Is that the character of the whole region? No, you darling; it has vales on vales of emerald, and mountains on mountains of amethyst, and streams on streams of silver; and, so help us Heaven!--for with these eyes we have seen them, a thousand and a thousand times--at sunrise and sunset, rivers on rivers of gold. What kind of climate? All kinds, and all kinds at once--not merely during the same season, but the same hour. Suppose it three o'clock of a summer afternoon--you have but to choose your weather. Do you desire a close sultry breathless gloom? You have it in the stifling dens of Ben-An[=e]a, where lions might breed. A breezy coolness, with a sprinkling of rain? Then open your vest to the green light in the dewy vales of Benl[=u]ra. Lochs look lovely in mist, and so thinks the rainbow--then away with you ere the rainbow fade--away, we beseech you, to the wild shores of Lochan-a-L[=u]rich. But you would rather see a storm, and hear some Highland thunder? There is one at this moment on Unimore, and Cruachl[=i]a growls to Meallanuir, till the cataracts of Glashgour are dumb as the dry rocks of Craig-te[=o]nan. In those regions we were, when a boy, initiated into the highest mysteries of the Highlands. No guide dogged our steps--as well might a red-deer have asked a cur to show him the Forest of Braemar, or Beniglo--an eagle where best to build his eyrie have advised with the Glasgow Gander. O heavens! how we were bewildered among the vast objects that fed that delirium of our boyhood! We dimly recognised faces of cliffs wearing dreadful frowns; blind though they looked, they seemed sensible of our approach; and we heard one horrid monster mutter, "What brings thee here, infatuated Pech?--begone!" At his impotent malice we could not choose but smile, and shook our staff at the blockhead, as since at many a greater blockhead even than he have we shook--and more than shook our Crutch. But as through "pastures green and quiet waters by," we pursued, from sunrise to sunset, our uncompanioned way, some sweet spot, surrounded by heather, and shaded by fern, would woo us to lie down on its bosom, and enjoy a visionary sleep! Then it was that the mountains confidentially told us their names--and we got them all by heart; for each name characterised its owner by some of his peculiar and prominent qualities--as if they had been one and all christened by poets baptising them from a font "Translucent, pure, With touch ethereal of heaven's fiery rod."