A TRIP TO SCOTLAND.* I HAVE travelled a good deal in my day, and seen as much as most people of the glories of Continental landscape. For instance, I have stood at an upper window of the Schweitzer Hof on the Lake of Lucerne, some ten minutes before sunrise on an August morning, and beheld a view of such bewildering beauty and wonder that I positively feared to look at it. I turned away, "dazzled and drunk with beauty;" and when I summoned courage to look again, it was gone-the sunrise had robbed the scene of some three parts of its beauty, leaving, however, a fourth part with charms enough to go mad about, if one had not seen the other three. A hundred other favourite haunts of the "tourist" within the scope of Murray's Handbook, and many without it, have I seen; and great as my enjoyment has been-rapturous as my homage—I declare that I would far rather travel in my own country; and this not from any morbid patriotism, but because I like the scenery better, and should do so were it in Timbuctoo. If I am asked why I like it better, I can only say that foreign scenery is apt to overpower me, and that I miss * Published in Fraser's Magazine for January, 1857. the calm loving tone that mellows the quieter pictures of home. There is Mont Blanc and Chamouni. Amidst the crowd of devout pilgrims who flock every summer to adore the monarch of mountains, are there none for whose nerves his majesty has been too much? On arrival at Chamouni you are crammed into a tight-fitting apartment, with one small window, which you no sooner open than you are struck dumb by the extraordinary apparition of the giant mountain, which appears quite close to you, and in such a foreshortened attitude that all his grace though none of his terror is lost by the jumbling together of his head, shoulders, and limbs. Then your eyes are quite blinded by the glare of the sunlit snow, which, though it is miles distant, seems as if you could almost touch it, and even-horrible reflection !-as if it was coming nearer and nearer to you, and would finally overwhelm you. Then the glaciers, the "aiguilles," the chamois-haunted fissures, the strange unearthly sound of the avalanches deep in the heart of those wildernesses of ice and rock-how terrible is their delight! Perhaps I am wrong, but on the top of Ben Lomond or Cader Idris I have felt more love of mountain country than in the midst of the High Alps; and if the reader of this paper were to consult me as to the choice of the direction in which, having a little spare time and money, he should shape his course, I would say to Scotland, to the English Lake district, or to Wales. Suppose we say to Scotland. In a few days -but when once in Scotland you should travel slowly-you may see some of the choicest treasures Betake of that northern Paradise, Perthshire. self, then, to the Euston Square or to the King's Cross station—I would say rather to the former; for though the Great Northern line will show you York, and between Newcastle and Edinburgh will whisk you along by the side of the blue German Ocean over a country of rare though gentle beauty, and full of the poetry of the old Border days, yet by the NorthWestern and Caledonian lines you will pass the English Lake district; and to see that, even from the railway, is a great privilege. Look well at that group of mountains—they are on your left soon after you pass Lancaster-and yield to their soothing and purifying influence, as the distant shadows float over their calm purple sides; and if when you left London there was any wild passion stirring at your heart, the chances are it will leave you here. After threading the desolate beauty of the sheep-pastured Border hills, with their lovely glens and wonderful grace of undulating line (I know no curves" like these), we will suppose you arrived at Glasgow. Well, stay there as short a time as you can, and then direct your course-it is a matter of two or three hours now-to Balloch, at the southern end of Loch Lomond. Put up at the inn there for the night, and stroll for the rest of the afternoon along the lake, keeping as close to the water as you can, for there you will get the best views-far better than from the deck of the steamer. What a calm, gentle, melancholy lake it is-from the little bay that comes rippling up with a quiet plaffing sound-so quiet as to be unheard at first-against the strip of silver sand that binds the oaken thickets through which you wind your way, to the expanse of blue water seen as you double some headland, with that long island in front shaped something like a beautiful human foot, and almost bare of foliage, but covered with a soft velvety turf; and farther up the lake the slopes of numberless heath-clad hills coming gradually down to the water's edge; and on the right Ben Lomond with his double summit, clothed with mossy verdure to the very top; and he also, proud as he is, sloping gradually down, for the lake is here (as I have said) a quiet, melancholy lake, and will suffer no sharp contrasts-no abrupt embraces of intrusive mountains—to ruffle the grace of its serene repose. Wander on, I say, and let twilight still find you there; so that when you return to your inn you may have thoroughly tasted and made your own the sweet, sad beauty of that enchanting scene. I think it is Mr. Ruskin who says that Walter Scott's is the "saddest" poetry he knows. This is a paradox, but it contains some truth; and the reason, I believe, is, that the country which Scott describes, though of an exquisite is of a rather sorrowful beauty. "Was never scene so sad and fair," is the feeling, I think, of all right-minded tourists in regard not only to moonlit Melrose, but to all that can be called beautiful in Scottish landscape. But you are off next morning by steamer up the lake; and the morning view, as you twist about among the thirty islands, and see the light dancing in diamond showers on the blue laughing waves, and watch the cloud-shadows floating over the mountain sides as they simmer in the hot mist of the glowing noontide sun, has scarce a shade of melancholy in it. And now you are at Rowardennan, about half-way up the lake, at the very foot of the majestic Ben. Here is the favourite place for ascending him; and if it is a fine, clear day, you had better go straight to the inn, put your wife (if she is with you, as of course she is, and I ought to have mentioned her before) on one of the lumbering ponies kept there for the purpose, and start at once for the summit. It is before you the whole way, and beckons you on over rock and sward, over moss and moor, as you slowly climb your long, but not toilsome, and infinitely beautiful road. Throughout there is neither difficulty nor danger. Winding at first among gray rocks fringed with purple heath and bedded in waving fern, over gigantic knolls looking down into deep grassy glades, in which here and there a rill glides stealthily down its rocky bed, curtained with dwarf birch and alder-then out on a wide moorland -and then the path becomes steeper, and you are really working your way up a good honest mountain side. And now-look back. What a change since half-an-hour ago ! Far down beneath those heathery rocks and grassy knolls lies the laughing lake, at least half of its thirty miles in length spread out before you, dotted with islands of every variety of shape and size ; and beyond the hills on the further shore, which seemed, when you were on level ground, to form its only frame-work, strange mountain-forms have started up and made a triple barrier; and, peeping out behind them, here and there, grotesque-looking shapes, the |