprehend, has been a gain in good. Alas! poverty--penury--want--even
of the necessaries of life--are too often there still rife; but patience
and endurance dwell there, heroic and better far, Christian--nor has
Charity been slow to succour regions remote but not inaccessible,
Charity acting in power delegated by Heaven to our National Councils.
And thus we can think not only without sadness, but with an elevation of
soul inspired by such example of highest virtue in humblest estate, and
in our own sphere exposed to other trials be induced to follow it, set
to us in many "a virtuous household, though exceeding poor." What are
the poetical fancies about "mountain scenery," that ever fluttered on
the leaves of albums, in comparison with any scheme, however prosaic,
that tends in any way to increase human comforts? The best sonnet that
ever was written by a versifier from the South to the Crown of
Benlomond, is not worth the worst pair of worsted stockings trotted