Chapter V: Part 5

Besides cathedrals, almost every parish in England has at least one beautiful church. The most interesting of them to us was the Holy Sepulchre at Cambridge. It belonged to the Knights Templars, and is circular, like most of their churches, in imitation of our Saviour's tomb at Jerusalem. It is very small, very low, very massive, with short round pillars, round arches, decorated only with the simple, effective zigzag moulding peculiar to the early Norman style; corbels running down from the domical vaulted roof (still recalling Moslem architecture), and ending in strange faces, military yet melancholy in expression,--probably portraits of the knights by whom it was founded in the year of our Lord 1101. The Temple Church in London is much larger and handsomer, but not nearly so curious and striking.

Almost all the old churches in England suffer exceedingly either from the defect of the stone of which they are built or the action of the atmosphere upon it: they look honeycombed, worm-eaten; their tracery is obliterated, their mullions are wasted as if by wear and tear. The interiors, protected from the weather, fare best, but even the cloisters, which are open on one side, are often in a ruinous condition, and the stone peels and crumbles under the touch like rusty iron. Chester Cathedral is an extreme instance: its dilapidation amounts to disfigurement. It is one of the least imposing and interesting, yet for an American just landed it is a profound revelation; and as Chester is close to Liverpool, one cannot do better than stop there for a day.

The old city is full of quaint characteristics, too well known to need description here. One of the gates is called by the odd title of the Pepper-gate. In the sixteenth century there was a mayor named Pepper, who had a young daughter in her middle teens. One evening, as she was playing ball with her companions near this gate, an impetuous youth rushed in, snatched her up, and carried her off through it. The mayor caused the gate to be closed, which gave rise to the saying, "When the daughter is stolen shut the Pepper-gate." Chester is the only city in England which has preserved the entire circuit of its walls: the town has spread far beyond them in every direction, except where they are washed by the Dee, but they form an unbroken round, and are used as a public walk, from which one looks into many a queer corner. Following its course, one comes upon a small turret rising from the battlements, on which is the inscription, "From this tower, on September 27, 1645, King Charles saw his army defeated at Rowton Moor." How much of anguish and doom lies in those few words! No doubt Sir Walter Scott is much to blame, but he can hardly be held answerable for all the sentiment with which we trace the footsteps of the Stuarts, dogged by fanatical hatred and murderous revenge, upheld by adventurous, daring, romantic loyalty and chivalrous self-devotion.

THE "OLD TOWN" OF EDINBURGH.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

[From one of the most notable of Scotland's literary sons we
extract the following attractive description of the famous
capital city of that land, the source of our selection being
Stevenson's "Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes." The "Old Town"
section of the city is particularly limned for us in the
selection here given.]

The ancient and famous metropolis of the North sits overlooking a windy estuary from the slope and summit of three hills. No situation could be more commanding for the head city of a kingdom, none better chosen for noble prospects. From her tall precipice and terraced gardens she looks far and wide on the sea and broad champaigns. To the east you may catch at sunset the spark of the May light-house, where the Firth expands into the German Ocean; and away to the west, over all the carse of Stirling, you can see the first snows upon Ben Ledi.

But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the vilest climates under heaven. She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with snow as it comes flying southward from the Highland hills. The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring. The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to envy them their fate. For all who love shelter and the blessings of the sun, who hate dark weather and perpetual tilting against squalls, there could scarcely be found a more unhomely and harassing place of residence. Many such aspire angrily after that Somewhere-else of the imagination, where all troubles are supposed to end. They lean over the great bridge which joins the New Town with the Old--that windiest spot or high altar in this northern temple of the winds--and watch the trains smoking out from under them and vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies. Happy the passengers who shake off the dust of Edinburgh, and have heard for the last time the cry of the east wind among her chimney-tops! And yet the place establishes an interest in people's hearts; go where they will, they find no city of the same distinction; go where they will, they take a pride in their old home.

Venice, it has been said, differs from all other cities in the sentiment which she inspires. The rest may have admirers; she only, a famous fair one, counts lovers in her train. And, indeed, even by her kindest friends, Edinburgh is not considered in a similar sense. These like her for many reasons, not any one of which is satisfactory in itself. They like her whimsically, if you will, and somewhat as a virtuoso dotes upon his cabinet. Her attraction is romantic in the narrowest meaning of the term. Beautiful as she is, she is not so much beautiful as interesting. She is pre-eminently Gothic, and all the more so since she has set herself off with some Greek airs, and erected classic temples on her crags.

In a word, and above all, she is a curiosity. The Palace of Holyrood has been left aside in the growth of Edinburgh, and stands gray and silent in a workmen's quarter and among breweries and gas-works. It is a house of many memories. Great people of yore, kings and queens, buffoons and grave ambassadors, played their stately farce for centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, dancing has lasted deep into the night, murder has been done, in its chambers. There Prince Charlie held his phantom levees, and in a very gallant manner represented a fallen dynasty for some hours. Now, all these things of clay are mingled with the dust; the king's crown itself is shown for sixpence to the vulgar; but the stone palace has outlived these changes.

