"On leaving college he went to reside for about a year on the romantic banks of Loch Gail, among the mountains of Argyleshire. His paternal grandfather possessed the estate of Kernan, in the Highlands; and it was in reference to it, that the beautiful and pathetic stanzas, beginning, 'At the silence of twilight's contemplative hour,' were composed. He was for some time tutor in a private family residing on the sea-coast of the island of Mull; and while in that situation he planned and wrote a considerable part of his most celebrated poem, The Pleasures of Hope. His youthful musings were nourished amid the magnificent scenery around him; and by the contemplation of the wild aspects of nature that presented themselves on every side, his ideas were expanded, and his imagination was filled with many bright and majestic images, which he afterward introduced with such admirable effect into his poetry. Lochiel's Warning and Lord Ullin's Daughter, for instance, could only have been written by one who cherished an intense love and admiration for Highland scenery and Highland associations. He himself has mentioned the delight with which he used to listen, at the distance of many leagues, to the far famed roar of Corryvreckan. 'When the weather is calm,' he says, 'and the adjacent sea scarcely heard on these picturesque shores, the sound of the vortex, which is like the sound of innumerable chariots, creates a magnificent effect.'" The poem, however, into which it seems to me he has most thoroughly infused the spirit of the wild and romantically desolate scenery of the Western Isles, is Reullura, one of the most exquisite poems of the language. Without any apparent attempt at description, either of scenery or individual character, both stand forth in strong and clear distinctness: Aodh, the far famed preacher of the word in Iona; and Reullura, beauty's star, with her calm, clear eye, to which visions of the future were often revealed; and those desolate, treeless islands, the savage shores of which, riven by primeval earthquakes, will be lashed by the waves of a wild, stormy sea, to the end of time. The church of Iona again stands aloft, the Gail listens to the preaching of the word, and the heathen sea-kings come from Denmark for plunder and massacre. This poem it is, above all others, into which the wild music of the Corryvreckan entered; and, though it was written many years after the poet's residence amid these scenes, nothing can be clearer evidence of the deep impression which they made upon his mind.