Mrs. Fitzroy gave a searching look, and shook her head at old Bentley, who growled under his breath, but for _once_ did not express his scepticism in words. We now entered the upper lake, and all language fails to do justice here. Do you remember the happy valley of Abyssinia, described in Rasselas? Here is in water what that was in land. So completely are you surrounded with the magnificent range of mountains which inclose this little world of beauty, that you seem as if separated at once from all that is external to it. You perceive no means of either egress or ingress, and but for the recollection of having entered by that narrow pass which I have described, might fancy yourself let down from the skies. This lake is sprinkled over thickly with islands, every one of which would make a picture in itself. These are covered with the most luxuriant evergreens, the glossy brightness of which might warrant a belief (were fairies as efficient personages as in the "olden time") that they had been under water till your approach, and rose at that moment into air, "dripping odours" in all the freshness of a new creation. While we gazed in astonishment at the scene before us, silence again took up her sceptre, and no one appeared willing to disturb her reign. I cannot with accuracy describe any feelings save my own, though I think I could read several minds amid the group; but for myself, I felt actually raised above this nether sphere, and as if I was holding communion with Deity, in this the first hour of my life in which I beheld his perfect workmanship, unspoiled by the finger of man. I was in a _trance_, and should have lost every remembrance that human creatures surrounded me, had not M'Carty More, in a half whisper directed to Frederick, who wins every heart which was not already his own, interrupted my musings by saying, "Mr. Douglas, I come from the rightful kings of this place, and though I am a poor man now, I can make _you_ king, sir, of one of these _islands_, and, with the help o'God, you _shall_ be king of it sure enough: pull my hearties for M'Carty More's Island."