with fields and groves, where many a pleasant dwelling is embowered, into lines of hills that gradually soften away into another land. On the other side, sloping back, or overhanging, mounts beautiful in their barrenness, for they are green as emerald; others, scarcely more beautiful, studded with fair trees--some altogether woods. They soon form into mountains--and the mountains become more and more majestical, yet beauty never deserts them, and her spirit continues to tame that of the frowning cliffs. Far off as they are, Benlomond and Benvoirlich are seen to be giants; magnificent is their retinue, but the two are supreme, each in his own dominion; and clear as the day is here, they are diademed with clouds. It cannot be that the “proportion of diffused water is here too great;” and is it then true that no one “ever travelled along the banks of Loch Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feeling that a speedier termination to the long vista of blank water would be acceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows, trees and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side?” We have travelled along them in all weathers, and never felt such a wish. For there they all are--all but the “sparkling stream to run by our side,” and we see not how that well could be in nature. “Streams that sparkle as they run,” cross our path on their own; and brighter never issued from the woods. Along the margin of the water, as far as Luss--ay, and much farther--the variations of the foreground are incessant; “had it no other beauties,” it has been truly said, “but those of its shores, it would still be an object of prime attraction; whether from the bright green meadows sprinkled with luxuriant ash-trees, that sometimes skirt its margin, or its white pebbled shores on which its gentle billows murmur, like a miniature ocean, or its bold rocky promontories rising from the dark water rich in wild-flowers and ferns, and tangled with wild roses and honey-suckles, or its retired bays where the waves dash, reflecting, like a mirror, the trees which hang over them, an inverted landscape.” The islands are for ever arranging themselves into new forms, every one more and more beautiful; at least so they seem to be, perpetually occurring, yet always unexpected, and there is a pleasure even in such a series of slight surprises that enhances the delight of admiration. And alongside, or behind us, all the while, are the sylvan mountains, “laden with beauty;” and ever and anon open glens widen down upon us from chasms; or forest glades lead our hearts away into the inner gloom--perhaps our feet; and there, in a field that looks not as if it had been cleared by his own hands, but left clear by nature, a woodsman’s hut.