Aberfoyle, on the banks of the “infant Forth,” its nursery name the Avon Dhu, “Blackwater,” haunted like a child’s dreams by fairies of whom prudent Bailie Nicol Jarvie spoke under his breath, though he professed to hold them as “deceits of Satan.” Here the change-house of Lucky M‘Alpine has been replaced by an hotel offering all the comforts of the Saltmarket, along with golf links and fishing at Loch Ard. As Ipswich shows the very room in the White Hart occupied by Mr. Pickwick and the green gate at which Sam Weller met Job Trotter, so among the lions here are the ploughshare valiantly handled by Bailie Nicol Jarvie, nay, even the identical bough from which he swung suspended by his coat tails. Such relics let one guess why that worthy citizen would not give “the finest sight in the Hielands for the first keek o’ the Gorbals of Glasgow!” But he might have taken another view had he seen the great slate quarries that now scar the braes of Aberfoyle, or that pleasure-house on Loch Katrine set apart for Glasgow magistrates to disport themselves at the source of their city’s water supply. From Aberfoyle or from Callander, the rest of the journey is by road to the Trossachs Hotel, which seems to represent Fitz-James’s imagination of “lordly tower” or “cloister grey”; then on through the mile of bristling pass to the foot of Loch Katrine. How many a peaceful stranger has passed this way since the Knight of Snowdoun’s steed here “stretched his stiff limbs to rise no more”! What “cost thy life, my gallant grey” would be the fact that even in the poet’s day, the path to Ellen’s Isle was more like a ladder than a road. Now the danger most to be feared is from Sassenach cycling, which caused a coach accident in the vicinity a few years ago. Umbrellas had replaced claymores so far back as Wordsworth’s time; and waterproofs are the armour most displayed, where once Refluent through the pass of fear The battle’s tide was pour’d; Vanish’d the Saxon’s struggling spear, Vanish’d the mountain-sword. As Bracklinn’s chasm, so black and steep, Receives her roaring linn, As the dark caverns of the deep Suck the wild whirlpool in, So did the deep and darksome pass Devour the battle’s mingled mass: None linger now upon the plain, Save those who ne’er shall fight again.