For fifty weeks together it is no more than a show for tourists and a museum of old furniture; but on the fifty-first, behold the palace reawakening and mimicking its past. The Lord Commissioner, a kind of stage sovereign, sits among stage courtiers; a coach and six and clattering escort come and go before the gate; at night the windows are lighted up, and its near neighbors, the workmen, may dance in their own houses to the palace music. And in this the palace is typical. There is a spark among the embers; from time to time the old volcano smokes. Edinburgh has but partly abdicated, and still wears, in parody, her metropolitan trappings. Half a capital and half a country town, the whole city leads a double existence; it has long trances of the one and flashes of the other; like the king of the Black Isles, it is half alive and half a monumental marble. There are armed men and cannon in the citadel overhead; you may see the troops marshalled on the high parade; and at night, after the early winter even-fall, and in the morning, before the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the sound of drums and bugles. Grave judges sit bewigged in what was once the scene of imperial deliberations.

Close by in the High Street perhaps the trumpets may sound about the stroke of noon; and you see a troop of citizens in tawdry masquerade, tabard above, heather-mixture trouser below, and the men themselves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic by-standers. The grooms of a well-appointed circus tread the streets with a better presence, and yet these are the Heralds and Pursuivants of Scotland, who are about to proclaim a new law of the United Kingdom before twoscore boys, and thieves, and hackney-coachmen. Meanwhile, every hour, the bell of the University rings out over the hum of the streets, and every hour a double tide of students, coming and going, fills the deep archways.

And lastly, one night in the spring time--or say one morning rather, at the peep of day--late folk may hear the voices of many men singing a psalm in unison from a church on one side of the old High Street, and a little after or perhaps a little before, the sound of many men singing a psalm in unison from another church on the opposite side of the way. There will be something in the words about the dew of Hermon, and how goodly it is to see brethren dwelling together in unity. And the late folk will tell themselves that all this singing denotes the conclusion of two yearly ecclesiastical parliaments,--the parliaments of churches which are brothers in many admirable virtues, but not specially like brothers in this particular of a tolerant and peaceful life.

Again, meditative people will find a charm in a certain consonancy between the aspect of the city and its odd and stirring history. Few places, if any, offer a more barbaric display of contrasts to the eye. In the very midst stands one of the most satisfactory crags in nature,--a Bass Rock upon dry land, rooted in a garden, shaken by passing trains, carrying a crown of battlements and turrets, and describing its warlike shadow over the liveliest and brightest thoroughfare of the new town. From their smoky beehives, ten stories high, the unwashed look down upon the open squares and gardens of the wealthy; and gay people sunning themselves along Prince's Street, with its mile of commercial palaces all beflagged upon some great occasion, see, across a gardened valley set with statues, where the washings of the old town flutter in the breeze at its high windows.

And then, upon all sides, what a clashing of architecture! In this one valley, where the life of the town goes most busily forward, there may be seen, shown one above and behind another by the accidents of the ground, buildings in almost every style upon the globe. Egyptian and Greek temples, Venetian palaces and Gothic spires, are huddled one over another in most admired disorder, while, above all, the brute mass of the Castle and the summit of Arthur's Seat look down upon these imitations with a becoming dignity, as the works of Nature may look down upon the monuments of Art.

But Nature is a more indiscriminate patroness than we imagine, and in no way frightened of a strong effect. The birds roost as willingly among the Corinthian capitals as in the crannies of the crag; the same atmosphere and daylight clothe the eternal rock and yesterday's imitation portico; and as the soft northern sunshine throws out everything into a glorified distinctness,--or easterly mists, coming up with the blue evening, fuse all these incongruous features into one, and the lamps begin to glitter along the street, and faint lights to burn in the high windows across the valley,--the feeling grows upon you that this also is a piece of nature in the most intimate sense; that this profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock, is not a drop-scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of every-day reality, connected by railway and telegraph-wire with all the capitals of Europe, and inhabited by citizens of the familiar type, who keep ledgers, and attend church, and have sold their immortal portion to a daily paper. By all the canons of romance, the place demands to be half deserted and leaning towards decay; birds we might admit in profusion, the play of the sun and winds, and a few gypsies encamped in the chief thoroughfare; but these citizens, with their cabs and tramways, their trains and posters, are altogether out of key. Chartered tourists, they make free with historical localities, and rear their young among the most picturesque sites with a grand human indifference. To see them thronging by, in their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a little air of possession that verges on the absurd, is not the least striking feature of the place.

And the story of the town is as eccentric as its appearance. For centuries it was a capital thatched with heather, and more than once, in the evil days of English invasion, it has gone up in flame to heaven, a beacon to ships at sea. It was the jousting-ground of jealous nobles, not only on Greenside or by the king's stables, where set tournaments were fought to the sound of trumpets and under the authority of the royal presence, but in every alley where there was room to cross swords, and in the main street, where popular tumult under the Blue Blanket alternated with the brawls of outlandish clansmen and retainers.

