MAPS. COUNTRY BETWEEN STIRLING AND OBAN (containing the scenery of "The Lady of the Lake," "Legend of Montrose," part of "Rob Roy," etc.) Page. 212 EASTERN AND MIDDLE BORDER, from Berwick to Moffatdale (containing scenery of "The Lay," "The Monastery," and parts of "Marmion," "The Abbot," "Black Dwarf," "St. Ronan's Well," etc., and the vicinity of Melrose and Abbotsford). GREAT BRITAIN FROM MORAY FIRTH TO YORK, with a clew of the Tour. . 336 352 A TOUR THROUGH THE LANDS OF SCOTT. I. INTRODUCTION. At first, some may think that in this busy, "practical" age, a tour into the regions of Romance is hardly worthy occupation for those experiencing the benefits and responsibilities of existing civilization. Afterward, some may reflect that rather a large number of persons wish to be amused, and are endowed with imagination, curiosity, and love of the beautiful, and inclination to use these qualities in obtaining pleasure from many objects and places, enriching earth with not a few of her truest charms. At some time, indeed, and in some manner, almost every one feels the fascinations of that World of the Past, animated by beings historical, legendary, or created by poets and romancers,—beings who, though unseen, yet active, will then make their existence felt, haunting some scene associated with a story of country, of familiar neighborhood, or, perhaps, become the home of creatures of mind or of fancy, grown to be among our inseparable friends. Evidence enough there is, even if but little is produced, that never was this feeling stronger or more general than in this generation, however prosaic some may rate it. Never before has there been more careful guard of historic monuments, art-treasures, or memorials of famous dead. Never before has there been such frequent visiting of places hardly known, except for charms with which Genius has invested them. From pedestal, or sculptured wall, or shafted window, the memorials every year more numerous-look out on city, town, and rural scenery. Few pilgrimages there may be now to saints' shrines, but the visits of literally a travelling world continually re-consecrating such poets' shrines as Stratford and Abbotsford. Scores of Scotch inns and travel-routes, hosts of sight-showers scattered almost everywhere, earn subsistence quite real to many families, because this generation feels the fascinations of those beings and creations of that world, that, though of Romance or of the Historic Past, yet speaks to us. With pleasure, and no small instruction, if we choose to receive it, we realize to ourselves this modern conversion of mythology, haunting with some of its innumerable unseen spirits almost every spot of countries longest civilized, or, visibly, appearing to us in statue or in picture. Few of us, indeed, who would not visit, and enjoy the story of, that San Carlo looking majestically over his great and beautiful lake; Martin Luther in his mighty company of witnesses at Worms; sublime Dante at Florence; brilliant Sir Peter Paul beneath the incomparable spire at his own Antwerp; or the nearly endless palacewalls bright with "All the Glories of France;" that richly-colored, stately hemicycle of Delaroche; or those wonderful pictures of the great eras of humanity with which Kaulbach has glorified the vast staircase hall at Berlin; that frescoed Niebelungenlied in Munich ; or the "Wizard of the North," sitting among those whom he made to live, looking down on Edinburgh. Few of us who would refuse, even if only in fancy, to follow towards Canterbury Chaucer's "nineand-twenty in a cumpany of sundrie folk;" few refuse to linger beneath the limes and elms of Stratford churchyard, or among quiet old English haunts of Shakspeare's creations; few who, sometime, could not love those charming, heathery, birch-grown shores where one feels that Ellen Douglas must have been; few not enjoy storied Rhenish hill-sides, that fountain at Vaucluse, those mightier shores where Trojan exiles sought divinely designated homes; or, grandest of all, that vast extent of scenes through which the course of empire marks its way. For few of us, indeed, have not sometime, in some place, experienced — thanks for growing civilization -the feeling expressed by Dr. Johnson in his introduction to desscription of his visit to "that illustrious island" Iona. "To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue." And when first treading the soil of that isle That isle that is itself a world Where "glory with its dust has blended, Till earth and seas and skies are rended," "One half" whose "soil has walked the rest how many have felt the same thoughts! " To these many, to Americans peculiarly, how especially present are such thoughts among scenes almost everywhere throughout that venerable island, Britain. Notwithstanding any antipathies, any greater or less causes for even exasperation, Americans, by lineage, by education, by disposition sometimes, of all people most allied to Old England, may, and do, among her nearly countless shrines of the World of the Past, affectionately and delightedly feel their fascinations, -and feel thus, perhaps, for the first time profoundly. There, indeed, Americans may feel a certain inherited ownership in places dreamed about during school-life, or thought about during readings in later years, — places in whose history their ancestors, possibly, held interest common with the ancestors of the people now occupying them, — places animated by creations of authors who have been and continue household companions, whose language renders those creations not foreigners, but kinsfolk and near friends. There, indeed, amid the busy occupations of an active, living people, Americans quite likely, to a greater or less degree, first, if ever, become pilgrims of our every-day world among the shrines and the fascinations of the World of the Past. -- Washington Irving wrote: "To an American visiting Europe the long voyage he has to make is an excellent preparative. The temporary absence of worldly scenes and employments produces a state of mind peculiarly fitted to receive new and vivid impressions. The vast space of waters that separates the hemispheres is like a blank page in existence. There is no gradual transition by which, as in Europe, the features and population of one country blend almost imperceptibly with those of another. From the moment you lose sight of the land you have left, all is vacancy until you step on the opposite shore, and are launched at once into the bustle and novelties of another world." Notwithstanding the quite evident fact that times and circumstances have changed greatly since Washington Irving's voyage to Europe, yet conditions he describes continue applicable to travellers after instruction or pleasure. Those who are not as good sailors as he is reported to have been, especially those who persistently reside in a "seven-by-two" berth during a whole Atlantic passage, cannot naturally be expected to believe their voyage "an excellent preparative" to any thing, certainly to a "sentimental journey." Yet it is a departure from accustomed routine of life productive of "a state of mind peculiarly fitted to receive new and vivid impressions," -a departure for which, indeed, the afflicted mentioned are to a degree indemnified by particular development of such a state. Confusion is apt to beset a traveller who arrives in a land crowded with scenes and objects of interest, and who has not formed some special plan of observation. A mode of avoiding this confusion may be suggested to others, as it was to the writer, by putting researches of the latter systematically together, and forming a tour that, in whole or in part, he hopes others may find as agreeable as he found it. And this is a tour that may be travelled over mentally, if not bodily, while one is reading astonishingly varied and extended pages of romance, around which lingers a spirit enchanting them even more fascinatingly than it enchants the long series of shrines and places ranged throughout the route of this tour, and that this spirit everywhere glorifies. To begin this tour, one may be supposed mentally or bodily to have reached Old England. THOSE II. HOSE who search for picturesque and suggestive scenes of that World of the Past and of Romance into which journeying is proposed, may, at first, think they find "Passing Away" expressed upon many too many of its monuments and scenes. Notwithstanding frequent "restorations" or preservations, things existing are apt to seem to be retaining few of its real or fancied aspects. |