The broom's tough roots his ladder made, High on the south, huge Benvenue 2 Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl'd, While on the north, through middle air, 4 Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.5 1 [Loch Ketturin is the Celtic pronunciation. In his Notes to "The Fair Maid of Perth," the author has signified his belief that the lake was named after the Catterins, or wild robbers, who haunted its shores.] 2 [Benvenue-is literally the little mountain-i. e. as contrasted with Benledi and Benlomond.] 8 [MS." His ruined sides and fragments hoar, While on the north to middle air."] 4 [According to Graham, Ben-an, or Bennan, is a mere diminutive of Ben-Mountain.] 5 [Perhaps the art of landscape-painting in poetry, has XV. From the steep promontory gazed1 And, "What a scene were here," he cried, In that soft vale, a lady's bower; Chime, when the groves were still and mute! Her forehead in the silver wave, How solemn on the ear would come The holy matin's distant hum, While the deep peal's commanding tone never been displayed in higher perfection than in these stanzas, to which rigid criticism might possibly object that the picture is somewhat too minute, and that the contemplation of it detains the traveller somewhat too long from the main purpose of his pilgrimage, but which it would be an act of the greatest injustice to break into fragments, and present by piecemeal. Not so the magnificent scene which bursts upon the bewildered hunter as he emerges at length from the dell, and commands, at one view, the beautiful expanse of Loch Katrine."]-Critical Review, August, 1820. [MS.-"From the high promontory gazed The stranger, awe-struck and amazed."] 1 A sainted hermit from his cell, XVI. "Blithe were it then to wander here! 1 [MS.-"To hospitable feast and hall."] My chamber for the night must be."] 8 The clans who inhabited the romantic regions in the neighbourhood of Loch Katrine, were, even until a late period, much addicted to predatory incursions upon their Lowland neighbours. "In former times, those parts of this district, which are situated beyond the Grampian range, were rendered almost inaccessible by strong barriers of rocks, and mountains, and lakes. It was a border country, and though on the very verge of the low country, it was almost totally I am alone;—my bugle-strain XVII. But scarce again his horn he wound,1 sequestered from the world, and, as it were, insulated with respect to society. 'Tis well known that in the Highlands, it was, in former times, accounted not only lawful, but honourable, among hostile tribes, to commit depredations on one another; and these habits of the age were perhaps strengthened in this district, by the circumstances which have been mentioned. It bordered on a country, the inhabitants of which, while they were richer, were less warlike than they, and widely differenced by language and manners."— GRAHAM'S Sketches of Scenery in Perthshire, Edin. 1806, p. 97. The reader will therefore be pleased to remember, that the scene of this poem is laid in a time, "When tooming faulds, or sweeping of a gien, 1 [MS.-" "The bugle shrill again he wound, 2 [MS." A little skiff shot to the bay. And when the boat had touch'd the sand, That round the promontory steep And kiss, with whispering sound and slow, XVIII. And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace1 A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace, Of finer form, or lovelier face! What though the sun, with ardent frown, Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown,- 1 [MS." A finer form, a fairer face, Had never marble Nymph or Grace, |