and security, without adding anything of lightness. We returned, by the
same road, to the village of Weem, where we had left our car. The vale
of Tay was very wide, having been so from within a short distance of
Kenmore: the reaches of the river are long; and the ground is more
regularly cultivated than in any vale we had yet seen--chiefly corn, and
very large tracts. Afterwards the vale becomes narrow and less
cultivated, the reaches shorter--on the whole resembling the vale of
Nith, but we thought it inferior in beauty.

One among the cottages in this narrow and wilder part of the vale fixed
our attention almost as much as a Chinese or a Turk would do passing
through the vale of Grasmere. It was a cottage, I believe, little
differing in size and shape from all the rest; but it was like a visitor,
a stranger come into the Highlands, or a model set up of what may be seen
in other countries. The walls were neatly plastered or roughcast, the
windows of clean bright glass, and the door was painted--before it a
flower-garden, fenced with a curiously-clipped hedge, and against the
wall was placed the sign of a spinning-wheel. We could not pass this
humble dwelling, so distinguished by an appearance of comfort and
neatness, without some conjectures respecting the character and manner of
life of the person inhabiting it. Leisure he must have had; and we
pleased ourselves with thinking that some self-taught mind might there
have been nourished by knowledge gathered from books, and the simple
duties and pleasures of rural life.

At Logierait, the village where we dined, the vale widens again, and the
Tummel joins the Tay and loses its name; but the Tay falls into the
channel of the Tummel, continuing its course in the same direction,
almost at right angles to the former course of the Tay. We were sorry to
find that we had to cross the Tummel by a ferry, and resolved not to
venture in the same boat with the horse. Dined at a little public-house,
kept by a young widow, very talkative and laboriously civil. She took me
out to the back-door, and said she would show me a place which had once
been very grand, and, opening a door in a high wall, I entered a ruinous
court-yard, in which was a large old mansion, the walls entire and very
strong, but the roof broken in. The woman said it had been a palace
{196} of one of the kings of Scotland. It was a striking and even an
affecting object, coming upon it, as I did, unawares,