pleasures of a mountain progress it offered some compensation by swelling unnumbered streams bastening down unnumbered gullies, and rushing, in various directions, as to some thirsty, boundless reservoir, impatient to receive within its bosom their congregated waters. The reservoir, in fact, was that of Loch Lomond. Within a few miles of its upper extremity, these tributary streams, in their rapid descent over the rocks, assumed, in a thousand places bordering on the road, the importance of steaming and impetuons cataracts* ; and so many of them were heard at once, as powerfully exemplified the Apocalyptic image, "the sound of many waters." continuous diffusion over the surface of the peat, of the roots of trees; so that all the country was certainly once a forest*. I noticed also two small encampments, pitched, in these houseless regions, for repairers of the roads. After several hours and miles of minor miseries, I reached Tyndrum at ten o'clock. Soon after leaving this place the next morning, I was again overtaken by a drizzling rain, through which might only be imagined what could not be seen. Among the invisibles of the vicinity, was the holy pool in Strathfillan, formed by the eddying of a river round a rock. In this, lunatic patients are dipped three times, and then left bound among the ruins of a neighbouring chapel, during the succeeding night; an excellent plan, one would calculate, not so much for removing as for inducing alienation of mind, in all cases where its existence was desirable. The victim is said sometimes to die in the night; but if, in the morning, he be found unshackled, hopes are then cherished of his recovery. Cures, as I was assured, are sometimes performed. By missing the turn at Crianlaroch, I wandered some miles out of the way; but by this accident—and the weather for the time was rather clearer-was unexpectedly gratified by the beautiful scenery of Loch Dochart, winding at the foot of Benmore. This lake, as I have since heard, contains a floating islet, formed by the intertexture of the stems and roots of aquatic plants, and which is sometimes browsed by cattle. These, when it is driven on shore, embark upon it, and are not unfrequently indulged with a voyage round the loch. The rain now came on again; and, under an accumulation of petty distresses, I traversed the mountains to the romantic retirements of Glenfallach a name signifying the hidden vale. Unpropitious as the rain had been to the Was this the region of the Sylva Caledonia ? The weather was most happily favourable, as I skirted the shores of Loch Lomond. This enchanting expanse amply merits all that even the poets of the picturesque would have ascribed to its diversified beauty. The intervening border of rock, between the road and the lake, thickly shaded, grouped, or sprinkled with trees, in all their summer foliage, carried along alternations of valley and steep, occasionally retiring from any visible connexion with the water, then presenting ever-changing glimpses of its undulating surface-such an affluent example of Nature's powers to delight her votaries, might warm frigidity itself with the fervours of enthusiasm. If I was incapable of finding the sublime in Scotland, I was certainly able to discover the beautiful, and to acknowledge the discovery with all my heart. A similar incapacity, counterpoised in some sort by a similar confession, was the result of a tour, some years ago, in North Wales; but I then lost my credit with certain of • When these burns are swelled by assuming the hue referred to in the Lay wet weather, they become discoloured, of the Last Minstrel : "Each wave was crested with tawny foam, Like the mane of a chesnut steed." my picturesque friends, who, I am I do beseech your Grace for charity, June 24.-Tarbet. This also is both? day. During the season, the Marion steam-boat makes her daily voyage round the lake from Balloch. My sensibility could not fail to be lacerated by the audacity of this monster, disturbing by her paddles the waters of the loch, which demand the appropriate embellishment of a vessel under sail; and must, doubtless, resent the intrusion of a machine, propelled by fire, and smoking like the cone of a glass-house. But it was truly said of life," All thy accommodations are nursed by baseness;" and I went on board the Marion, disengaged from the sensibilities of the morning, and very glad to obtain an easy, dry, and even luxurious conveyance, to a ferry within two or three miles of Dunbarton. We coasted the lake to Rob Roy's Cave, round an islet of incomparable beauty, containing a ruin inhabited by a recluse, who has exiled himself, for some years, within the limits of the island, and was seen, as we passed, gathering sticks. On the whole, I think, that I prefer yesterday's ride on the shore, 10 the voyage of this morning. After all, a steam-packet is far preferable to a sailing boat, for surveying the scenery. It is regular in its progress, and steady in its motions; and the deck view is not interrupted by the intervention of sails and rigging. Add to this, that in a shower, much may be seen from the windows distributed on either side of the cabin. Is there no method of consuming the smoke of the engine? The dimensions of Loch Lomond, so usually exaggerated, are now pretty well ascer tained to be, a length of twentyfour miles, by a breadth, in the widest part, of six; covering a space of, perhaps, twenty