As I advanced into the bosom of an island, I found myself in the midst of one of the most lovely vales ever formed by Nature. At a distance, dells overshadowed by trees, through which peeped out the chimney tops of poor huts, many of them wreathed with the richest ivy,-mounts wrapped in a glittering mantle of luxuriant foliage,-the summits of groves here and there islanded in the azure atmosphere, and far off the blue tops of a hundred hills, presented continual objects of admiration. The lake, seen through a vista of trees, shone like liquid silver; for by this time the sun rode above the horizon, but it was yet morning, and its calm still hung upon the woods. I shall never forget this enchanting landscape," while Memory holds a seat in this distracted globe." During those pleasing reveries which pass like a glittering vision before the soul,-when we wish to retire from the perversity of this stirring world to some poetical Elysium, or amid the loveliness of some imagined Tempe,-when the fancy endeavours to picture in one scene every beauteous image that the memory can supply,—it would be impossible to conceive the existence of a more heavenly spot, than the one which suddenly burst upon my view. So sweet is this vale, that the winds of heaven appear to "visit its face less roughly" than the other parts of this or the other islands; they seem fondly to float over it, and to caress it with peculiar delight; even the lovers of the feath

ered kind, seem to tune their tender throats with more harmony in this fairy solitude. There is a still and delicious witchery in the tranquillity and seclusion of the place, and I was in as perfect a state of loneliness as Sancho in the Sierra Morena. From the flowers which fringed the borders of a stream that murmured along the glade, was wafted a delicious sweetness, more exquisite than the odours of Arabia, and more volatile than the scent of the iris. I walked about in an ecstacy of admiration; and I was sometimes shrouded in the drizzling spray from a picturesque waterfall which thundered on the rocks, and then curled around their jetty fragments.

In this Elysian vale, the earth seems to adorn herself to make a nuptial bed for happy lovers; and one could have thought that it had been created as an asylum for two fond mortals, who alone had escaped the general wreck of nature. Here might have lived in more than human bliss, lovers like Petrarch and Laura, St. Preux and Julia, whose tender sentiments have been painted in the strongest and most glowing colours, of which language is susceptible. Some secret charm would have enlivened every object, or raised their mutual transports to a more exquisite degree:

"Oh! when meet now

Such pairs, in love and mutual honour joined!"

When matrimony is looked upon as a means of acquiring fortune, it will be rather difficult

to find lovers fit to inhabit the delicious retreat, which I have been describing. Virtuous minds alone can relish the charms of such a sweet solitude; to worldly and sordid beings, it would prove the most frightful of all dungeons.

LETTER XXII.

"Farewell to the land where the clouds love to rest,
Like the shroud of the dead on the mountain's cold breast,
To the cataract's roar where the eagles reply,
And the lake her lone bosom expands to the sky."

Dunbarton, May 13, 1819.

My pedestrious tour is now at an end. After leaving the delightful scenery described in my last letters, I feel, (to talk medically,) the languor of previous excitement. At this moment, I experience a lassitude of mind similar to that which we feel after having been powerfully agitated by agreeable sensations: it is like returning to the insipidity of ordinary life, after witnessing the most splendid and interesting exhibitions of the theatre.

In this country, the works of nature are formed on such a magnificent scale, that one feels deeply impressed with an idea of the comparative littleness of the works of man. The immense rocky mountains frowning over smiling valleys, the beautiful dells and regions overhung by towering crags of vast height, the

picturesque rivers serpentining over the vales, and above all the lochs clear as glass and full to the brim, and embosomed amidst mountains on whose tops the clouds repose,—present the most magnificent idea of the omnipotence of nature, and make the heart adore the Creator of all these wonders. Tracts of horrible barrenness, terrific precipices, rocks rioting on rocks, and mountains "tossed round by Nature's careless hand" in chaotic confusion. To be sure, every one is not susceptible of those emotions which are kindled in the bosom of the enthusiast of nature, of him whose sense of immediate delight is fixed deep in the beauty of surrounding objects. It seems to me that I hear an insensible being, after perusing my reveries, ironically exclaim with West: it must surely be a pretty thing to fetch a walk in the clouds, and to have the snow up to one's ears! I will not waste my time with such poor, stupid wretches; but will content myself with exclaiming, in the words of one of the most enthusiastic admirers of the works of the Supreme Being: "Oh! how fair art thou, Nature! how beautiful in thy smallest works! Happy he whose calm mind, unclouded by remorse or care, is open to every impression of thy beauty! For him Nature unfolds all her charms; his senses find continual and inexhaustible sources of delight in every step he takes, in every shade under which he reposes: rapture springs for him, from the murmuring stream; it diffuses itself with the perfumes of the flow

ers, and whispers among the gently waving trees."*

Nothing but the castle is worthy of observation at Dunbarton. It is situated in the environs of the town, on an isthmus formed by the union of the rivers Leven and Clyde. At a distance, this dungeon presents the appearance of a mitre; the sides consist of upright columns of basaltic rock, from which immense masses have been detached, and hurled along its slope, with a romantic confusion-exhibiting in appearance"the fragments of an earlier world." The elegant Buchanan has honoured Dunbarton castle with a particular description, as an "arx inexpugnabilis." It is inaccessible on all sides, except in one place, where the entrance is guarded, and is so admirably contrived by nature and art, that, to use Scott's language,

"An hundred men might hold the post
With hardihood against a host."

The passage to the summit of this fortress is between precipitous and dark rocky masses, which present a peculiarly romantic gloom. General Simond was confined in this dungeon, during a period of the continental war. When Napoleon confided himself to the boasted hospitality of England, it was proposed to make Dunbarton castle his prison, instead of the Isle of Rats; but the government thought proper to make him expiate cruelly his former

* Gessner's Idyls.