Look now only at the Linnhe Loch--how it gladdens Argyle! Without it and the sound of Mull how sad would be the shadows of Morven! Eclipsed the splendours of Lorn! Ascend one of the heights of Appin, and as the waves roll in light, you will feel how the mountains are beautified by the sea. There is a majestic rolling onwards there that belongs to no land-loch--only to the world of waves. There is no nobler image of ordered power than the tide, whether in flow or in ebb; and on all now it is felt to be beneficent, coming and going daily, to enrich and adorn. Or in fancy will you embark, and let the “Amethyst” bound away “at her own sweet will,” accordant with yours, till she reach the distant and long-desired loch. “Loch-Sunart! who, when tides and tempests roar, Comes in among these mountains from the main, ’Twixt wooded Ardnamurchan’s rocky cape And Ardmore’s shingly beach of hissing spray; And, while his thunders bid the sound of Mull Be dumb, sweeps onwards past a hundred bays Hill-sheltered from the wrath that foams along The mad mid-channel,--All as quiet they As little separate worlds of summer dreams,-- And by storm-loving birds attended up The mountain-hollow, white in their career As are the breaking billows, spurns the Isles Of craggy Carnich, and Green Oronsay Drench’d in that sea-born shower o’er tree-tops driven And ivied stones of what was once a tower Now hardly known from rocks--and gathering might In the long reach between Dungallan caves And point of Arderinis ever fair With her Elysian groves, bursts through that strait Into another ampler inland sea; Till lo! subdued by some sweet influence,-- And potent is she though so meek the Eve,-- Down sinketh wearied the old Ocean Insensibly into a solemn calm,-- And all along that ancient burial-ground, (Its kirk is gone,) that seemeth now to lend Its own eternal quiet to the waves, Restless no more, into a perfect peace Lulling and lull’d at last, while drop the airs Away as they were dead, the first risen star Beholds that lovely Archipelago, All shadow’d there as in a spiritual world, Where time’s mutations shall come never more!”