We had been out since early morning, rambling amid the rough romance of the Scottish Highlands, in the vicinity of the far-famed Loch Katrine. With Sir Walter’s picture of that “burnished sheet of living gold,” with its surrounding hills broken by trossach, dell and valley, in my mind’s eye, I own that I felt disappointed, as I stood upon an isolated rock at the foot of “huge Ben-Venue,” and looked up to the feathered crests of the eternal _mountains_, (by courtesy,) and then gazed where Katrine “In all her length far winding lay, With promontory, creek and bay, And islands that empurpled bright Flouted amid the livelier light.” The scene _was_ grand, and very beautiful, and no soul can be more susceptible than mine to the beauties of Nature in her solitudes of mountain, lake and woodland; but I had expected too much. It needed the love light of Sir Walter’s Scottish heart to give the scenery, in my eyes, the loveliness it wore for him. To me the rough hill, with its shingly bosom, its tufts of heather, and ravines fringed with yellow broom, and feathery fern—the precipitous rocks and wooded slopes—the pebbly beach and abrupt headland—the cloud-checkered heaven above—and the deep, clear lake that mirrored all these in its trembling bosom, were but as the multitudes of hills and lakes, which every where diversify the surface of our earth. I was disappointed, and of course inclined to underrate the real beauty and sublimity of the grand theatre by which we were surrounded. The enthusiastic admiration which burst in ejaculatory phrases from my companions became distasteful to me; and partly to relieve my own peevishness, and partly to escape from the distasteful demonstrations of the company, I struck into a narrow path that wound spirally along up the precipitous rocky tower at the base of which I had been standing. Higher and higher I ascended, botanizing amongst the plants and lichens, until a stone on which I placed my foot gave way beneath the effort I made to spring higher, and alas for my _excelsior_—after a rapid but very rough descent, I found myself prostrate on the pebbly beach—half buried in rubbish, and the faithless stone that betrayed my unwary foot lying very uncomfortably upon what should have been my lower limbs, though at that time they were elevated considerably above my head, fixed, as in a vice, between a hillock of pebbles and the fallen mass of rock. Great was my fright, greater my pain, and greatest the consternation and alarm of my companions, who soon extricated the fallen greatness from its perilous position, and discovered that one of my legs was badly fractured, and both severely crushed, while several serious bruises, in other parts of my person, rendered me quite helpless, and apparently in great danger. What now was to be done? There was a real tempest of sighs, groans, and lamentations, and no small shower of tears; a goodly number of which fell from the