opinion, a person would more readily chuse for a permanent habitation. Invermoriston has sublimity in all objects within view, without the gloom often attendant on those magnificent scenes, and is really a smiling landscape, and peculiarly congenial to that home enjoyment, which its inhabitants seem pre-eminently to possess.

The dwellers in these glens, when possessed of the means of abundance, have, I doubt not, a higher relish for the pleasures within their reach, than those in luxurious cities, where habit has converted so many superfluities into necessaries, that the mind becomes contracted and enslaved, by having the attention continually called off, to petty conveniences, and imaginary wants: then not one, but a thousand cruel somethings, corrode and destroy all the rest. Here, the greatness of the objects by which they are surrounded, make all the prior littleness of false refinement, and fastidious art, seem still less. Nature is either so wild and solemn in the solitude of the dark mountain, or so soft and varied in the

green sheltered glen, with its blue streams and dashing water-falls, that art shrinks and diminishes before her; and those laboured decorations which give variety to flat grounds, and are accounted embellishments, by those who always lived in artificial life, would here be forced, and out of place. Nothing, for instance, would so completely destroy the wild graces of Invermoriston, than to lay it out in the manner that grounds are adorned in the vicinity of great towns, where such are not only suitable, but necessary, to relieve the monotony of enclosures and corn-fields, which I am afraid will appear very tame and uninteresting, after the wild exuberance of these glens.

The family property of this glen, I am told, runs back to the north for four-andtwenty miles, and is all inhabited; many parts of it are beautiful. I regret my stay will not permit me to look at the new road forming, which is to conduct the traveller hence, by a direct line, into the West

ern Isles; a most important and beneficial improvement.

Near the head of this glen is a native pine-forest, one of the few that still remains, where very lately the cock-of-the-wood, a bird now almost extinct in this country, was seen. Nothing can be more dismal and wretched than the woods of planted firs, continually seen through Scotland. But, on the contrary, in the native woods of this description, the trees spread an ample shade, and rise to a considerable height. The ground below is covered with the beautiful foliage of the dwarf arbutus, which constantly springs in the shelter of the native pine; and the woodpecker, and squirrel, seldom found in any woods, here animate the scene by their chattering and lively motions.

There is a place about eight miles above Invermoriston, which I am sorry I had not time to visit. It is a large cave, with a shaded entrance, and a living stream trickling through it, very fine in itself, but

rendered more interesting by being the retreat of those three thieves, who, without even the motive of personal knowledge or attachment, generously afforded an asylum to the Pretender (here called Prince Charles) in the year 1746. It is not probable they would have shewn such exalted disregard for that wealth, which was to be the price of blood, had they been degraded in mind by the habits of petty depredations, which in guilty cities make the term thief expressive of every thing that is odious and contemptible. They plundered with some degree of sentiment and discrimination, never taking a cow from a widow, or poor person, or from any popular character, beloved for charity or hospitality. They plundered such as they considered intruders in the country, or belonging to clans to which their own had long been adverse. If caught, they were imprisoned for a time, or banished. Till after the year 1745, highlanders would have revolted at the idea that a man's life was to be the forfeit for the value of an animal. Retributions, or

exile, were the only punishments awarded for such offences.

Of this description were those hospitable and magnanimous persons, who, for above twenty days, cherished and concealed the princely fugitive, though daily hearing at Fort Augustus the reward almost beyond their calculation, offered for the person, or even the severed head of their unhappy guest.

Not satisfied with procuring him every thing the woods and hether afforded, they went by turns every morning to the Fort, and had the ingenuity, unsuspected, to procure for him, at their own imminent risk, wheaten bread, and the newspapers; and while in the act of performing these generous deeds of kindness, the proclamation abovementioned, daily sounded in their ears. This delicacy of hospitality and attention cannot be sufficiently admired, considering that it was entirely by their native sagacity that these demi-savages discovered that such things were desirable to their guests. He could give them no orders, and they