At Stirling Castle it will be convenient to take our next stand, and see "the mazy Forth unravelled." No baronial castle on the Rhine or Danube is more romantically and commandingly placed than these "towers of Snowdoun," or surveys a fairer scene. One can imagine the time--but yesterday in the geologist's record--when the broad valley of the river was filled with the sea, back to the roots of the Grampians, and when Stirling Rock, with its neighbour bluffs, the Abbey Craig and Craigforth, rose as islands or peninsulas over the waters, each with its slope towards the east and its front to the west. The sea has long receded, and Stirling now dominates the green and level floor of its fertile carse. Through the middle of the landscape meanders the Forth, in immense loops and folds--"a foiled circuitous wanderer"-- "Forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle," and using, as it would seem, every circumvolution and chance of tarrying or turning back, to avoid meeting with the Teith, the Allan, and the Bannock, at the base of Stirling Rock. From where the stream debouches from the hills into Flanders Moss, to where it meets the tide-water at Stirling Bridge, there is said to be a fall of only eighteen feet in some eighteen miles, measured "as the crow flies"--a distance increased fourfold by following the intricate gyres of the dark still waters. Below the Bridge, to which vessels are able to come up from the sea, the river still continues to double and turn as far as Alloa, in those "links o' Forth," each of which, according to the old rhyme, is "worth an Earldom in the North." Flat and tame as are the immediate banks of the river, draining through ancient mosses, now turned for the most part into rich corn-bearing land, goodly sites are close at hand in the plain, on the slopes of the enclosing hills, or in the tributary valleys--among them Cardross, and Blair-Drummond, and Keir, all famous in the annals of Scottish law, agriculture, and literature; and Airth and Airthrey Castles, which carry the mind from the doughty deeds of Sir John the Graeme to those of Sir Ralph Abercromby. Of what lies within the valley of the Teith we have seen something. But the banks of Allan Water, behind the favourite Spa of Bridge of Allan and its embosoming woods and hills, are almost as well worth exploring; for they lead, to mention but a few of their attractions, to Dunblane and its beautiful old Cathedral, to Sheriffmuir, and to the Roman Camp at Ardoch.