The sun breaks out, for a few moments, and the sombre hue of the gray sky is lightened with streaks of gold. At Bucklyvie there is a second pause, and then the course is northwest, through banks and braes of heather, to peaceful Aberfoyle and the mountains of Menteith. [Illustration: _Stirling Castle._] The characteristic glory of the Scottish hills is the infinite variety and beauty of their shapes and the loveliness of their colour. The English mountains and lakes in Westmoreland and Cumberland possess a sweeter and softer grace, and are more calmly and wooingly beautiful; but the Scottish mountains and lakes excel them in grandeur, majesty, and romance. It would be presumption to undertake to describe the solemn austerity, the lofty and lonely magnificence, the bleak, weird, haunted isolation, and the fairy-like fantasy of this poetic realm; but a lover of it may declare his passion and speak his sense of its enthralling and bewitching charm. Sir Walter Scott's spirited and trenchant lines on the emotion of the patriot sang themselves over and over in my thought, and were wholly and grandly ratified, as the coach rolled up the mountain road, ever climbing height after height, while new and ever new prospects continually unrolled themselves before delighted eyes, on the familiar but always novel journey from Aberfoyle to the Trosachs. That mountain road, on its upward course, and during most part of the way, winds through treeless pastureland, and in every direction, as your vision ranges, you behold other mountains equally bleak, save for the bracken and the heather, among which the sheep wander, and the grouse nestle in concealment or whir away on frightened wings. Ben Lomond, wrapt in straggling mists, was dimly visible far to the west; Ben A'an towered conspicuous in the foreground; and further north Ben Ledi heaved its broad mass and rugged sides to heaven. Loch Vennacher, seen for a few moments, shone like a diamond set in emeralds, and as we gazed we seemed to see the bannered barges of Roderick Dhu and to hear the martial echoes of "Hail to the Chief." Loch Achray glimmered forth for an instant under the gray sky, as when "the small birds would not sing aloud" and the wrath equally of tempest and of war hung silently above it, in one awful moment of suspense. There was a sudden and dazzling vision of Loch Katrine, and then all prospect was broken, and, rolling down among the thickly wooded dwarf hills that give the name of Trosachs to this place, we were lost in the masses of fragrant foliage that girdle and adorn, in perennial verdure the hallowed scene of _The Lady of the Lake_. [Illustration: _Loch Achray._] [Illustration: _Loch Katrine._]