Back to Loch Awe station, and presently onward past the Falls of Cruachan and through the grim Pass of Brander,--down which the waters of the Awe rush in a sable flood between jagged and precipitous cliffs for miles and miles,--and soon we see the bright waves of Loch Etive smiling under a sunset sky, and the many bleak, brown hills that fringe Glen Lonan and range along to Oban and the verge of the sea. There will be an hour for rest and thought. It seems wild and idle to write about these things. Life in Scotland is deeper, richer, stronger, and sweeter than any words could possibly be that any man could possibly expend upon it. The place is the natural home of imagination, romance, and poetry. Thought is grander here, and passion is wilder and more exuberant than on the velvet plains and among the chaste and stately elms of the South. The blood flows in a stormier torrent and the mind takes on something of the gloomy and savage majesty of those gaunt, barren, lonely hills. Even Sir Walter Scott, speaking of his own great works,--which are precious beyond words, and must always be loved and cherished by readers who know what beauty is,--said that all he had ever done was to polish the brasses that already were made. This is the soul of excellence in British literature, and this, likewise, is the basis of stability in British civilisation,--that the country is lovelier than the loveliest poetry that ever was written about it, or ever could be written about it, and that the land and the life possess an inherent fascination for the inhabitants, that nothing else could supply, and that no influence can ever destroy or even seriously disturb. Democracy is rife all over the world, but it will as soon impede the eternal courses of the stars as it will change the constitution or shake the social fabric of this realm. "Once more upon the waters--yet once more!" Soon upon the stormy billows of Lorn I shall see these lovely shores fade in the distance. Soon, merged again in the strife and tumult of the commonplace world, I shall murmur, with as deep a sorrow as the sad strain itself expresses, the tender words of Scott: "Glenorchy's proud mountains, Kilchurn and her towers, Glenstrae and Glenlyon No longer are ours." [Illustration: _Corbel from "St. Giles."_] CHAPTER XIX THE HEART OF SCOTLAND "_The Heart of Scotland, Britain's other eye._"--BEN JONSON