bless the bells of St Mungo's tolling on the first Sabbath.
Thousands and tens of thousands, who, but for those smoking sea-horses,
had never been beyond view of the city spires, have seen sights which,
though passing by almost like dreams, are not like dreams forgotten, but
revive of themselves in memory and imagination; and, when the heart is
weary with the work of the hand, quicken its pulses with a sudden
pleasure that is felt like a renovation of youth.

All through the interior, too, how many hundreds of miles of roads now
intersect regions not long ago deemed impracticable!--firm on the fen,
in safety flung across the chasm--and winding smoothly amidst
shatterings of rocks, round the huge mountain bases, and down the glens
once felt as if interminable, now travelled almost with the speed of the
raven's wing!

In the Highlands now, there is no _Terra Incognita_. But there are many
places yet well worth seeing, which it is not easy for all men to find,
and to which every man must be his own guide. It is somewhat of a
selfish feeling, indeed, but the pride is not a mean one, with which the
solitary pedestrian sits down to contemplate some strange, or wild, or
savage scene, or some view of surpassing sweetness and serenity, so far
removed from the track of men that he can well believe for a time that
his eyes have been the first to behold it, and that for them alone it
has now become a visible revelation. The memory of such places is
sometimes kept as a secret which we would not communicate but to a
congenial friend. They are hallowed by those mysterious "thoughts that,
like phantoms, trackless come and go;" no words can tell another how to
find his way thither; and were we ourselves to seek to return, we should
have to trust to some consciousness mysterious as the instinct of a
bird that carries it through the blind night to the place of its desire.

It is well to have in our mind the conception of a route: but without
being utterly departed from--nay, without ceasing to control us within
certain bounds--it admits of almost any degrees of deviation. We have
known persons apparently travelling for pleasure, who were afraid to
turn a few miles to the right or the left, for fear of subjecting
themselves to the reproach of their own conscience for infirmity of
purpose. They had "chalked out a route," and acted as if they had sworn
a solemn oath to follow it. This is to be a slave among the boundless
dominions of natur