e
other specks are huts, somewhat browner--few roofed with straw, almost
all with heather--though the better houses are slated--nor is there in
the world to be found slate of a more beautiful pale-green colour than
in the quarries of Ballahulish. The scene is vast and wild; yet so much
beauty is interfused, that at such an hour as this its character is
almost that of loveliness; the rude and rugged is felt to be rural, and
no more; and the eye, gliding from the cottage gardens on its banks to
the islands on the bosom of the Loch, loses sight of the mighty masses
heaved up to the heavens, while the heart forgets that they are there,
in its sweet repose. The dim-seen ruins of castle or religious house,
secluded from all the stir that disturbed the shore, carries back our
dreams to the olden time, and we awake from our reveries of "sorrows
suffered long ago," to enjoy the apparent happiness of the living world.

Loch Lomond is a sea! Along its shores might you voyage in your swift
schooner, with shifting breezes, all a summer's day, nor at sunset, when
you dropped anchor, have seen half the beautiful wonders. It is
many-isled; and some of them are in themselves little worlds, with woods
and hills. Houses are seen looking out from among old trees, and
children playing on the greensward that slopes safely into deep water,
where in rushy havens are drawn up the boats of fishermen, or of
woodcutters who go to their work on the mainland. You might live all
your life on one of those islands, and yet be no hermit. Hundreds of
small bays indent the shores, and some of a majestic character take a
fine bold sweep with their towering groves, enclosing the mansion of a
Colquhoun or a Campbell at enmity no more, or the turreted castle of the
rich alien, who there finds himself as much at home as in his hereditary
hall, Sassenach and Gael now living in gentle friendship. What a
prospect from the Point of Firkin! The Loch in its whole length and
breadth--the magnificent expanse unbroken, though bedropped, with
unnumbered isles--and the shores diversified with jutting cape and
far-shooting peninsula, enclosing sweet separate seclusions, each in
itself a loch. Ships might be sailing here, the largest ships of war;
and there is anchorage for fleets. But the clear course of the lovely
Leven is rock-crossed and intercepted with gravelly shallows, and guards
Loch Lomond from the white-winged roamers that from all seas come
crowding into the Fi