he mountains converts a calm
into a commotion--the many-murmuring voice into one roar. In flood they
are terrible to look at; and every whirlpool seems a place of torment.
Winds can make a mighty noise in swinging woods, but there is something
to our ears more appalling in that of the fall of waters. Let them be
united--and add thunder from the clouds--and we have heard in the
Highlands all three in one--and the auditor need not care that he has
never stood by Niagara. But when "though not o'erflowing full," a
Highland river is in perfection; far better do we love to see and hear
him rejoicing than raging; his attributes appear more his own in calm
and majestic manifestations, and as he glides or rolls on, without any
disturbance, we behold in him an image at once of power and peace.

Of rivers--comparatively speaking--of the second and third order--the
Highlands are full--and on some of them the sylvan scenery is beyond
compare. No need there to go hunting the waterfalls. Hundreds of
them--some tiny indeed, but others tall--are for ever dinning in the
woods; yet, at a distance from the cataract, how sweet and quiet is the
sound! It hinders you not from listening to the cushat's voice; clear
amidst the mellow murmur comes the bleating from the mountain; and all
other sound ceases, as you hearken in the sky to the bark of the
eagle--rare indeed anywhere, but sometimes to be heard as you thread the
"glimmer or the gloom" of the umbrage overhanging the Garry or the
Tummel--for he used to build in the cliffs of Ben-Brackie, and if he has
shifted his eyrie, a few minutes' waftage will bear him to Cairn-Gower.

In speaking of the glens, we but alluded to the rivers or streams, and
some of them, indeed, even the great ones, have but rivulets; while in
the greatest, the waters often flow on without a single tree, shadowed
but by rocks and clouds. Wade them, and you find they are larger than
they seem to be; for looked at along the bottom of those profound
hollows, they are but mere slips of sinuous light in the sunshine, and
in the gloom you see them not at all. We do not remember any very
impressive glen, without a stream, that would not suffer some diminution
of its power by our fancying it to have one; we may not be aware, at the
time, that the conformation of the glen prevents its having any
water-flow, but if we feel its character aright, that want is among the
causes of our feeling; just as there are some scenes of which