above 70 miles. The park and lawns present too much the appearance of art to please a lover of wild Nature; and this studied cultivation shrinks in comparison with the surrounding mountainous scenery. The luxuriant beauty and the majestic appearance of the uncultivated parts of the country, seemed even more striking, when brought in parallel with those favoured spots which were adapted to agricul tural improvement; and thereby impressing irresistibly the mind of the spectator, (says the author of Old Mortality,) with a sense of the omnipotence of Nature, and the comparative inefficacy of the boasted means of amelioration which man is capable of opposing to the disadvantages of climate and soil.

We accompanied our Cicerone to visit the curiosities along the banks of the Braan, amidst very beautiful scenery. The Braan reminded me of the river Sorgue at Vaucluse. It flows amid masses of rock, against which it dashes with an agreeable murmur.-We at length arrived at Ossian's Hall, near which a bridge of one arch stretches over the Braan; here the river precipitates itself "with impetuous recoil and jarring sound,” into beds and clifts of rock. It arrives at the head of the precipice foamingly in motion, and then rushes down into a narrow but deep basin, where it is so perfectly silent and motionless,

"That the waters scarcely seem to stray,
And yet they glide like happiness away!"

There are a few picturesque rocks in the entre, finely clothed with wood and moss. These divide the fall, but the spray rising from below, conceals their bases entirely, and thus produces an effect which sets all description at defiance. Indeed, my imagination is so entirey taken up with a splendid passage of the grand infernal peer," that I beg you to accept his appropriate and poetic imagery, ininstead of my humble prose:

"The fall of waters! rapid as the light,

The flashing mass foams, shaking the abyss;
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, rung out from this
Their phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf profound, in pitiless horror set."

The hall, or hermitage, near this romantic fall, is ornamented with mirrors, both plain and convex, which reflect the magnificent scenery, and produce the most complete deception I ever witnessed. The continual dashing of the water, the foliage of the adjoining woods, and the clouds floating over the landscape, present a most beautiful picture viewed in the glasses. Mirrors fixed in the ceiling show the foaming precipice, with its gray rocks and rich foliage, inverted; whilst the roaring voice of the cataract renders the delusion perfect.

A mile from Ossian's Hall, there is another precipice, which recalled to my mind the classic fountain of Vaucluse: it is the Rumbling Bridge, so called from the peculiar noise which

it produces when the Braan is swelled. Like Vaucluse, it must be well filled with water, to produce that sublime and magnificent effect, which no pen can describe, no pencil delineate. The water being low, the scene is now devested of that grandeur; but still we see much that is beautiful, and we hear that brawling noise, which produces in some the voluptuous melancholy of love, in others the soft and romantic sadness so congenial to the contemplative being, "whose imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown."

From the Craigvignon, where we afterwards walked, we enjoyed a view of the Grampians, which separate the High from the Lowlands, or the Gaelic from the Saxon Scotland. Dunsinane appears at the farthest distance-Dunkeld presents itself in the middle of the prospect, with its beautiful bridge, and its ruined cathedral, the towers and shell of which are still entire; and the picturesque Tay makes one entire sweep, varied by meanderings, across this magnificent landscape.

LETTER XIX.

Variety's a fine young playful cat

A hopeful imp of spirit, sport, and whim;
Who, when all other objects fail,

Runs after its own tail.

TO JOHN D-—.

Peter Pindar.

Callander, May 7, 1819.

IN my letters to our parents, I have endeavoured to convey an idea of the beautiful sce

ery which distinguishes this romantic and ineresting country. As your taste does not reuire such themes, I will content myself with describing the manners, noticing the ridenda, nd just giving you a glance of the beauties of ature which most attract my observation. Horace Walpole says that this world is a conedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel. As you belong to the former class, I will indulge your risible muscles, by groupng together, in this letter, the few ludicrous objects which have struck me during my peripatetic journey! I ought perhaps to apologize for being so trifling in my letters to you; as your favourite, Sevigné, says, " Quand je relis nes lettres, je suis toujours tente de les bruler en voyant les bagatelles que je mande"-but you are not fond either of politics, or of geneal descriptions, or of "babbling of green ields"-as Falstaff was on his death-bedand, as you read all my serious epistles to our parents, I will forthwith endeavour to amuse you, without any more remorseful feelings on the subject!

I had not calculated on a very luxurious diet among the Highlanders, but I scarcely expected to find such abominable fare as I met with. We seldom got wheat bread-but were presented with that horrible stuff, oatcake, which is about as savoury, and equally as nourishing, as a fricasee of white paper! Indeed the general appearance of the people, re

cals to mind the verse which a wag made on Scotland,

"Where half starved spiders live on half starved flies!"

The country people are nourished chiefly on the antiphlogistic plan, if we except the copious draughts of usquebaugh with which they Occasionally enliven themselves. Oat and bear cake, cheese and greens, with now and then a red herring by way of a bonne bouche, compose their humble fare. Their tea is little better than a decoction of apple leaves; and as to coffee, I believe they seldom indulge themselves with such a luxury! They seem to entertain in perfection the old feud of Burns against the aquæ potores; however I have only to refer you to the Scotch novels for "proofs damning as holy writ," of their free indulgence in ardent spirits. Indeed, I remember that Dr. Thomson of Edinburgh, in his lecture on calculous disorders, attributes the diminution of the stone and gravel among these people, to the more frequent use of grog! This is avoiding Scylla to fall in Charybdis, with a vengeance!

The nasty huts which I visited, filled me with horror and disgust; no curtains on the windows, no clean sheets to the beds! no earthly thing to eat but their eternal oat-cake and dried fish, and nothing to drink but their nau seous flip or fiery usquebaugh! And when I beheld the hoary Sybils, with their gray heads imperfectly covered with greasy night caps, and their "overwhelming brows" and long