the sky was often threatening, but the rain blew off, and the
evening was uncommonly fine. The sun had set a short time before we had
dismounted from the car to walk up the steep hill at the end of the glen.
Clouds were moving all over the sky--some of a brilliant yellow hue,
which shed a light like bright moonlight upon the mountains. We could
not have seen the head of the valley under more favourable circumstances.

The passing away of a storm is always a time of life and cheerfulness,
especially in a mountainous country; but that afternoon and evening the
sky was in an extraordinary degree vivid and beautiful. We often stopped
in ascending the hill to look down the long reach of the glen. The road,
following the course of the river as far as we could see, the farm and
cottage hills, smooth towards the base and rocky higher up, were the sole
objects before us. This part of Glen Croe reminded us of some of the
dales of the north of England--Grisdale above Ulswater, for instance; but
the length of it, and the broad highway, which is always to be seen at a
great distance, a sort of centre of the vale, a point of reference, gives
to the whole of the glen, and each division of it, a very different
character.

At the top of the hill we came to a seat with the well-known inscription,
'Rest and be thankful.' On the same stone it was recorded that the road
had been made by Col. Wade's regiment. The seat is placed so as to
command a full view of the valley, and the long, long road, which, with
the fact recorded, and the exhortation, makes it an affecting
resting-place. We called to mind with pleasure a seat under the braes of
Loch Lomond on which I had rested, where the traveller is informed by an
inscription upon a stone that the road was made by Col. Lascelles'
regiment. There, the spot had not been chosen merely as a resting-place,
for there was no steep ascent in the highway, but it might be for the
sake of a spring of water and a beautiful rock, or, more probably,
because at that point the labour had been more than usually toilsome in
hewing through the rock. Soon after we had climbed the hill we began to
descend into another glen, called Glen Kinglas. We now saw the western
sky, which had hitherto been hidden from us by the hill--a glorious mass
of clouds uprising from a sea of distant mountains, stretched out in
length before us, towards the west--and close by us was a small lake or
tarn. From the reflection