when every day was a dream, and every dream filled to
overflowing with poetic visions that swarmed in every bough, on every
bent, on every heather-bell, on every dewdrop, in every mote o' the sun,
in every line of gossamer, all over greenwood and greensward, grey
cliff, purple heath, blue lock, "wine-faced sea,"

"with locks divinely spreading,
Like sullen hyacinths in vernal hue,"

and all over the sky, seeming then a glorious infinitude, where light,
and joy, and beauty had their dwelling in calm and storm alike for
evermore.

Heaven bless thee--with all her sun, moon, and stars! there thou art,
dearest to us of all the lochs of Scotland--and they are all
dear--mountain-crowned, cliff-guarded, isle-zoned, grove-girdled,
wide-winding, and far-stretching, with thy many-bayed banks and braes of
brushwood, fern, broom, and heather, rejoicing in their huts and
shielings, thou glory of Argyllshire, rill-and-river-fed, sea-arm-like,
floating in thy majesty, magnificent Loch Awe!

Comparisons, so far from being odious, are always suggested to our
hearts by the spirit of love. We behold Four Lochs--Loch Awe, before our
bodily eyes, which sometimes sleep--Loch Lomond, Windermere, Killarney,
before those other eyes of ours that are waking ever. The longest is
Loch Awe, which from that bend below Sonnachan to distant Edderline,
looks like a river. But cut off, with the soft scythe or sickle of
fancy, twenty miles of the length of the mottled snake, who never coils
himself up except in misty weather, and who is now lying outstretched in
the sunshine, and the upper part, the head and shoulders, are of
themselves a Loch. Pleasant are his many hills, and magnificent his one
mountain. For you see but Cruachan. He is the master-spirit. Call him
the noblest of Scotland's Kings. His subjects are princes; and
gloriously they range around him, stretching high, wide, and far away,
yet all owing visible allegiance to him, their sole and undisputed
sovereign. The setting and the rising sun do him homage. Peace loves--as
now--to dwell within his shadow; but high among the precipices are the
halls of the storms. Green are the shores as emerald. But the dark
heather with its purple bloom sleeps in sombre shadow over wide regions
of dusk, and there is an austere character in the cliffs. Moors and
mosses intervene between holms and meadows, and those black spots are
stacks of last year's peats--not huts, as you might think; but thos