Down in the palace John Knox reproved his queen in the accents of modern democracy. In the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so many swallows' nests among the buttresses of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat, James VI., would gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly look down on the Castle with the city lying in waves around it, those mad and dismal fanatics, the Sweet Singers, haggard from long exposure on the moors, sat day and night with tearful psalms to see Edinburgh consumed with fire from heaven, like another Sodom or Gomorrah. There, in the Grass-market, stiff-necked, covenanting heroes offered up the often unnecessary, but not less honorable, sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent farewell to sun, moon, and stars, and earthly friendships, or died silent to the roll of drums. Down by yon outlet rode Grahame of Claverhouse and his thirty dragoons, with the town beating to arms behind their horses' tails,--a sorry handful thus riding for their lives, but with a man at the head who was to return in a different temper, make a dash that staggered Scotland to the heart, and die happily in the thick of fight. There Aikenhead was hanged for a piece of boyish incredulity; there a few years afterwards, David Hume ruined Philosophy and Faith, an undisturbed and well-reputed citizen; and thither, in yet a few years more, Burns came from the plough-tail, as to an academy of gilt unbelief and artificial letters...

The Old Town occupies a sloping ridge or tail of diluvial matter, protected, in some subsidence of the waters, by the Castle cliffs which fortify it to the west. On the one side of it and the other the new towns of the south and of the north occupy their lower, broader, and more gentle hilltops. Thus, the quarter of the Castle overtops the whole city and keeps an open view to sea and land. It dominates for miles on every side; and people on the decks of ships, or ploughing in quiet country places over in Fife, can see the banner on the Castle battlements, and the smoke of the old town blowing abroad over the subjacent country. A city that is set upon a hill. It was, I suppose, from this distant aspect that she got her nickname of _Auld Reekie_. Perhaps it was given her by people who had never crossed her doors: day after day, from their various rustic Pisgahs, they had seen the pile of building on the hill-top, and the long plume of smoke over the plain; so it appeared to them; so it had appeared to their fathers tilling the same field; and as that was all they knew of the place, it could be all expressed in these two words.

Indeed, even on a nearer view, the Old Town is properly smoked; and though it is well washed with rain all the year round, it has a grim and sooty aspect among its younger suburbs. It grew, under the law that regulates the growth of walled cities in precarious situations, not in extent, but in height and density. Public buildings were forced, wherever there was room for them, into the midst of thoroughfares; thoroughfares were diminished into lanes; houses sprang up story after story, neighbor mounting upon neighbor's shoulder, as in some Black Hole of Calcutta, until the population slept fourteen or fifteen feet deep in a vertical direction.

The tallest of these _lands_, as they are locally termed, have long since been burnt out; but to this day it is not uncommon to see eight or ten windows at a flight; and the cliff of building which hangs imminent over Waverley Bridge would still put many natural precipices to shame. The cellars are already high above the gazer's head, planted on the steep hill-side; as for the garret, all the furniture may be in the pawn-shop, but it commands a famous prospect to the Highland hills. The poor man may roost up there in the centre of Edinburgh, and yet have a peep of the green country from his window; he shall see the quarters of the well-to-do fathoms underneath, with their broad squares and gardens; he shall have nothing overhead but a few spires, the stone top-gallants of the city; and perhaps the wind may reach him with a rustic pureness, and bring a smack of the sea, or of flowering lilacs in the spring....

One night I went along the Cowgate after every one was abed but the policeman, and stopped by hazard before a tall _land_. The moon touched upon its chimneys, and shone blankly on the upper windows; there was no light anywhere in the great bulk of the building; but as I stood there it seemed to me that I could hear quite a body of quiet sounds from the interior; doubtless there were many clocks ticking, and people snoring on their backs. And thus, as I fancied, the dense life within made itself faintly audible in my ears, family after family contributing its quota to the general hum, and the whole pile beating in tune to its time-pieces, like a great disordered heart. Perhaps it was little more than a fancy altogether, but it was strangely impressive at the time, and gave me an imaginative measure of the disproportion between the quantity of living flesh and the trifling walls that separated and contained it.

There was nothing fanciful, at least, but every circumstance of terror and reality, in the fall of the _land_ in High Street. The building had grown rotten to the core; the entry underneath had suddenly closed up, so that the scavenger's barrow could not pass; cracks and reverberations sounded through the house at night; the inhabitants of the huge old human bee-hive discussed their peril when they encountered on the stair; some had even left their dwellings in a panic of fear, and returned to them again in a fit of economy or self-respect; when, in the black hours of a Sunday morning, the whole structure ran together with a hideous uproar and tumbled story upon story to the ground. The physical shock was felt far and near, and the moral shock travelled with the morning milkmaid into all the suburbs.

The church-bells never sounded more dismally over Edinburgh than that gray forenoon. Death had made a brave harvest, and, like Samson, by pulling down one roof destroyed many a home. None who saw it can have forgotten the aspect of the gable: here it was plastered, there papered, according to the rooms; here the kettle still stood on the hob, high overhead; and there a cheap picture of the Queen was pasted over the chimney. So, by this disaster, you had a glimpse into the life of thirty families, all suddenly cut off from the revolving years. The _land_ had fallen; and with the _land_ how much! Far in the country, people saw a gap in the city ranks, and the sun looked through between the chimneys in an unwonted place. And all over the world, in London, in Canada, in New Zealand, fancy what a multitude of people could exclaim with truth, "The house that I was born in fell last night!"

