Old Scotland! Noble old hills! Charming lakes, and enchanting valleys! How like the awakened memories of loved faces, they come back to us when we hear the word “Dumbarton”! What exciting tales of Baliol, of Wallace, of Bruce, of Queen Mary, of Cromwell, come again as we recall the sugar-loaf rock, on which the remnant of the old fortress stands! Those bright youths must have feasted on the associations connected with Dumbarton. As they peered from Wallace’s tower, handled Wallace’s sword, and gazed over the wide landscape, with the sites of battle-fields, castles, palaces, the home of Bruce, the cottage of Wallace, the beautiful valleys of the Clyde and Leven, the majestic Ben Lomond, and the crests of the Highlands, they grew in intellectual stature, and breathed a moral atmosphere as pure as the air that encircled the flagstaff at the summit. There is no education like the actual contact with the scenes connected with heroic self-sacrifice, to train young men for patriots and poets. No discipline is more necessary to the development of a broad and virtuous manhood among any class of young men, than studious travel in foreign countries. To young Bayard, lacking other culture than the few years at the district school, the few months at the academy, and the studious perusal of histories and poems, this experience was of vast importance. Its beneficial effects were seen throughout his life, and frequently show themselves in his editorials, poems, novels, and narratives. At Dumbarton, Bayard had his first narrow escape, and he said that when he reached the ground, after daring to scale, for flowers, the precipice up which Wallace climbed with his followers for glory and fatherland, he was in such a tremor of terror, in view of his having so narrowly escaped death, that he could scarcely speak. The unusual strength of a little tuft of wild grass, growing in a crevice of the cliff, had saved him from being dashed to pieces. It must have given him a very vivid impression of the daring feats of those old Scotch warriors, who not only faced these perpendicular walls, but fearlessly encountered the foes at the top. From Dumbarton, Bayard and his friends walked through the valley of the River Leven to Loch Lomond. All his letters and contributions to the newspapers speak of this walk as one of the most enjoyable of all his rambles. In his “Views Afoot,” with which every reader is or should be familiar, he mentions it as a glorious walk. The pastoral beauty of the fields, the clearness of the stream, the ivy-grown towers, the dense forests, the early home of Smollett, whose dashing pen astonished the kingdom in 1748, the summer parks of Scottish noblemen, the mild, soothing August sunshine, were a combination rarely found, and when found as rarely appreciated.