thousand acres. Foul rumours are abroad, that measures will be taken to drain it; that is, to a certain degree; for no efforts of human avarice and mechanical skill can possibly lay it dry. The odious monosyllable dry, the echoes of its bordering groves would, I am convinced, refuse to repeat. Your consolation must be, that a scarcely perceptible lowering of the surface, if my informant was no flatterer, is all that the proprietors want. They accuse the lake of encroachments, and are only anxious to recover their lost rights. Let me leave its enchanting beach, its islands some of them populous with deerand its mountain boundaries, with the inquiry, What is admired on the lakes of Locarno and Como, on the Lago di Gardo, and on the expanse of Lungern and the magic waters of Switzerland, which may not be seen here? Soon after leaving Balloch, I passed by Smollett's pillar. From this road appeared, once more, the twin rocks of Dunbarton castle. Their guilt can no longer be extenuated: if I can hear you defend them again, I will manage to construct two insulated anthillocks on the velvet horizontal lawn of your flower-garden at —; and leave the inference to yourself. In the churchyard of a village between Glasgow and Kilmarnock, I observed a portable pulpit, used on the preceding Sunday at a sacrament. The common method of celebrating the eucharist, in coun4ry places, appears to be one of the darkest blemishes in the ceremo nial of the Church of Scotland. That Establishment, usually regard ed as the antipodes of the Church of Rome, does in this respect retain, what has about it something of the vulgarism and worst delusions of Popery. The sacrament becomes a kind of pilgrimage; and some measure, one would almost fear, of the old confidence in the wafer, is transferred to the occasion. But, supposing this not to be the case, the custom is still no better than an English wake; and indeed, in one material point, it is much worse. The waker professes to mingle no reli. gion with the attendance at his saturnalia; but the sacramentarian goes through the ritual as a kind of necessary passport to the humours of the day it is his penance before the carnival. Should not institutions, which are essentially devotional, be conducted with all possible quietness; with an absence of the bustling and tumultuous accompaniments, occasioned by crowds of populace? The idea of a devout mob revolts the mind by its incongruity. Whether Burus's Holy Fair by which name the rustic sacramental occasions of Scotland are familiarly designatedbe a correct picture, or otherwise, I never inquired; but no one, who holds opinions of human corruption, similar to your own, ought to be blamed, if, on the ground of those opinions, he calculate that licentiousness, disorder, and demoralizing impressions are the natural results of this (may I call it so?) carnival-sacrament. Temptation loses none of its malignity, by meeting men within the inclosure of religious ordinances. The Temple itself became a den of thieves; and the sacrament of the early Corinthian Church was notoriously polluted by sensual indulgence. It might be added, that an abuse of the same institution became one of the most powerful instruments, by which the policy of Antichrist enslaved and cheated its victims; and, from whatever cause, its administration, even according to the reformed rites of the Church of England, does not prevent its reception from being, to all appearance, considered, in too many cases, as a death-bed key to unlock the gates of heaven, at the close of a life of practical infidelity*, Is not this, in truth, the essence of transubstantiation; the oblation of the consecrated bread and wine as wine as a meritorious, purifying This may be called the Protestant Succession to the principles of such persons as, in the dark ages, "to be sure of Paradise, Or, in Franciscan, thought to pass disDying, put on the weeds of Dominic ; guis'd." sacrifice, offered at least once, and that once efficacious! How far an equally mistaken view of the eucharist prevails among too many of the Scotch sacramentarians, I know not. Superstition, or a blind faith of some kind or other, may be called the natural religion of mankind. It appears to be one of the last distempers of the mind, which the Gospel removes. It is by no means extinct in the "land of Bibles," and in the land of Presbyterians. It is matter of some surprise, that any degree of it should have vitiated the scanty ceremonial of the Kirk. But I must leave the subject in better hands. Men of serious minds in the Church of Scotland, are, doubtless, anxious to reform the abuse in question: in the mean time, they will continue to educe at least one good from acknowledged evil, by addressing the multitudes with an earnestness proportionate to their numbers, their errors, and the many mischievous consequences, so very likely to grow out of the admixtures and confusions connected with a popular religious assembly*. June 28.-The country, from Kilmarnock to Dumfries, is well known to be sprinkled with recollections, good and evil, of Burns, Mauchline is the scene of the Holy Fair; and near this place, I passed by the farm of Mossgiel, or Mosgaville, which he held with his brother Gilbert, after their father's death. The man who drove the coach to-day, between Kilmarnock andCumnock, was, it seems, the The Sunday is observed in Scotland generally with greater strictness than among ourselves; especially in attendance on public worship. It is said, that when the French princes resided at Holyrood House, and noticed the decorum of an Edinburgh Sabbath, they expressed a conviction, that the blessings of Heaven must descend upon a people, by whom the day of rest was so faithfully kept.