e understanding,
which a bit of philosophical criticism will purge away, as the leech's
phial does a disease of the blood.

Macpherson's "Ossian," is it not poetry? Wordsworth says it is not--but
Christopher North says it is--with all reverence for the King. Let its
antiquity be given up--let such a state of society as is therein
described be declared impossible--let all the inconsistencies and
violations of nature ever charged against it be acknowledged--let all
its glaring plagiarisms from poetry of modern date inspire what derision
they may--and far worse the perpetual repetition of its own imbecilities
and inanities, wearying one down even to disgust and anger;--yet, in
spite of all, are we not made to feel, not only that we are among the
mountains, but to forget that there is any other world in existence,
save that which glooms and glimmers, and wails and raves around us in
mists and clouds, and storms and snows--full of lakes and rivers,
sea-intersected and sea-surrounded, with a sky as troublous as the
earth--yet both at times visited with a mournful beauty that sinks
strangely into the soul--while the shadowy life depictured there eludes
not our human sympathies; nor yet, aerial though they be--so sweet and
sad are their voices--do there float by as unbeloved, unpitied, or
unhonoured--single, or in bands--the ghosts of the brave and beautiful;
when the few stars are dim, and the moon is felt, not seen, to be
yielding what faint light there may be in the skies.

The boat in a moment is a bagpipe; and not only so, but all the
mountains are bagpipes, and so are the clouds. All the bagpipes in the
world are here, and they fill heaven and earth. 'Tis no
exaggeration--much less a fiction--but the soul and body of truth. There
Hamish stands stately at the prow; and as the boat hangs by midships on
the very point that commands all the echoes, he fills the whole night
with the "Campbells are coming," till the sky yells with the gathering
as of all the Clans. His eyes are triumphantly fixed on ours to catch
their emotions; his fingers cease their twinkling; and still that wild
gathering keeps playing of itself among the mountains--fainter and
fainter, as it is flung from cliff to cliff, till it dies away far--far
off--as if in infinitude--sweet even and soft in its evanescence as some
lover's lute.

We are now in the bay of Gleno. For though moonlight strangely alters
the whole face of nature, confusing its most settle