Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
A lovely place indeed must that have been in the pleasant days of
summer! We do not wonder at the fondness with which the Stuarts
speak of that lodge in the wilderness, reared as it was in the
midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery which exists
within the compass of the seas of Britain, or, for aught we know,
elsewhere. Years have rolled by since we last set foot upon the
banks of Findhorn; but never shall we forget the glories of that
deep ravine, or the noble woods of Altyre, still possessed by the
descendants of the princely Comyns. Did we not expect to be summoned
out within half an hour to contribute to the safety of the realm by
breaking the head of a Chartist, we should ourselves launch out into
description, and try conclusions with Horatio M'Culloch. But, after
all, it would be a work of supererogation. Mr St John has already
illustrated most charmingly that abode of the faithful; and he will
not be displeased to see that, even in painting, he has met with
formidable rivals. Rarely, indeed, have we met with any thing so
perfect as the following sketch:--
"Near Slui on the Findhorn there is a range of precipices
and wooded steeps crowned with pine, and washed by a clear
and rippling stream of the river, through which there is an
excellent ford, very well known to the roe, for escaping to
the woods of Slui when pressed by the hounds. This reach is
called the Ledanreich, from a remarkable craig, a sheer naked
even wall of sandstone, lying in horizontal strata eighty or
ninety feet high: At the eastern extremity of this rock there
is a great division, partly separated from the main curtain by
a deep woody slope, which dips into the precipice with little
more inclination from the perpendicular than to admit of careful
footing. In the face of the divided craig, the decomposition of
the softer stone between the courses of the strata has wasted
it away into narrow galleries, which, passing behind the tall
pillars of the pines growing from the rifts and ledges, extend
along the face of the precipice, veiled by a deep tapestry of
ivy, which spreads over the mighty wall of rock, and hangs
from shelf to shelf over the covered ways. Beyond the craigs,
the bank of the forest, an abrupt steep, covered with oak and
copsewood, slopes down to the river, its brow darkened with a
deep-blue cloud of pines, and its descent carpeted with moss,
primroses, and pyrolas, here and there hollowed into quaint
'cuachs,' filled with hazels, thorns, and giant pines. Along
this woody scarp, and through its thick copse, the roe had made
narrow galleries, which communicated with the ivy corridors
on the face of the craig, to which there were corresponding
ways upon the opposite side. In that fortress of the rock, for
shelter from the sun and flies, and seclusion from the stir of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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