IN THE LAND OF ROB ROY.

NATHANIEL P. WILLIS.

[From Willis's "Famous Persons and Places" we select an
interesting description of some Scottish scenes which the works
of Scott have rendered famous, including the home of Rob Roy
and the lakes Lomond and Katrine, the latter the scene of the
"Lady of the Lake." Passing many famous places on his way
north, the traveller at length reached the "far-famed and
much-boasted valley of Glencoe," which he describes in the
chapter following.]

We passed the head of the valley near Tyndrum, where McDougal of Lorn defeated the Bruce, and were half-way up the wild pass that makes its southern outlet, when our Highland driver, with a shout of delight, pointed out to us a red deer, standing on the very summit of the highest mountain above us. It was an incredible distance to see any living thing, but he stood clear against the sky, in a relief as strong as if he had been suspended in the air, and with his head up, and his chest towards us, seemed the true monarch of the wild.

At Invarenden, Donald McPhee begged for the discharge of himself and his horse and cart from our service. He had come with us eighty miles, and was afraid to venture farther on his travels, having never before been twenty miles from the Highland village where he lived. It was amusing to see the curiosity with which he looked about him, and the caution with which he suffered the hostler at the inn to take the black mare out of his sight. The responsibility of the horse and cart weighed heavily on his mind, and he expressed his hope to "get her back safe," with an apprehensive resolution that would have become a knight-errant girding himself for his most perilous encounter. Poor Donald! how little he knew how wide is the world, and how very like one part of it is to another!

Our host of Invarenden supplied us with another cart to take us down to Tarbot, and having dined with a waterfall looking in at each of our two opposite windows (the inn stands in a valley between two mountains), we were committed to the care of his eldest boy, and jolted off for the head of Loch Lomond.

I have never happened to see a traveller who had seen Loch Lomond in perfectly good weather. My companion had been there every summer for several years, and believes it always rained under Ben Lomond. As we came in sight of the lake, however, the water looked like one sheet of gold leaf, trembling, as if by the motion of fish below, but unruffled by wind; and if paradise were made so fair, and had such waters in its midst, I could better conceive than before the unhappiness of Adam when driven forth. The sun was just setting, and the road descended immediately to the shore, and kept along under precipitous rocks, and slopes of alternate cultivation and heather, to the place of our destination. And a lovely place it is! Send me to Tarbot when I would retreat from the world. It is an inn buried in a grove at the foot of hills, and set in a bend of the lake-shore, like a diamond upon an "orbed brow;" and the light in its kitchen, as we approached in the twilight, was as interesting as a ray of the "first water" from the same. We had now reached the route of the cockney tourists, and while we perceived it agreeably in the excellence of the hotel, we perceived it disagreeably in the price of the wines, and the presence of what my friend called "unmitigated vulgarisms" in the coffee-room. That is the worst of England. The people are vulgar, but not vulgar enough. One dances with the lazzaroni at Naples, when he would scarce think of handing the newspaper to the "person" on a tour at Tarbot. Condescension is the only agreeable virtue, I have made up my mind.

Well--it was moonlight. The wind was south and affectionate, and the road in front of the hotel "fleck'd with silver," and my friend's wife, and the corresponding object of interest to myself, being on the other side of Ben Lomond and the Tweed, we had nothing for it after supper but to walk up and down with one another, and talk of the past. In the course of our ramble we walked through an open gate, and, ascending a gravel walk, found a beautiful cottage, built between two mountain streams, and ornamented with every device of taste and contrivance. The mild pure torrents were led over falls and brought to the threshold of bowers, and seats, and bridges, and winding paths were distributed up the steep channels in a way that might make it a haunt for Titania. It is the property, we found afterwards, of a Scotch gentleman, and a great summer retreat of the celebrated Jeffrey, his friend. It was one more place to which my heart clung in parting.

Loch Lomond sat still for its picture in the morning, and after an early breakfast we took a row-boat, with a couple of Highlanders, for Inversnade, and pulled across the lake with a kind of drowsy delightfulness in the scene and air which I had never before found out of Italy. We overshot our destination a little to look into Rob Roy's cave, a dark den in the face of the rock, which has the look of his vocation; and then pulling back along the shore, we were landed, in the spray of a waterfall, at a cottage occupied by the boatman of this Highland ferry. From this point across to Loch Katrine is some five miles, and the scene of Scott's novel of Rob Roy. It has been "done" so often by tourists that I leave all particular description of the localities and the scenery to the well-hammered remembrance of readers of magazines, and confine myself to my own private adventures.

The distance between the lakes is usually performed by ladies on donkeys, and by gentlemen on foot, but being myself rather tender-toed with the gout, my companion started off alone, and I lay down on the grass at Inversnade to wait the return of the long-eared troop, who were gone across with an earlier party. The waterfall and the cottage just above the edge of the lake, a sharp hill behind, closely wooded with beech and fir, and, on a greensward platform in the rear of the house, two Highland lassies, and a laddie, treading down a stack of new hay, were not bad circumstances in which to be left alone with the witcheries of the great enchanter.

