and spots of productive soil, give such constant and fanciful variety to the scene, as neither language nor painting is adequate to convey to the imagination. The fair creation of the poet's fancy has, in the meantime, been realized by the noble proprietor.

The shades which he imagined have actually sprung up, and the melody of his ideal birds resound from their branches. Flowers, which seem scattered by the lavish hand of native spring, adorn every crevice in the rock, and the vegetable soil on the brink of this turbulent stream, afford room for a variety of trees and shrubs most judiciously adapted to the scenery, and seem to partake of its wild and unequal character. Nothing can be more sudden and luxuriant than the growth of the plants scattered along the abrupt banks of the Bruar, fed by a constant though scarce visible shower, from the ascending mist of the successive cascades. Sheltered from every wind by the rocky walls that surround them, and enjoying by the reflection of

the sun from their flinty bed, a degree of heat scarce inferior to that of a hot-house, the tenderest plants are here safe and flourishing.

The little pastoral huts, in the form of those highland shealings, which are here and there erected, as resting-places in this enchanting wilderness, are quite in character with the chaste simplicity of the other decorations. The whole scene so much resembles, "The negligence of Nature, wide and wild," that in a more genial climate it might be supposed to be merely the result of abundant moisture and sunshine.

It would be unjust to quit the boundary of this wide domain, without adverting to an improvement of the most lasting and extensive nature, which is here in a state of daily advancement. Those bleak and naked mountains, which repelled the eye of the traveller, and appeared to serve no other visible purpose but that of a frowning barrier to the last retreat of unconquered valour, are now assuming a very different

aspect. Plantations of an almost incredible extent are quickly overspreading their dusky and rugged surface. The Duke plants many millions of trees every year. The continuity, the extent of these lofty and thriving plantations, reminds me of the beautiful fiction in the Spectator, of Hilpe and Shallam, where the disappointed untideluvian is represented as consoling his love-lorn sorrows, by adorning his mountains with groves of his own creating. To be sure, the space of five hundred years which Shallam devoted to this useful amusement, gave room for improvements far beyond what our limitted three-score and ten admits of; yet in this instance, the parallel does not entirely fail. A succession of our short-lived Shallams following in this path of improvement, with a noble emulation, the steps of their predecessors, may equal the sole exertions of this imaginary planter. Disappointment of another kind, also, might in this case have turned the thoughts of our modern planters into this salutary channel: The gates of ambi

tion were happily closed against them. At a period of national misfortune, the noble cultivator found a solace in adorning his abode, and shading his mountains with plantations, to supply the place of those ancient groves, which once covered this country. His ancestors were too good and too happy to forsake the home, and the pursuits which were so congenial to their pure and tranquil spirit. The present owner of these improved domains, less retired, is not less zealous in this beneficial branch of improvement. Future travellers will not spy the nakedness of the land, as did that "majestic teacher of moral wisdom," whose prejudices proved only as a shade in a picture, to contrast with his gigantic powers and stern virtues. If ever his mighty spirit revisits the scenes of his northern pilgrimage, it may now wander amid new-sprung woods, which the hand of industry is raising in every quarter, and which will soon, by their number and extent, take away our reproach among the nations. The larch, in particular seems to be adapted to this

any

soil; and under the sheltering mountains of Dunkeld, attains to a size unknown in other part of Britain. This seems the more extraordinary, as the parent plant from which this sylvan race has all sprung up, was brought over by the first Duchess of Athol, from the Alps, in its infant state. Her Grace had it planted in a pot, and brought to England on her lap, least any harm should befal so rare a plant, which she considered as too delicate for this climate. To this Duchess's wish to introduce a new plant, and to Pope's curiosity in examining the fresh withies, in which a foreign parcel was tied up, we owe all the graceful larches and pendant weeping willows which now adorn the Scotch hills.

The plantations of rhubarb on the mountains above the Blair, deserve notice; that being the only place in the kingdom where this plant is cultivated to any extent. Some person who had travelled over the wilds in Tartary, where the rhubarb is indigenous, and abundant, remarked, that the places where it grows are very si