Vain pleasures of luxurious life, For ever with yourselves at strife; Through town and country both deranged By affectations interchanged, And all the perishable gauds That heaven-deserted man applauds; When will your hapless patrons learn To watch and ponder—to discern The freshness, the everlasting youth, Of admiration sprung from truth; From beauty infinitely growing Upon a mind with love o’erflowing— To sound the depths of every Art That seeks its wisdom through the heart? Thus (where the intrusive Pile, ill-graced With baubles of theatric taste, O’erlooks the torrent breathing showers On motley bands of alien flowers In stiff confusion set or sown, Till Nature cannot find her own, Or keep a remnant of the sod Which Caledonian Heroes trod) I mused; and, thirsting for redress, Recoiled into the wilderness. APPENDIX F. ‘_Three or four times the size of Bowder Stone_.’—PAGE 225. From the _Tour in Scotland_, 1814:—‘The account of the Brownie’s Cell and the Ruins was given me by a man we met with on the banks of Loch Lomond, a little above Tarbet, and in front of a huge mass of rock, by the side of which we were told preachings were often held in the open air. The place is quite a solitude, and the surrounding scenery quite striking.’ SUGGESTED BY A BEAUTIFUL RUIN UPON ONE OF THE ISLANDS OF LOCH LOMOND, A PLACE CHOSEN FOR THE RETREAT OF A SOLITARY INDIVIDUAL, FROM WHOM THIS HABITATION ACQUIRED THE NAME OF THE BROWNIE’S CELL. I. To barren heath, bleak moor, and quaking fen, Or depth of labyrinthine glen; Or into trackless forest set With trees, whose lofty umbrage met; World-wearied Men withdrew of yore; (Penance their trust, and prayer their store;) And in the wilderness were bound To such apartments as they found; Or with a new ambition raised; That God might suitably be praised. II. High lodged the Warrior, like a bird of prey; Or where broad waters round him lay: But this wild Ruin is no ghost Of his devices—buried, lost! Within this little lonely isle There stood a consecrated Pile; Where tapers burned, and mass was sung, For them whose timid Spirits clung To mortal succour, though the tomb Had fixed, for ever fixed, their doom! III. Upon those servants of another world, When madding Power her bolts had hurled, Their habitation shook;—it fell, And perished, save one narrow cell; Whither at length, a Wretch retired Who neither grovelled nor aspired: He, struggling in the net of pride, The future scorned, the past defied; Still tempering, from the unguilty forge Of vain conceit, an iron scourge! IV.