I must narrate here an adventure in which my own part was rather a discomfiture, but which will show somewhat the manners of the people. My companion had been gone half an hour, and I was lying at the foot of a tree, listening to the waterfall and looking off on the lake, and watching by fits the lad and lassies I have spoken of, who were building a haystack between them, and chattering away most unceasingly in Gaelic. The eldest of the girls was a tall, ill-favored damsel, merry as an Oread, but as ugly as Donald Bean; and after a while I began to suspect, by the looks of the boy below, that I had furnished her with a new theme. She addressed some remark to me presently, and a skirmish of banter ensued, which ended in a challenge to me to climb upon the stack. It was about ten feet high, and shelving outward from the bottom, and my Armida had drawn up the ladder. The stack was built, however, under a high tree, and I was soon up the trunk, and, swinging off from a low branch, dropped in the middle of the stack.

In the same instant I was raised in a grasp to which I could offer no resistance, and, with a fling to which I should have believed the strength of few men equal, thrown clear of the stack to the ground. I alighted on my back, with a fall of perhaps twelve feet, and felt seriously hurt. The next moment, however, my gentle friend had me in her arms (I am six feet high in my stockings), and I was carried into the cottage, and laid on a flock bed, before I could well decide whether my back was broken or no. Whiskey was applied externally and internally, and the old crone, who was the only inhabitant of the hovel, commenced a lecture in Gaelic, as I stood once more sound upon my legs, which seemed to take effect upon the penitent, though her victim was no wiser for it. I took the opportunity to look at the frame which had proved itself of such vigorous power, but, except arms of extraordinary length, she was like any other equally ugly, middle-sized woman. In the remaining half-hour before the donkeys arrived we became the best of friends, and she set me off for Loch Katrine with a caution to the ass-driver to take care of me, which that sandy-haired Highlander took as an excellent joke, and no wonder!

The long mountain glen between these two lakes was the home of Rob Roy, and the Highlanders point out various localities, all commemorated in Scott's incomparable story. The house where Helen McGregor was born lies a stone's throw off the road to the left, and Rob Roy's gun is shown by an old woman who lives near by. He must have been rich in arms by the same token, for, besides the well-authenticated one at Abbotsford, I have seen some dozen guns and twice as many daggers and shot-pouches which lay claim to the same honor. I paid my shilling to the old woman not the less. She owed it to the pleasure I had received from Sir Walter's novel.

The view of Loch Lomond back from the highest point of the pass is incomparably fine; at least when I saw it, for sunshine and temperature and the effect of the light vapors on the hills were at their loveliest and most favorable. It looks more like the haunt of a robber and his caterans, probably, in its more common garb of Scotch mist, but, to my eye, it was a scene of the most Arcadian peace and serenity. I dawdled along the five miles upon my donkey, with something of an ache in my back, but a very healthful and sunny freedom from pain and impatience at my heart. And so did _not_ Baillie Nicol Jarvie make the same memorable journey.

The cottage inn at the head of Loch Katrine was tenanted by a woman, who might have been a horse-guardsman in petticoats, and who kept her smiles for other cattle than the Sassenach. We bought her whiskey and milk, praised her butter, and were civil to the little Highlandman at her breast; but neither mother nor child were to be mollified. The rocks were bare around, we were too tired for a pull in the boat, and three mortal hours lay between us and the nearest event in our history. I first penetrated, in the absence of our Hecate, to the inner room of the sheiling. On the wall hung a broadsword, two guns, a trophy or two of deer's horns, and a Sunday suit of plaid, philibeg and short red coat, surmounted by a gallant bonnet and feather. Four cribs, like the berths in a ship, occupied the farther side of the chamber, each large enough to contain two persons; a snow-white table stood between the windows; a sixpenny glass, with an eagle's feather stuck in the frame, hung at such a height that, "though tall of my hands," I could just see my nose; and just under the ceiling on the left was a broad and capacious shelf, on which reposed apparently the old clothes of a century,--a sort of place where the gude-wife would have hidden Prince Charlie, or might rummage for her grandmother's baby linen.

The heavy steps of the dame came over the threshold, and I began to doubt from the look in her eyes whether I should get a blow of her hairy arm or a "persuader" from the butt of a gun for my intrusion. "What are ye wantin' here?" she _speered_ at me, with a Helen-McGregor-to-Baillie-Nicol-Jarvie sort of an expression.

"I was looking for a potato to roast, my good woman."

"Is that a'? Ye'll find it ayont, then!" And pointing to a bag in the corner, she stood while I subtracted the largest, and then followed me to the general kitchen and receiving-room, where I buried my _improvista_ dinner in the remains of a peat-fire, and congratulated myself on my ready apology.

What to do while the potato was roasting! My English friend had already cleaned his gun for amusement, and I had looked on. We had stoned the pony till he had got beyond us in the morass (small thanks to us if the dame knew it). We had tried to make a chicken swim ashore from the boat, we had fired away all my friend's percussion-caps, and there was nothing for it but to converse _a rigueur_. We lay on our backs till the dame brought us the hot potato on a shovel, with oatcake and butter, and with this Highland dinner the last hour came decently to its death.

