ROB ROY receded from view, than the monument of Smollett rises in sight. The inimitable author of Roderick Random was born on the banks of the clearest stream in Scotland, and lies buried on the banks of the most turbid river in Italy. He, whose youthful imagination has been delighted with the exquisite delineations of Smollett's pen, will hardly fail to stop and sigh, if not shed a tear, at the foot of his monument, whether on the Arno or the Leven. I have had the melancholy pleasure of inscribing my name, as a testimony of my gratitude and admiration for the dead, in both places-and, during the remainder of the drive from Loch Lomond to Dumbarton, the characters and scenes of Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphrey Clinker, so completely excluded all impressions of the natural scenery through which I passed, that I know no more of it than I do of the darkest catacombs on the banks of the Nile. Reflection is a sad marplot of perception; and often have I had to lament that intensity of thought has disturbed or superseded accuracy of observation. The sensorium, too much occupied with its own internal operations, neglects or turns a deaf ear to the reports of the senses from without—and thus, opportunities are lost which can never be recalled!

DUMBARTON.

At the end of a short drive, we are roused from our reminiscences of the bard of Leven, by a stupendous object of great interest. An insulated and almost perpendicular rock, some five or six hundred feet high, springing from an alluvial beach, crowned with battlements, chronicled in history, and commanding the most extensive views of a majestic river, an Alpine coast, and a boundless ocean, is well worth an attentive survey from the plain below, and a laborious ascent to its highest pinnacle. The venerable summit of the most ancient and the most impregnable fortress of Caledonia is disfigured—I had almost said, defiled -by tasteless and inappropriate buildings. I sincerely hope that the indignant genius of old Ben-Lomond will, one of these days, send down such a potent blast from his powerful lungs, as shall pitch the governor's house, with all its etceteras (except the inmates) clean into the Clyde, to be replaced by structures more castellated in form, and more antiquated in appearance.

The projection of such a basaltic rock through an alluvial stratum, on this confluent angle of the Leven and the Clyde, affords a fine example of one of those stupendous operations of nature during some of her con

vulsive and intestine struggles, not much inferior to those which heaved Ailsa and Staffa from the unfathomable bed of the ocean.

It would be strange if such a locality were scanty of historical incidents and legendary lore. Dumbarton rock and castle are not deficient in this respect; but these I must pass over. We cannot help shuddering at the idea of treading on the same stones that were polluted by the treacherous foot of a MENTEITH-and our indignation changes into sorrow, when we sit down on a fragment of that ruined tower, where a WALLACE pined in captivity, before he was delivered up to the southron foeman!

THE CLYDE.

The Clyde is the most Christian river on which I have ever had the good luck to sail. There are more crosses planted on its banks than on the banks of the Tiber, or in half the Catholic churchyards of Oberland or the Vaudois. Sir Walter Scott frequently calls it the "brim-fu' Clyde"—and so it is, especially at high water, when, like a drove of wild Highland cattle, it often manifests a strong dislike to leave its own bonny Scotland, and takes every opportunity of sideling to the right and to the left, if not controlled by sticks and stones.

It is also a very noisy river, from the moment that it leaps over huge ledges of rock, near Lanark, and foams through a rugged channel past the yet more noisy colony of Mr. Owen, till its waters are mixed with the ocean, and flow through the kyles of Bute, and fifty other boisterous and dangerous passages, among the Hebridean Cyclades—the pibroch, the pipes, and the fiddle intermingling their melodious notes with the hundred dialects and intonations of English and Scotch, of Gaelic and of Erse, not omitting the equally intelligible language and music of kyloes, sheep, hogs, dogs, poultry, and various other biped and quadruped passengers up and down the Clyde, bent on different errands.

A stranger standing on Wallace's Tower at the summit of Dumbarton Castle, and surveying the majestic Clyde, would be tempted to imagine that the thousand factories of cotton, calico, and cutlery, erected on the banks of the river, together with all their beams, traddles, and shuttles, had taken it into their heads to have an excursion, by steam, as well as their masters; and, with laudable Scotch industry, were combining pleasure with profit, and keeping their clanking machinery, plashing paddles, and roaring steam blasts, in full play from the Gorbals of Glasgow to the Castle of Rothsay.

The surface of the waters presents some curious phenomena.

It is

ploughed into broad furrows, resembling deep, but boiling and eddying streams, on each side of which is a white and foaming torrent, like that so often seen coming down a mountain gully after a heavy shower; while diagonal and constantly widening lines of waves diverge from the track of one ploughing machine, till they meet and clash with those of another, pursuing the same or opposite courses.

Meantime the atmosphere is in keeping with, and characteristic of, the great city of Glasgow. It is a huge canopy of tartan, or of striped calico, produced by long narrow lines of smoke, drawn out to interminable lengths, crossing each other in a hundred directions, on every breeze, and chequered with the still narrower lines of grey steam perpetually issuing from the safety-valves of the boilers.

"

The daughter of the Dawn" was just beginning to tread, with her rosy feet, the summits of the mountains, when we were falling down, with the ebb tide, from the little harbour of Dumbarton, and crossing the broad shadow which the rock cast on the smooth water beneath. Saunders, the boatman, whose eyes were scarcely open, had yet an eye to economy, and wishing to shorten his course and abridge his labour, grounded us hard and fast on a point which was rapidly becoming bare by the recession of the tide. This false economy occasioned honest Sawney treble the work he would otherwise have had—and at length we gained the stream.

GREENOCK.

