Romance works with a charm more powerful than that of History itself in attracting visitors to the head-waters of the Forth and Teith, and in enhancing the marvellous natural beauties of their lake and mountain scenery. True, few except stout pedestrians and ardent anglers follow up the Duchray Water, past ivied Duchray Castle, to the corries that seam the base of Ben Lomond. But the path from Inversnaid, that skirts Loch Chon and the more famous and more beautiful northern head-stream of the Forth that issues from it, is not so unfrequented. Further down, Loch Ard opens again, and yet again, a lovely mirror in which are reflected the changeful outlines and rich colours of its girdling hills and woods. Oak coppice, interspersed with the shining trunks of the birch and the dark green of the pines, climbs over every knoll, and clings to every crag, and even covers the little island on the lake, where Duke Robert of Albany hoped to find a refuge from his enemies. Above copse-wood and lake rise the brown slopes and grey precipices of Ben Vogrieh and of Craigmore; while the conical head and broad flanks of Ben Lomond shoulder themselves into view, and close the top of the glen. But the enchantment of Loch Ard would not be complete did not the form of Flora McIvor yet haunt the Linn of Ledeart, in the guise of the Highland Muse, as when first she startled and threw a spell over Edward Waverley; and did not her voice--wild and plaintive as the legends of the land and the genius of its race--mingle, as of yore, with the murmur of the stream. The pass by the lake-side still seems to have the commanding figure of Helen MacGregor presiding over it, and eyeing menacingly Saxon intrusion into this refuge of a proscribed clan. The "Clachan of Aberfoyle," now unexceptionable as a place of travellers' entertainment, can never be disassociated from the memorable experiences of a night's quarters at "Jeanie MacAlpine's." At the "Fords of Frew," we think, more than of anything else, of Rob Roy slipping the belt-buckle in midstream, and of the moving and mysterious night interview on the neighbouring moor between Francis Osbaldistone and Di Vernon. [Illustration: _Walker & Boutall sc._ THE FORTH.]