An Englishman with his wife and lady's maid came over the hills with a boat's crew, and a lassie who was not very pretty, but who lived on the lake, and had found the means to get "Captain Rob" and his men pretty well under her thumb. We were all embarked, the lassie in the stern-sheets with the captain, and ourselves, though we "paid the scot," of no more consideration than our portmanteaus. I was amused, for it was the first instance I had seen in any country (my own not excepted) of thorough emancipation from the distinction of superiors. Luckily, the girl was bent on showing the captain to advantage, and by ingenious prompting and catechism she induced him to do what probably was his custom when he could not better amuse himself, point out the localities as the boat sped on, and quote the Lady of the Lake with an accent which made it a piece of good fortune to have "crammed" the poem beforehand.

The shores of the lake are flat and uninteresting at the head, but towards the scene of Scott's romance they rise into bold precipices, and gradually become worthy of their celebrity. The Trosachs are a cluster of small, green mountains, strewn, or rather piled, with shrubs and mossy verdure, and from a distance you would think only a bird, or Ranald of the Mist, could penetrate their labyrinthine recesses. Captain Rob showed us successively the Braes of Balquidder, Rob Roy's birth- and burial-place, Benledi, and the crag from which hung, by the well-woven skirts of braid cloth, the worthy bailie of Glasgow; and, beneath a precipice of remarkable wildness, the half-intoxicated steersman raised his arm, and began to repeat, in the most unmitigated gutturals,--

"High _o'er_ the south hung Ben_venue_,
Down _to_ the lakes _his_ masses threw,
Crags, knowls, and mounds _con_fusedly hurl'd
The frag_ments_ of an earlier _wurruld_."

I have underlined it according to the captain's judicious emphasis, and in the last word have endeavored to spell after his remarkable pronunciation. Probably to a Frenchman, however, it would have seemed all very fine,--for Captain Rob (I must do him justice, though he broke the strap of my portmanteau) was as good-looking a ruffian as you would sketch on a summer's tour.

Some of the loveliest water I have ever seen in my life (and I am rather an amateur at that element to look at) lies deep down at the bases of these divine Trosachs. The usual approaches from lake to mountain (beach or sloping shore) are here dispensed with; and straight up from the deep water rise the green precipices and bold and ragged rocks, overshadowing the glassy mirror below with tints like a cool corner in a landscape of Ruysdael's. It is something (indeed, on a second thought, exceedingly) like Lake George; only that the islands in this extremity of Loch Katrine lie closer together, and permit the sun no entrance except by a ray almost perpendicular. A painter will easily understand the effect of this,--the loss of all that _makes a surface_ to the water, and the consequent far depth to the eye, as if the boat in which you shot over it brought with it its own water and sent its ripple through the transparent air. I write _currente calamo_, and have no time to clear up my meaning, but it will be evident to all lovers of nature.

Captain Rob put up his helm for a little fairy green island, lying like a lapful of green moss on the water, and, rounding a point, we ran suddenly into a cove sheltered by a tree, and in a moment the boat grated on the pebbles of a natural beach perhaps ten feet in length. A flight of winding steps, made roughly of roots and stones, ascended from the water's edge.

"Gentlemen and ladies!" said the captain, with a hiccup, "this is Ellen's Isle. This is the gnarled oak" (catching at a branch of a tree as the boat swung astern), "and--you'll please to go up them steps, an' I'll tell you the rest in Ellen's bower."

The Highland lassie sprang on shore, and we followed up the steep ascent, arriving breathless at last at the door of a fanciful bower, built by Lord Willoughby d'Eresby, the owner of the island, exactly after the description in the Lady of the Lake. The chairs were made of crooked branches of trees and covered with deer-skins, the tables were laden with armor and every variety of weapon, and the rough beams of the building were hung with antlers and other spoils of the chase.

"Here's where she lived!" said the captain, with the gravity of a cicerone at the Forum, "and _noo_, if ye'll come out, I'll _show_ you the echo!"

We followed to the highest point of the island, and the Highlandman gave a scream that showed considerable practice, but I thought he would have burst his throat in the effort. The awful echo went round, "as mentioned in the bill of performance," every separate mountain screaming back the discord till you would have thought the Trosachs a crew of mocking giants. It was a wonderful echo, but, like most wonders, I could have been content to have had less for my money.

There was a "small silver beach" on the mainland opposite, and above it a high mass of mountain.

"There," said the captain, "gentlemen and ladies, is where Fitz-James _blew'd_ his bugle, and waited for the 'light shallop' of Ellen Douglas; and here, where you landed and came up _them_ steps, is where she brought him to the bower, and the very tree's still there,--as you see'd me tak' hold of it,--and over the hill, yonder, is where the gallant gray giv' out, and breathed _his_ last, and (will you turn round, if you please, them that likes?) yonder's where Fitz-James met Red Murdoch that killed Blanche of Devon, and right across this water _swum_ young Greme that disdained the regular boat, and I s'pose on that lower step set the old Harper and Ellen many a time a-watching for Douglas,--and now, if you'd like to hear the echo once more----"

"Heaven forbid!" was the universal cry; and, in fear of our ears, we put the bower between us and Captain Rob's lungs, and followed the Highland girl back to the boat.

