We had decided to leave the steamer at Fort William, and cross through the heart of Scotland to Loch Lomond. My companion was very fond of London hours, and slept late, knowing that the cart-the only conveyance to be had in that country-would wait our time. I was lounging about the inn, and amusing myself with listening to the Gaelic spoken by every body who belonged to the place, when the pleasant family with whom we had past the evening, drove out of the yard, (having brought their horses down in the boat) intending to proceed by land to Glasgow We renewed our adieus, on my part, with the sincerest regret, and I strolled down the road and watched them till they were out of sight, feeling that (selfish world as it is) there are some things that look at least like impulse and kindness-so like, that I can make out of them a very passable happiness.

We mounted our cart at eleven o'clock, and with a bright sun; a clear, vital air; a handsome and good-humoured callant for a driver, and the most renowned of Scottish scenery before us, the day looked very auspicious. I could not help smiling at the appearance of my fashionable friend, sitting with his well-poised hat and nicely adjusted curls, upon the springless cross-board of a most undisguised and unscrupulous market-cart, yet in the highest good-humour with himself and the world. The boy sat on the shafts, and talked Gaelic to his horse; the mountains and the lake, spread out before us, looked as if human eye had never profaned their solitary beauty, and I enjoyed it all the more, perhaps, that our conversation was of London and its delights; and the racy scandal of the distinguished people of that great Babel amused me in the midst of that which is most unlike it-pure and lovely nature. Everything is seen so much better by contrast!

We crossed the head of Loch Linnhe, and kept down its eastern bank, skirting the water by a winding road directly under the wall of the mountains. We were to dine at Ballyhulish, and just before reaching it we passed the opening of a glen on the opposite side of the lake, in which lay, in a green paradise shut in by the loftiest rocks, one of the most enviable habitations I have ever seen. I found on inquiry that it was the house of a Highland chief, to whom

Lord D- had kindly given me a letter, but my lameness and the presence of my companion induced me to abandon the visit; and, hailing a fishing boat, I despatched my letters, which were sealed, across the loch, and we kept on to the inn. We dined here; and I just mention, for the information of scenery hunters, that the mountain opposite Ballyhulish sweeps down to the lake with a curve which is even more exquisitely graceful than that of Vesuvius in its farfamed descent to Portici. That same inn of Ballyhulish, by the way, stands in the midst of a scene, altogether, that does not pass easily from the memory-a lonely and sweet spot that would recur to one in a moment of violent love or hate, when the heart shrinks from the intercourse and observation of men.

We found the travellers' book, at the inn, full of records of admiration, expressed in all degrees of doggerel. People on the road write very bad poetry. I found the names of one or two Americans, whom I knew, and it was a pleasure to feel that my enjoyment would be sympathized in. Our host had been a nobleman's travelling valet, and he amused us with his descriptions of our friends, every one of whom he perfectly remembered. He had learned to use his eyes, at least, and made very shrewd guesses at the condition and tempers of his visitors. His life, in that lonely inn, must be in sufficient contrast with his former vocation.

We had jolted sixteen miles behind our Highland horse, but he came out fresh for the remaining twenty of our days' journey, and with cushions of dried and fragrant fern, gathered and put in by our considerate landlord, we crossed the ferry and turned eastward into the far-famed and much boasted valley of Glencoe.

INVARERDEN.

423

LETTER XXVII.

THE HIGHLANDS.

INVARERDEN-TARBET-COCKNEY TOURISTS-LOCH LOMOND-INVERSNAID-ROB ROY'S CAVE-DISCOMFITURE-THE BIRTH-PLACE OF HELEN M'GREGOR.

Ост. 1834.

We passed the head of the valley near Tyndrum, where M'Dougal of Lorn defeated the Bruce, and were half way up the wild pass that makes its southern outlet, when our Highland driver, with a shout of delight, pointed out to us a red deer, standing on the very summit of the highest mountain above us. It was an incredible distance to see any living thing, but he stood clear against the sky, in a relief as strong as if he had been suspended in the air, and with his head up, and his chest toward us, seemed the true monarch of the wild.

At Invarerden, Donald M'Phee begged for the discharge of himself and his horse and cart from our service. He had come with us eighty miles, and was afraid to venture farther on his travels, having never before been twenty miles from the Highland village where he lived. It was amusing to see the curiosity with which he looked about him, and the caution with which he suffered the hostler at the inn to take the black mare out of his sight. The responsibility of the horse and cart weighed heavily on his mind, and he expressed his hope "to get ta beast back safe," with an apprehensive resolution that would have become a knighterrant guiding himself for his most perilous encounter. Poor Donald! how little he knew how wide is the world, and how very like one part of it is to another!

