This is one of the lochs without a history, although doubtless men have lived and died, married and given in marriage, laboured, plotted, and perhaps thieved and robbed upon its borders. It owes its presence in our collection because of its position in an island, and that one of the most tempting spots in the more lowland parts of Scotland. The island of Bute, which unites with Arran and the Greater and Lesser Cumbraes to make up a county to which Bute gives its name, lies on the west of the Frith of Clyde, and is separated from the mainland on the inner side by a narrow, tortuous, and picturesque channel called the Kyles of Bute. Landing at Rothesay we find a busy, cleanly, charming watering place, with suburbs of Craigmore and Port Bannatyne filling up the lovely shores of Rothesay Bay, and giving from every window enchanting peeps of water and hill, carrying the view far into the mountainous county of Argyle. Writing of this lovely, verdant island, David Macbeth Moir (the _Delta_ of Blackwood,) says 'each moment brought A new creation to the eye of thought.' So much for poetry. We may tell of Bute a more prosaic story, when a town-lady, going, as the Glasgow people say, 'doon the watter,' asked a lodging-house keeper in Rothesay about thunder, and received the very satisfactory rejoinder, _more Scottice_, in question form, 'Wha ever heard o' thunder in an island?' Leaving Rothesay by the road near its centre, and passing the parish kirk, Loch Fad is found about two miles out. On the south side, forming the foreground and left of our view, the shores are low and green, but on the other side it swells out into bolder outlines, and may fitly claim to be a Highland loch. A curious mound crosses the water, leading to its northern side. On this side of the pretty island loch, Edmund Kean, in 1827, built himself a residence. From his windows, and more especially from a summer-house placed on the height above, there is a grand view, embracing not only the near waters of Loch Fad, but glimpses of Rothesay Bay, and on the outer line the bold features of Argyleshire. Over the doorway of this summer-house, the great tragedian had those lines 'How glorious from the loopholes of retreat To peep at such a world.' And this concisely expresses the feeling with which a wearied man may seek his holiday in such an island as this. True it is, that Rothesay has a telegraph, and a post office, and a newspaper, and that in two hours' time one can be set down in the heart of Glasgow. But the insular charm is a great one. 'The promises of blooming spring live here, And all the blessings of the ripening year.'