be a city for aught the traveller knows to the contrary. It stands half hidden among trees in the rich and diversified vale. On the north rises the mountainous rock of Craigdarroch, luxuriantly wooded with birch, and divided off from the bounding mountains of that side of the valley by the wild and anciently impregnable Pass of Ballater. Beyond the river, amidst an infinite variety of slopes and woods, is seen the tall old huntingtower of Knock; and behind it distance rises over distance, till the prospect is terminated by the long and shivered front, and (when I saw it on the 15th of October last) the snow-covered ridge of Lochnagar, the nurse of the sublime genius of Byron, who, in his beautiful little poem, so entitled, still

"Sighs for the valley of dark Loch-na-gar.'"