closed plain--and here and
there are enclosures, near the few houses or huts standing, some of them
in the middle of the glen, quite exposed, on eminences above reach of
the floods--some more happily placed on the edge of the coppices, that
sprinkle the steep sides of the hills, yet barely mountains. But
mountains they soon become; and leaving behind you those few barren
habitations, you see before you a wide black moor. Beautiful hitherto
had been the river, for a river you had inclined to think it, long after
it had narrowed into a stream, with many a waterfall, and in one chasm a
cataract. But the torrent now has a wild mountain cry, and though there
is still beauty on its banks, they are bare of all trees, now swelling
into multitudes of low green knolls among the heather, now composed but
of heather and rocks. Through the very middle of the black moor it
flows, yet are its waters clear, for all is not moss, and it seems to
wind its way where there is nothing to pollute its purity, or tame its
lustre. 'Tis a solitary scene, but still sweet; the mountains are of
great magnitude, but they are not precipitous; vast herds of cattle are
browsing there, on heights from which fire has cleared the heather, and
wide ranges of greensward upon the lofty gloom seem to lie in perpetual
light.

The moor is crossed, and you prepare to scale the mountain in front, for
you imagine the torrent by your side flows from a tarn in yonder cove,
and forms that series of waterfalls. You have been all along well
pleased with the glen, and here at the head, though there is a want of
cliffs of the highest class, you feel nevertheless that it has a
character of grandeur. Looking westward, you are astounded to see them
ranging away on either side of another reach of the glen, terrific in
their height, but in their formation beautiful, for like the walls of
some vast temple they stand, roofed with sky. Yet are they but as a
portal or gateway of the glen. For entering in with awe, that deepens,
as you advance, almost into dread, you behold, beyond, mountains that
carry their cliffs up into the clouds, seamed with chasms, and hollowed
out into coves, where night dwells visibly by the side of day; and still
the glen seems winding on beneath a purple light, that almost looks like
gloom; such vast forms and such prodigious colours, and such utter
stillness, become oppressive to your very life, and you wish that some
human being were by, to relieve, by