That verification to such an extent, however, both of facts and localities, and ideas--philosophic or imaginative, in the text of Ossian, was possible, has scarcely hitherto been believed by any one; it has certainly never been attempted. A sort of vagueness in many of his descriptions ill-understood, and a similarity in poetic figures that might be indiscriminately applied; and an occasional apparent conflict or confusion of details seem to have deterred almost all readers from the study we now recommend. But all these difficulties, of verification and interpretation alike, are only on the surface; and not even there, if it has been looked at attentively. Let any intelligent reader, with the poems which refer to Scotland in his hand, survey the Clyde, the Kelvin, and the Carron, and trace the still remaining footsteps of nature and of civilization through distant centuries on their banks, and he will see that Ossian has been there. Let him look steadily even at the cloud-drifts from the Atlantic, as they troop or roll along in a thousand fantastic forms, converging all to a certain inland range, and he will understand that the author of these poems must have seen and studied them so. Let him proceed then to Arran, and he will discover there, if he looks and listens, not only scenes and traditions, and monuments of sepulture, still associated with the names of Oscar and Malvina, Fingal and Ossian--in literal confirmation of what has been stated in the text concerning them; but the only reliable account, by survey and tradition also, of the Fingalian expeditions from Morven to Ireland. Let him then, by direct communication, which is occasionally possible from Arran; or by any circuit he pleases, disembark in the Bay of Larne "with its bosom of echoing woods," as Fingal himself must have done; and there, with _Fingal_ and _Temora_ in hand, let him survey the entire region between Larne and Belfast. Let him march with his eyes open by the pass of Glenoe, and try to ascend it on the old track--by the "narrow way at the stream of the battle of thousands," round the double-headed rock there by moonlight, or in the misty dawn; and before attempting this, let him look carefully around among the limestone cliffs for any other reasonable opening; and if he does not begin to suspect, at least, that it was here Cuchullin stood, and Calmar fell, against the invading Norse, he must be "hopelessly convinced" to the contrary, indeed. Onwards let him prosecute his journey, looking backwards occasionally to the sea, where the ships of Fingal should be appearing--onwards among marshy Lenas, open Straths, half cultivated Heaths--with an occasional monolith among the enclosures, testifying to what has once been done there; onwards, with his eye now to the ridges on the left--on one of which, below Carneal or thereabouts, the head-quarters of Fingal must have been before the campaigns began--onwards until he touches the source of the Six-Mile-Water above