From Ellen's Isle to the head of the small creek, so beautifully described in the "Lady of the Lake," the scenery has the same air of lavish and graceful vegetation, and the same features of mingled boldness and beauty. It is a spot altogether that one is sure to live much in with memory. I see it as clearly now as then.

The whiskey had circulated pretty freely among the crew, and all were more or less intoxicated. Captain Rob's first feat on his legs was to drop my friend's gun-case and break it to pieces, for which he instantly got a cuff between the eyes from the boxing dandy that would have done the business for a softer head. The Scot was a powerful fellow, and I anticipated a row; but the tremendous power of the blow and the skill with which it was planted quite subdued him. He rose from the grass as white as a sheet, but quietly shouldered the portmanteau with which he had fallen, and trudged on with sobered steps to the inn.

We took a post-chaise immediately for Callender, and it was not till we were five miles from the foot of the lake that I lost my apprehensions of an apparition of the Highlander from the darkening woods. We arrived at Callender at nine, and the next morning at sunrise were on our way to breakfast at Stirling.

THE ISLAND OF STAFFA AND FINGAL'S CAVE.

BERIAH BOTFIELD.

[The islands adjoining the Scottish Highlands have much in them
to interest the traveller, both in the character and habits of
the people and the aspects of nature. As respects natural
phenomena, the scenery of the island of Staffa and Fingal's
Cave is of especial interest, the development of columnar
basalt rocks here being unequalled in extent and perfection.
From Botfield's "Journal of a Tour through the Highlands of
Scotland during the Summer of 1829" we select the following
description of Staffa and the adjacent coast and islands.]

The full moon shone in cloudless splendor upon the tranquil waters of the bay and the dark shore of Morven. Lights were occasionally seen to gleam from the motionless vessels, and, in the stillness of the night, the distant waterfalls were heard to pour amidst the woody recesses of Drumfin, the romantic residence of McLean, the laird of Coll, on the opposite side of the bay. Beyond the mouth of the harbor, across the Sound of Mull, appeared the rugged coast and wild hills of Morven, so celebrated in the heroic strains of Ossian, upon which, whatever may be the opinion of the spectator as to the authenticity of these celebrated poems, it is impossible to look, at such a time as this, without the deepest emotion. Indeed, the celebrated traveller, Dr. Clarke, who ever regarded them as an ingenious fiction, blended with a very scanty portion of traditional information, confessed that he could not, nevertheless, avoid feeling some degree of local enthusiasm as he passed the shores upon which so vast a superstructure of amazing but visionary fable had been erected....

At daybreak we were summoned on board the steamboat, whence we enjoyed a pleasing prospect of the woods and waterfalls surrounding the handsome modern mansion of Drumfin, the residence of McLean, "the chief of the sandy Coll," situated under a range of woody cliffs, upon the margin of a lovely lake, at the eastern point of the Bay of Tobermory. Upon emerging from this harbor, the opening of Loch Sunart, an arm of the sea which deeply indents the rugged coast of Morven, and separates it from the still more wild and rugged district of Ardnamurchan, appeared on our right....

Upon the wild mountain-shore of Ardnamurchan, immediately upon the edge of the sea, the castle of Mingarry appeared, "sternly placed," being surrounded by a polygonal wall, whose edges coincide with those of the ledge of rocks on which it stands; and though it can no longer be said "to overawe the woodland and the waste," yet it is an object of striking interest both from its situation and ancient history. The cliffs which bind this rude shore scarcely rise beyond sixty or one hundred feet in height, but are of a peculiarly savage character, which, combined with the prevailing swell of the mighty Western Ocean, renders any attempt at landing both difficult and dangerous.

[As they proceeded, a long chain of islands was passed, while
on the coast at length appeared Cailleach Head, so called from
the extremely close resemblance of a portion of the rock to the
human head. Thence they gained a magnificent view of the coast
of Canna, and saw, beautiful in the distance, the dark-blue
mountains of the island of Skye, while other islands gemmed the
waters nearer at hand.]

Upon this beautiful view of these islands we longed for winged feet to leap from isle to isle; and though the number of the Western Islands exceeds two hundred, our flight of fancy would not

"pause till perched on Kilda's steep,
The last fair daughter of the Western deep."

On emerging from the Sound of Mull, and passing the stormy cape of Cailleach Head, we observed the bold rocks of the western coast of Mull, veined with trap, and frequented by flocks of sea-fowl. As we proceeded down the strait, between the islands of Coll and of Mull, the little archipelago of the Treshanish Islands came in sight. As we drew near these singular islands, consisting of Fladda, Linga, Bach, and the two Cairnburgs, we gradually discerned their columnar structure, which, though not so decided as that of Staffa, yet appeared sufficiently evident to warrant the supposition that these are similar rocks of basalt emerging from the deep, and just sufficiently clothed with verdure to merit the appellation of islands. Upon the larger of the Cairnburgs we saw, upon our right, as we approached its shore, a ruined fortalice, used as a place of refuge by the warlike and turbulent McLeans of Duart. This was a place of strength in the Norwegian times, but is now only tenanted by a few wandering sheep, as are also Fladda and Bach, which last, from its singularly oval shape, has obtained from mariners the name of the Dutchman's Cap.

