the beautiful windings of the Forth with the Grampian Hills on the north; Stirling Castle; the wild grandeur of the Trosacks; Ben Nevis and Ben Venue, and the haunted waters of Loch Katrine, every rock and headland garlanded with romance; the bold and majestic shores of Loch Lomond; the haunts of Rob Roy, the Lennox country, and the soft scenery of the Leven.

I passed the night at Callender, twelve miles from Loch Katrine, and spent the evening in reading through the Lady of the Lake. About a mile and a half before reaching the lake, you enter the celebrated Trosacks, or The Bristled Territory. Conceive of two or three hundred hills, wild and precipitous, some higher, some lower, all covered with shrubbery, ivy, and heather, with often a bold "thunder-splintered pinnacle" shooting up from among them; conceive yourself walking through this region on a winding and almost level road, at the foot of these hills, with some new view opening, some striking object arresting you at every step as you proceed, and you may have some idea of that grand panorama of the picturesque-the Trosacks.

As you emerge from this valley of hills and mountains, Loch Katrine presents itself—a narrow strip of water at the first, and never, at any point,

more than two miles wide. You are rowed, ten miles, through the length of the lake, and may spend some of your time, if you please, in fancying where the fairy lady moored her bark, or where, under her magic guidance, it shot across the silver

waters.

A walk of five miles, through a wild country, with some genuine Highland moors on the way, brings you to Inversnaid Mill, on the shore of Loch Lomond. The pass down to Inversnaid is so steep, and dark, and deep, that it seemed to me a hundred men might have been murdered there without being heard-Rob Roy must have held it as a favourite spot. There is a single cottage on the shore; and I entered it with a curiosity inspired by a thousand tales of romance. A Highland cottage, at the bottom of one of the wildest Highland passes!what would it be, and what its inmates? I found a woman and her daughter, who told me that they had no neighbours, and exchanged no visits with anybody. There was no chimney. The smoke found its way out at a hole in the roof, but not till it had circulated in many eddies and wreaths around the beams and rafters, which were black and shining with soot. Along the wall adjoining that against which the fire was built-for there was properly no fireplace-were to be dimly

seen the apartments or stories, one above another, of a sort of crib, such as Walter Scott has described, as answering the purpose of a bedstead. I asked the woman for food. She had nothing but oatmeal cake, which she produced, and I was glad to try a specimen of Highland bread. But, in good truth, I should never desire to have anything to do with it, save as a specimen; for of all stuff that ever I tasted, it was the most inedible, impracticable, insufferable-dry, hard, coarse, rasping, gritty, chaffy: I could not eat it, and it seemed to me that if I could, it would be no more nourishing than gravel kneaded into mud and baked in a limekiln. As to drink, whiskey-whiskey, the boatmen said, was the only thing, and the thing indispensable. tasted of it; and truly it had not the usual odious taste of our American whiskey. It is said that the peat, by which it is distilled, gives it a peculiar fla

vour.

I

As to the estimate of this article, or something like it something "wet and oothsome," as the wretch Peter Peebles says-I should suppose that Highlands and Lowlands agree, nay, and all England for that matter-for I have never seen anything like the numbers of persons that I have observed here, after dinner or in the evening, sipping their brandy and water, or whiskey punch. It

would seem strange to some of our American reformers; but I have been at supper, where the meal was introduced by the host with a "grace;" and the brandy and hot water were brought on at the close of the entertainment, evidently as a matter of course, and I was very much urged to take some, as a very excellent thing; and, indeed, as the conscientious Peebles says, "they had like to ha' guided me very ill."

From Inversnaid Mill a steamboat takes you up and down the entire length of Loch Lomond, thirty miles. A rainy day did not hide altogether the bold and majestic features of this shore and mountain scenery, though it prevented me from seeing it to the best advantage. Around the lower part of Loch Lomond is the country of the Lennox; from whence a ride through the vale of the Leven brings you to Dumbarton, where a steamboat again, at almost any hour, will take you up to Glasgow.

The cathedral here is a grand old pile; the only one that Knox spared, and which he still frowns upon from his monument in the cemetery on the opposite hill. And this last spot suggests the subject of funerals, which are celebrated with much pomp, as it appears to an American taste, throughout the kingdom: the hearse bearing a sort of

forest of waving plumes over it-white for the young, black for the elder-the carriages and horses put into as deep mourning as their owners. It would seem that there are entertainments on these occasions; for I saw over a shop here this singular advertisement-" Funeral and Fancy biscuit, for sale here."

HAMILTON, JULY 23. I have come down to Hamilton to-day, on my way to the Falls of the Clyde, Tweedale, Abbotsford, &c. I have several times observed, as I did to-day, very tidy looking young women walking barefoot, and carrying a little parcel in hand, which was evidently the stockings and shoes. Indeed, neatness and thrift seem characteristic of the people everywhere. When there is no scenery to engage attention, Scotch husbandry, at least, is a pleasing feature of the landscape.

About two miles from Hamilton are the ruins of Bothwell Castle. The property now belongs to Lord Douglass, and the castle is situated just in the rear of his seat. And very few things have I seen equal to the beauty of its situation, on a bold, rounded, wooded bank of the Clyde, with the ruins of an old abbey on the opposite bank.

About half a mile from this is Bothwell Brig. The land slopes on each side of the river to the