At last the solitude becomes less marked. The mountains are half-wooded at first, and then wholly so; they dwindle down; the widening valleys are covered with harvest; the fresh and green verdure of the herbage which supplies forage begins to clothe the hollows and the slopes. We enter Inverness, and we are surprised to find at almost the extreme north of Scotland, on the border of the Highlands, a pretty and lively modern town. It stretches along the two banks of a clear and rapid river. Many houses are newly-built; we note a church, a castle, an iron bridge. In every part are marks of cleanliness, forethought, and special care. The window-panes shine, the frames have been painted; the bell-handles are of copper; there are flowers in the windows; the poorest nouses are freshly whitewashed. Well-drest ladies and carefully drest gentlemen walk along the streets. Even a desire to possess works of art is shown by Ionian pillars, specimens of pure Gothic, and other architectural gimcrackery, and these prove at least the search after improvement. The land itself is clearly of inferior quality; industry, order, economy and labor have done everything. How great the contrast between all this and the aspect of a small town on the shores of the Mediterranean, so neglected and filthy, where the lower middle class exist like worms in a worm-eaten beam! THE SCOTCH HIGHLANDS [Footnote: From "Notes on England." Published by Henry Holt & Co.] BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE On the slopes the violet heaths are spread like a silken carpet under the scanty firs. Higher still are large patches of evergreen wood, and, as soon as the mountain is approached, a brown circle of barren eminences may be discerned toward the horizon. At the end of an hour the desert begins; the climate is inimical to life, even to that of plants. A tarn, the tint of burned topaz, lies coldly and sadly between stony slopes whereon a few tufts of fern and heather grow here and there. Half a league higher is a second tarn, which appears still more dismal in the rising mist. Around, patches of snow are sprinkled on the peaks, and these descending in rivulets produce morasses. The small country ponies, with a sure instinct, surmount the bog, and we arrive at an elevation whence the eye, as far as it can reach, embraces nothing but an amphitheater of desolate, yet green summits; owing to the destruction of timber, everything else has perished; a scene of ruined nature is far more melancholy a spectacle than any human ruins. On our return across the lake, a bag-piper played his instrument. The music is strange and wild, its effects harmonizing with the aspect of the bubbling streams, veined with striking or somber reflections. The same simple note, a kind of dance music, runs through the whole piece in an incorrect and odd manner, and continually recurs, but it is always harsh and rough; it might be likened to an orange shriveled with the cold and rendered bitter.