From Bowerswell, an artist had not far to go for scenes of beauty. The road past the house, winding up to a Roman Catholic monastery built since those days, leads on into the woods of Kinnoul Hill, which is to Perth what Arthur’s Seat is to Edinburgh. No tourist should, as many do, neglect to take the shady climb through those woods, suggesting the scenes of a tamed German “Wald.” At the farther side one comes out on the edge of a grand crag, the view from which has been compared to the Rhine valley, and to carry out this similitude, a mock ruin crowns the adjacent cliff. We have here turned our backs on the Grampians so finely seen from the Perth slope of the hill, and are looking down upon the Tay as it bends eastward between this spur of the Sidlaws and the wooded outposts of the Ochils opposite, then, swollen by the Earn, opens out into its Firth in the Carse of Gowrie, dotted with snug villages and noble seats such as the Castle of Kinfauns among the woods at our feet, a scene most lovely when The sun was setting on the Tay, The blue hills melting into grey; The mavis and the blackbird’s lay Were sweetly heard in Gowrie. The Gowrie earldom, once so powerful in Perth, has disappeared from its life; but the title is still familiar as covering one of those districts of a Scottish county that bear enduring by-names, like the Devonshire South Hams or the Welsh Vale of Glamorgan. To a native ear, the scene is half suggested by the word _Carse_, [Illustration: LOCH VENNACHAR, PERTHSHIRE] implying a stretch of rich lowland along a river-side, whereas Strath is the more broken and extensive valley of a river that has its upper course in some wilder Glen or tiny Den, the _Dean_ of so many southern villages. The course of the Tay from Perth to Dundee, below Kinnoul, ceases to be romantic while remaining beautiful in a more sedate and stately fashion as it flows between its receding walls of wooded heights, underneath which the “Carles of the Carse” had once such an ill name as Goldsmith’s rude Carinthian boor, but so many a “Lass of Gowrie” has shown a softer heart-- She whiles did smile and whiles did greet; The blush and tear were on her cheek. There are various versions of this ballad, whose tune makes the Perth local anthem; but they all tell the same old tale and often told, with that most hackneyed of ends-- The old folks syne gave their consent; And then unto Mass-John we went; Who tied us to our hearts’ content, Me and the Lass o’ Gowrie.