Are we--into
such a dream might fancy for a moment half beguile herself--rowing back,
after a day among the savage islanders, to our ship lying at anchor in
the offing, on a voyage of discovery round the world?

Where are all the dogs? Ponto, Piro, Basta, trembling partly with cold,
partly with hunger, partly with fatigue, and partly with fear, among and
below the seats of the rowers--with their noses somewhat uncomfortably
laid between their fore-paws on the tarry timbers; but O'Bronte boldly
sitting at our side, and wistfully eyeing the green swell as it heaves
beautifully by, ready at the slightest signal to leap overboard, and
wallow like a walrus in the brine, of which you might almost think he
was born and bred, so native seems the element to the "Dowg o' Dowgs."
Ay, these are sea-mews, O'Bronte, wheeling white as silver in the
moonshine; but we _shall_ not shoot them--no--no--no--we _will_ not
shoot you, ye images of playful peace, so fearlessly, nay, so lovingly
attending our bark as it bounds over the breasts of the billows, in
motion quick almost as your slowest flight, while ye linger around, and
behind, and before our path, like fair spirits wiling us along up this
great Loch, farther and farther through gloom and glimmer, into the
heart of profounder solitude. On what errands of your own are ye
winnowing your way, stooping ever and anon just to dip your wing-tips in
the waves, and then up into the open air--the blue light filling this
magnificent hollow--or seen glancing along the shadows of the mountains
as they divide the Loch into a succession of separate bays, and often
seem to block it up, till another moonlight reach is seen extending far
beyond, and carries the imagination on--on--on--into inland recesses
that seem to lose at last all connection with the forgotten sea. All at
once the moon is like a ghost;--and we believe--Heaven knows why--in the
authenticity of Ossian's Poems.

Was there ever such a man as Ossian? We devoutly hope there was--for if
so, then there were a prodigious number of fine fellows, besides his
Bardship, who after their death figured away as their glimmering ghosts,
with noble effect, among the moonlight mists of the mountains. The
poetry of Ossian has, it is true, since the days of Macpherson, in no
way coloured the poetry of the island; and Mr Wordsworth, who has
written beautiful lines about the old Phantom, states that fact as an
argument against its authenticity. He thi