-No steam-boats, or public carriages (except the mails) are allowed to be used, except on " lawful days." identical person, who, in Novem ber, 1785 (a month of high importance in the annals of the Caledonian muse!) was assisting Robert Burns at the plough, when he turned up the mouse's nest! The field where this incident occurred, is close to the road side, and, as you might expect, is regarded as part of the sacred glebe of Scotland. As the vicinage of Loch Katrine is the Palestine of this country, the santa casa, near Ayr, where Burns was born, is its Loretto." Here pilgrims roam, who stray so far to seek," and adore the relics of their canonized poet. Kirk Alloway is also numbered among the regular stages of their pilgrimage. Every knot and splinter of the rafters of this ruin has long since been worked up (like the mulberry tree of another poetical saint), into snuff boxes and trinkets. I crossed the Lugar, Ayr, Irvine, and Nith, "rivers well known to song;" and especially to the countrymen of Burns, many of whom read his works, the second Bible of their land, with more intent than they bestow upon the first. The tomb of the prophet is at Dumfries; the cemetery of which town is a real curiosity, and ought to be visited by every traveller, independently of its principal ornament. There is a line in the Night Thoughts, "How populous, how vital is the Grave!" powerfully recalled by this scene; as the spectator involuntarily calculates the numbers who sleep below, in casting his eye over the vast variety of sepulchral monuments, covering their remains. There is a kind of original solemnity diffused around this portion of " the waste dominions of the dead;" which, I should suppose, is almost an unique example. In the north-west angle what is usually called the form of a appears a building, constructed in temple, open on three sides (resembling the burying-place of Robertson, in the Grey Friars churchyard at Edinburgh), and containing the mortal remains of Burns. It is inclosed within a small garden, kept in perfect order, and decorated, among other plants, by a luxuriant Scotch thistle. Under this edifice will soon be erected a characteristic monument; with, of course, the usual assortment of emblems, and allegorical figures, from the chisel of Turnerelli; it is already arrived, and deposited, unpacked in the church. Another monument, and, I believe, one more ample and costly, is to be raised at Edinburgh. And such are the posthumous idolatries lavished on this man; while, in respect to certain, (of whom the world was not worthy!) "Their ashes flew, No marble tells us whither." The popularity of Burns's writings, should by no means create astonishment: they are so purely national, as scarcely to be indebted for a single sentiment, illustration, or phrase, to any country except his own:-all is the indigenous growth of home. A Scotchman sees the glens, braes, shaws, burns, and scars of his native land, peopled by the creations of his own poet's genius. But, alas! this populace of the fancy has, too often, httle innocence of character! I was sorry to observe that some of the later and cheap collections of his works, have admitted several exceptionable pieces, refused by Dr. Currie. It is indeed true that the same editions contain something like an antidote; but will readers administer to themselves, what at best is only half a cure? Nothey will select their parts, as the poet himself instructs them; - "For why of death begin a tale? CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 218. "This life, so far's I understand, Is all enchanted fairy land, Where pleasure is the magic wand That, wielded right, Makes hours like minutes, hand in hand, Dance by, full light." While such a stream of voluptuous delusion winds through his pages, how few will pause, as they follow its course, to gather the caustic and bitter fruits of repentance, occasionally clustered on its banks! The truth simply is, that the serious parts of his writings will be most beneficial to those who least need them; while others will throw them away, disgusted with their gloominess and intrusion, and resolving not to be preached to, even by such a good fellow as Burns. June 29.-To-day closed my six weeks' ramble into Scotland. I crossed the Sark this afternoon, with the hope of re-visiting the country, at some future time, and congratulating myself, in having found, within the home circuit, what many seek, I am convinced, with inferior success, among the contaminations of the continent; and this too, although three weeks of the six were nearly lost by unfavourable weather; so that I was compelled to fly over hill and dale, almost with the rapidity of Malise the henchman, when he bore the fiery cross in the day of the gathering. In fact, I have not so properly seen Scotland, as caught a distant glance of what is to be seen; a mere outline of some detached groupe, in a magnificent composition. Under the influence of these parting im pressions, combined with others I trust of a loftier character, which have long cemented our intimacy, I remain, my dear sir, Always faithfully your's |