the beauty
would not be so touching were there a single tree.

Thousands and tens of thousands there are of nameless perennial
torrents, and "in number without number numberless" those that seldom
live a week--perhaps not a day. Up among the loftiest regions you hear
nothing, even when they are all allow; yet, there is music in the sight,
and the thought of the "general dance and minstrelsy" enlivens the air,
where no insect hums. As on your descent you come within hearing of the
"liquid lapses," your heart leaps within you, so merrily do they sing;
the first torrent-rill you meet with you take for your guide, and it
leads you perhaps into some fairy dell, where it wantons awhile in
waterfalls, and then gliding along a little dale of its own with "banks
o' green bracken," finishes its short course in a stream--one of many
that meet and mingle before the current takes the name of river, which
in a mile or less becomes a small woodland lake. There are many such of
rememberable beauty; living lakes indeed, for they are but pausings of
expanded rivers, which again soon pursue their way, and the water-lilies
have ever a gentle motion there as if touched by a tide.

It used, not very long ago, to be pretty generally believed by our
southern brethren, that there were few trees in the Lowlands of
Scotland, and none at all in the Highlands. They had an obscure notion
that trees either could not or would not grow in such a soil and
climate--cold and bleak enough at times and places, heaven knows--yet
not altogether unproductive of diverse stately plants. They know better
now; nor were we ever angry with their ignorance, which was nothing more
than what was to be expected in persons living perpetually at home so
far remote. They rejoice now to visit, and sojourn, and travel here
among us, foreigners and a foreign land no more; and we rejoice to see
and receive them not as strangers, but friends, and are proud to know
they are well pleased to behold our habitation. They do us and our
country justice now, and we have sometimes thought even more than
justice; for they are lost in admiration of our cities--above all, of
Edinburgh--and speak with such raptures of our scenery, that they would
appear to prefer it even to their own. They are charmed with our bare
green hills, with our shaggy brown mountains they are astonished, our
lochs are their delight, our woods their wonder, and they hold up their
hands and clap them at our cliffs.