This little chain of islets, with their treble summits and varied forms, appeared under a thousand different aspects as we advanced between them and the coast of Mull. Engaged as our attention had been by these interesting objects, it was effectually diverted when we beheld, for the first time, the celebrated island of Staffa, so justly esteemed one of the greatest natural curiosities the world can boast, and well worth all the perils of the voyage; since no description, however eloquent, no picture, however vivid, can portray this admirable demonstration of nature's power as it is seen and felt by the beholder.

Beyond Staffa we discerned, as yet indistinctly, the tower of the cathedral upon the Isle of Iona; and, more distantly to the extreme west, the island of Tiree; while close upon our left appeared the range of rocky precipices which render the coast of Mull so interesting.... In the distance rose proudly to heaven the lofty summit of Ben More, and the lesser mountain of Mamclachaig, in Mull.

Little islets, some of them bearing vestiges of ancient forts, are scattered over the face of the deep, between Ulva and Staffa, to which island, as we approached, our gaze was eagerly directed; and as we beheld its unrivalled columnar structure more distinctly, we were enabled to appreciate more justly the far-famed wonders of this precious gem of the sea. Having stayed our course underneath its most precipitous and attractive side, fronting the southwest, we instantly got into the boat, and rowed off for Fingal's Cave, over unusually quiescent water.

As the tide was ebbing fast, we landed at the entrance of the cave underneath the most magnificent arch it is possible to conceive; the mouth of the cave being seventy feet high and about forty-two broad. We scrambled on without difficulty along its eastern side, over the flat tops of the broken yet upright pillars, which form an excellent causeway, into the interior of the cave, and there contemplated, with infinite awe and admiration, this magnificent temple of the God of Nature....

This celebrated cave is entirely composed of basaltic pillars, having from five to six sides in general, but varying to seven or eight, the ends of which are generally about two feet in diameter, accurately corresponding with each other at the roof and bottom of the cavern, which has been formed, it may be conjectured, by the action of the sea undermining the jointed columns, and thus producing the excavation, which gradually diminishes in breadth to its termination, two hundred and twenty-seven feet from its entrance. This majestic vault is poetically termed in Gaelic, Uiamh Binn--the Musical Cave--from the echo of the waves within its mighty recesses, and somewhat unaccountably has obtained the name of Fingal, though tradition has not connected it in any way with the illustrious exploits of that Ossianic hero.

As the tide never entirely leaves the cave, the only floor it has is the beautifully translucent green wave of the sea, reflecting from its bosom those tints which vary and harmonize the darker hues of the rock, and often throwing on the basaltic columns the flickering lights which its undulating surface receives from the rays of the sun without.

The roof of the cave is extremely curious and beautiful, the interstices between the pillars being filled up by stalactites of varied hue, whose beautiful tints have the fine effect of greatly enriching this natural mosaic work. The murmur of the swelling tide, mingling with the deep-toned echoes of the vault, which grandly reverberated to the repeated reports of our double-barrelled pistol, added to the stupendous magnificence of the columns, and the splendid singularity of the scene, produced emotions in the mind which defy description, and which future impressions will never be able to obliterate.

Reluctantly quitting the Cave of Fingal, we proceeded in our boat under the highest part of the magnificent colonnade of basaltic pillars, which rise to the height of one hundred and twelve feet above high-water mark, between Fingal's Cave and a square dark aperture in the lowest stratum of the rock called the Boat Cave, because it is accessible by that mode alone, and runs in the rock one hundred and forty feet, like the gallery of a mine. The columnar structure of the trap rock is extremely evident above and around this cave, and continues equally so as far as the Cormorant's or McKinnon's Cave to the west, which derives its former name from the feathered race that inhabit it, and of which a fine specimen flew over our heads as we approached the spacious entrance of the cave.

This singular aperture is peculiarly striking from the simplicity and regularity of its form. The columns are extremely perfect, and rise immediately from a black amorphous mass of indurated matter, through which are dispersed nodules and fragments of a still darker rock, altogether closely resembling the scoriae of a volcano, strongly corroborative of the igneous origin of basaltic rocks. The height of this cave is fifty feet, its breadth forty-eight, and its length two hundred and twenty-four feet. The range of columns over its front is extremely beautiful, being hollowed or bent into a concave recess, while the upper part presents a curious and regular geometric ceiling of a striking and unusual appearance.

Repassing the Boat Cave and the range of columns above it, we landed below the echoing arch of the great cave, and availing ourselves of the natural steps afforded by the gigantic causeway, which rises step by step up to the base of the grand colonnade, walked to the detached rock called Buachaille ([Greek: Bougolos]), or the Herdsman. This noted rock rises about thirty feet above the waves, consisting of an agglomeration of columns resting against each other, and meeting, until they form a conical body, which appears to lie upon a bed of singularly curved horizontal columns visible only at low water,--an advantage which we fortunately enjoyed, and found several sea anemones in the hollows of the rocks.