A Londoner can get “to Brighton and back for four shillings” in the height of the season; but we in Glasgow can have a day’s outing quite as good for half the money, and at any time. It is not “down the water,” but up to the Earl’s Seat, the highest point in what is popularly called the Campsie range. Find your way to Strathblane in the manner most agreeable to your mood. On reaching the station, turn to the right, past the handsome parish church, the pulpit of which was long filled by Dr. William Hamilton of astronomical fame, the father of the still more famous Dr. James Hamilton, of Regent Square, London, and soon after you will readily find the way up the hillside to the Spout of Ballagan. In doing so you can think of the time when the church and lands of Strathblane were gifted to the hospital of Polmadie, in the parish of Govan, and how those, with one-half of the lands of “Little Govan,” seem to have formed the most important endowment of the hospital. You can think also how the present church occupies the site of the church that preceded it, and that to the Duntreath family are due many improvements which have been made in the building in recent years. Much valuable family history is, we are afraid, slowly decaying among the weeds and mosses of many a neglected churchyard, but Mr. Guthrie Smith, in his book on Strathblane, has acted the part of an “Old Mortality” in this one. The Spout is a cascade of 70 feet formed by the Blane in its passage to the valley below, and which, with its surroundings of rock and wood, presents a scene of the most wild and romantic beauty; the hollow into which the river plunges being filled up with a vast collection of gigantic stones piled upon each other, and adorned on its sides with many alternate strata of various hues. Anyone can see for himself at a glance at Ballagan the process by which our mountain glens and gorges are formed—how after a heavy rainfall the descending waters rush down the watercourses, setting all the boulder and rock fragments in the bed of the stream in motion. The last of the old race of the Levenax, or Lennox, had a castle near to and in sight of this romantic glen, from which fact the range of hills was, and frequently still is, called the Lennox range, and its highest point the Earl’s Seat. Ballagan House, which is close at hand, commands a beautiful view of the fall, and is within hearing of its music, even when it has not the power to strike a loud note. In flood-time the Spout is stupendous, and increases its apparent height by covering the huge masses below so as to vie with the sublimity if not the beauty of Cora Linn. This may seem to some to be rather strong language, but all measurement is comparative, and it may be possible to feel that there is more than prettiness or even grandeur here.