ute little to mutual
illustration and ornament; and if the opposite shores are out of sight
of each other, like those of the American and Asiatic lakes, then
unfortunately the traveller is reminded of a nobler object--he has the
blankness of a sea-prospect without the grandeur and accompanying sense
of power."

We shall not be suspected of an inclination to dissent, on light
grounds, from any sentiments of Wordsworth. But finely felt and
expressed as all this is, we do not hesitate to say that it is not
applicable to Loch Lomond. Far be it from us to criticise this passage
sentence by sentence; for we have quoted it not in a captious, but a
reverent spirit, as we have ever done with the works of this illustrious
man. He has studied nature more widely and profoundly than we have; but
it is out of our power to look on Loch Lomond without a feeling of
perfection. The "diffusion of water" is indeed great; but in what a
world it floats! At first sight of it, how our soul expands! The sudden
revelation of such majestic beauty, wide as it is and extending afar,
inspires us with a power of comprehending it all. Sea-like indeed it
is--a Mediterranean Sea--enclosed with lofty hills and as lofty
mountains--and these indeed are the Fortunate Isles! We shall not dwell
on the feeling which all must have experienced on the first sight of
such a vision--the feeling of a lovely and a mighty calm; it is manifest
that the spacious "diffusion of water" more than conspires with the
other components of such a scene to produce the feeling; that to it
belongs the spell that makes our spirit serene, still, and bright, as
its own. Nor when such feeling ceases so entirely to possess, and so
deeply to affect us, does the softened and subdued charm of the scene
before us depend less on the expanse of the "diffusion of water." The
islands, that before had lain we knew not how--or we had only felt that
they were all most lovely--begin to show themselves in the order of
their relation to one another and to the shores. The eye rests on the
largest, and with them the lesser combine; or we look at one or two of
the least, away by themselves, or remote from all a tufted rock; and
many as they are, they break not the breadth of the liquid plain, for
it is ample as the sky. They show its amplitude, as masses and
sprinklings of clouds, and single clouds, show the amplitude of the
cerulean vault. And then the long promontories--stretching out from
opposite m