rhaps little inferior to them in point of scenery,
through which no traveller has passed, no writer drawn his pen, and
upon which no printer has inked his types. Among other neglected
regions, the Ochil Hills may be mentioned--at least the eastern part
of them. These, so far as we know, have not been fruitful of battles,
and consequently the historian has had nothing to say concerning them.
They are traversed by few roads; the few that do exist are nearly
impassable, except to pedestrians of a daring disposition; and the
novelist, never having seen them, has not thought of making them the
home of his imaginary heroes. They have given birth to no poet of
eminence--none such has condescended to celebrate them in his songs;
and, except to the few scattered inhabitants who nestle in their
hollows, they are nearly unknown.

This, however, is not the fault of the hills themselves, but of the
circumstances just alluded to; for here heroes might have found a
field on which to spill whole seas of blood; novelists might have
found all the variation of hill, valley, rock, and stream, with which
they usually ornament their pages; and Ossian himself, had it been his
fortune to travel in the district, might have found "grey mist" and
"brown heath" to his heart's content, and, in the proper season, as
much snow as would have served to deck out at least half-a-dozen
"Morvens" in their winter coat. These hills, on the east and south,
rise from the adjoining country by a gradual slope, surmounted, in
some instances, by thriving plantations, while, in others, the plough
and harrow have reached what appears to be their summit. On the north,
they are terminated by a rocky front, which runs nearly parallel to
the river Tay, and afterwards to the Earn, thus forming the southern
boundary of Strathearn, which is perhaps one of the most fertile
districts in Scotland. The elevation on this side is partly composed
of the rocky front just mentioned; partly of a cultivated slope at its
base; and partly of a green acclivity above, which, when seen from the
plain below, seems to crown the whole, while it conceals from the eye
those barren altitudes and dreary regions which lie behind. But, after
having surmounted this barrier, the prospect which then opens may be
regarded as a miniature picture of those more lofty mountain-ranges
which are to be found in other parts of the island. Here the ground
again declines a little, forming a sort of shoulder upo