Our host of Invarerden supplied us with another cart to take us down to Tarbet, and having dined, with a waterfall looking in at each of our two opposite windows, (the inn stands in a valley between two mountains) we were committed to the care of his eldest boy, and jolted off for the head of Loch Lomond.

I have never happened to see a traveller who had seen

Loch Lomond in perfectly good weather. My companion had been there every summer for several years, and believed it always rained under Ben Lomond. As we came in sight of the lake, however, the water looked like one sheet of gold-leaf, trembling as if by the motion of fish below, but unruffled by wind; and if paradise were made so fair, and had such waters in its midst, I could better conceive, than before, the unhappiness of Adam when driven forth. The sun was just setting, and the road descended immediately to the shore, and kept along under precipitous rocks, and slopes of alternate cultivation and heather, to the place of our destination. And a lovely place it is! Send me to Tarbet when I would retreat from the world! It is an inn buried in a grove at the foot of the hills, and set in a bend of the lake shore, like a diamond upon an "orbed brow;" and the light in its kitchen, as we approached in the twilight, was as interesting as a ray of the "first water" from the same. We had now reached the route of the cockney tourists; and while we perceived it agreeably in the excellence of the hotel, we perceived it disagreeably in the price of the wines, and the presence of what my friend called "unmitigated vulgarians" in the coffee-room. That is the

worst of England. The people are vulgar, but not vulgar enough. One dances with the lazzaroni at Naples, when he would scarce think of handing the newspaper to the "person" on a tour at Tarbet.

Well-it was moonlight. The wind was south and affectionate, and the road in front of the hotel "flecked with silver;" and my friend's wife, and the corresponding object of interest to myself, being on the other side of Ben Lomond and the Tweed, we had nothing for it after supper but to walk up and down with one another, and talk of the past. In the course of our ramble, we walked through an open gate, and, ascending a gravel-walk, found a beautiful cottage, built between two mountain streams, and ornamented with every device of taste and contrivance. The mild pure torrents were led over falls, and brought to the thresholds of bowers; and seats and bridges and winding-paths were distributed up the steep channels, in a way that might make it a haunt for Titania. It is the property, we found afterward, of a Scotch gentleman, and a great summer-retreat

of the celebrated Jeffery, his friend. It was one more place to which my heart clung in parting.

Loch Lomond still sat for its picture in the morning, and, after an early breakfast, we took a row-boat, with a couple of Highlanders, for Inversnaid, and pulled across the lake with a kind of drowsy delightfulness in the scene and air which I have never before found out of Italy. We overshot our destination a little to look into Rob Roy's Cave, a dark den in the face of the rock, which has the look of his vocation; and then, pulling back along the shore, we were landed, in the spray of a waterfall, at a cottage occupied by the boatmen of this Highland ferry. From this point across to Loch Katrine, is some five miles, and the scene of Scott's novel of "Rob Roy." It has been "done" so often by tourists, that I leave all particular description of the localities and scenery to the well-hammered remembrance of readers of magazines, and confine myself to my own private adventures.

The distance between the lakes is usually performed by ladies on donkeys, and by gentlemen on foot; but being myself rather tender-toed with the gout, my companion started off alone, and I lay down on the grass at Inversnaid to wait the return of the long-eared troop, who were gone across with an earlier party. The waterfall and the cottage just above the edge of the lake; a sharp hill behind, closely wooded with birch and fir, and, on a green sward platform in the rear of the house, two Highland lassies and a laddie, treading down a stack of new hay, were not bad circumstances in which to be left alone with the witcheries of the great enchanter.

I must narrate here an adventure in which my own part was rather a discomfiture, but which will shew somewhat the manners of the people. My companion had been gone half an hour, and I was lying at the foot of a tree, listening to the waterfall and looking off on the lake, and watching, by fits, the lads and lasses I have spoken of, who were building a haystack between them, and chattering away most unceasingly in Gaelic. The eldest of the girls was a tall, illfavoured damsel, merry as an Oread, but as ugly as Donald Bean; and, after a while, I began to suspect, by the looks of the boy below, that I had furnished her with a new