I wonder that some of our descriptive and picturesque tourists do not spend "six weeks on the Clyde," instead of "six weeks on the Rhine" -exploring its shores and the innumerable lochs, creeks, and sounds that lie about its debouches. There is no lack of castles, ruins, islands, ships, rocks, mountains, cascades, lakes, cliffs, forests, villas, towns, commerce and cultivation, to fill their albums—and even make a costly quarto into the bargain. "The Clyde, always spacious, and always covered with its shipping, offers a scene of life and brilliancy, unparalleled on any of our sea-shores, and enhanced by the majestic screen of mountains to the north, for ever varying, under the changes of a restless atmosphere; but, under all these changes, for ever magnificent."

Greenock, which, to a Southron ear or fancy, conveys no other idea than that of Wapping or Rotherhithe, is not only most beautifully situated; but is, in fact, one of the most extraordinary spots I have ever visited. I once thought that the tide of human existence flowed about Charingcross and Cornhill, with unrivalled velocity; but Greenock surpasses either of these confluences. From morn till night, ten minutes seldom

elapse without the advent or departure of from one to ten or fifteen steamers, of all sizes, and fraught with all kinds of cargoes, living and dead, animal and vegetable. The roar of the steam and the plash of the paddles never cease for an instant-the wharfs perpetually vibrate with the concussions of the vessels-crowds of men, women, and children are constantly climbing up and jumping down, in and out of the steamers while the quays are covered with passengers and packages, pressing, flowing, jostling, and tumbling, in such intricate mazes and gyrations, that the head of the spectator becomes giddy with the tumult and confusion. As every steamer that enters or sails from the Clyde, touches, for a few minutes, at Greenock; some faint idea of this moving scene may be conceived; but it is from the pencil of a Wilkie or a Cruikshank that any very sensible or tangible image could be conveyed to the eye. If Cruikshank were to seat himself on a herring barrel, for a few hours in front of the Custom-house at Greenock, with a pot of stout or a stoup of whiskey at his side, he might draw a picture from life, without any exaggeration, that would convulse the metropolis with laughter, from Hyde-park to the London-docks*.

When tired or satisfied with the tumultuous scene of the quays at Greenock, the traveller may ascend, in half an hour, the heights above the port, and there behold one of the finest views in Scotland. The noble screen of the Argyleshire mountains, rising peak over peak, till they vanish in the sky, forms a magnificent distance to the picture, while the middle ground is occupied by the broad expanse of the Clyde, gay with shipping in every direction. Still nearer, the port of Greenock itself, crowded with masts, and sails, and steam chimnies, and buildings, forms an appropriate foreground to a panorama, as variegated as it is picturesque. With a spirit more restless and impatient than falls to the lot of most mortals, I spent two days at Greenock, without the slightest approach to ennui-the comfortable TONTINE furnishing me with ample refection after the toils and pleasures of the day. Let no traveller grudge a day or two at Greenock and its vicinity.

* Some conception may be formed of the effects of steam on the Clyde, when it is stated that an old woman, and one or two of ten bairns, can now gather together the chickens, and eggs that used to be eaten, if produced at all, in the wildest glens of the most barren isles of the Hebrides-embark in a steamer-sell her cargo in Greenock or Glasgow-and be back again in a day or two to her native haunts, with money to pay the rent of her cot and acre for a whole year!

HELENBURGH-PANNANICH.

So, then, the good folks of the Clyde and Argyleshire have not pure water enough from the clouds above, and from their rocky springs, pebble-bottomed streams, and glassy lakes below; but they must drench themselves at a foul fountain near the Kyles of Bute, pregnant with nauseous ingredients of the most scientific description, nearly as difficult to pronounce as terrible to swallow-the scourings, doubtless, of some tannery, blanket manufactory, or soap boilery, in the nether world,

That the spinning Jocks and Jennies of Glasgow should take a summer trip down the Clyde, to inhale the fresh breezes of the Atlantic, and clear their pipes of the cotton, cobwebs, and carbon, therein accumulated during the winter, is rational enough; but that the Highlanders and islanders, who may be said to live in a kind of perpetual showerbath, and whose interiors are as familiar with whiskey, as their exteriors are with rain—that whole clans of the M'Donalds, M'Leans, M'Gregors, M'Leods, M'Phersons, and M'Dougalls, should be seized with an annual fit of hydro-mania, or preference of stinking water to mountain dew, may appear somewhat strange-more especially as the springs of Pannanich do not perfume the air with those sulphureous odours that exhale from the waters of Harrogate, and which used to find such favour with the olfactories of our Caledonian neighbours! Be this as it may, it is astonishing what ample justice the Highlanders do to the healing springs of this place-" for they sit from morning to night by the side of the wells, drinking as often as they can make room for a fresh supply." It has been keenly remarked by a modern traveller, that " if a man's carcase is to be scoured of all diseases as you can scour a house, their practice is perfect."

But why should not Highlanders have their holidays as well as Sassenachs? It is not the medicinal properties of the springs at Cheltenham and Leamington that work the miraculous healing powers which are ascribed to them. It is the change of scene and air-the change of hours and habits—the abstraction from business—the dissipation of care-in short, the new stimulus given to the morale, rather than the operation of salt water on the physique, which performs the wonderful renovation of health. Let, therefore, the pale and sickly beauties of Glasgow imitate their southern sisters, by-" picking cockle-shells in the sand-reading novels-riding on asses-raffling at libraries— buying spars-wishing for dinner first, and bed-time afterwards-and