A Descriptive Tour in Scotland. By T. H. C

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A DESCRIPTIVE TOUR IN SCOTLAND V DESCRIPTIVE TOUR IN SCOTLAND; BY T. H. C. BRUSSELS: PUBLISHED BY H AU MAN AND CO. LONDON : BY GEORGE WHITAKER AXL CO. Mill I r.U . IN MEMORY OF PLEASANT HOURS, IN GR-ATITCDE FOR KINDNESS, IN TOKEN OF SINCERE REGARD, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED in THOMAS COLLEY GrWTTAN, ESO. TO THE READER. [TO BE ON NO ACCOUNT PASSED OVER.] Dear Reader, Before entering upon the journey which I would fain persuade you to undertake lovingly in my company, let me entreat you to parley awhile with me in this my preface ; that is, to parley according to Dr. Johnson's or 31adame de Stael's notions of parleying; — i.e. lo be all attention, while I am all eloquence. I will give you excellent reasons why you should accord me this grace. First, I am not going to bore you with assurances that these letters were not written with a view to publication ; neither shall I tell you that the original sheets, from which they have been printed verbatim, may be seen, postmarks and all, at3Iessrs.

Whitlaker's and Co. I say nothing of the kind — for one plain reason : you would not believe me, if I did. In the second place, my ideas of length are not of an alarming nature. Lastly, I do solemnly aver that this my preface is not a mere wen or excrescence (custom's unsightly offspring) upon the fair visage of my book, but an integral part of the work, nay, the key to the whole work. Preface, indeed (to speak properly), this familiar preamble is not. Rather should it be headed :

Letter I

(private and confidential.) With its address you are already acquainted. Its end and object I will now unfold. We are to travel together. Are we not? Clearly, then, it is my duty to let you a little into my character, and have some preliminary chat with you. I must take care that there be a good understanding between us, lest haply we should fall out by the way. With this view, I desire, as is natural, to create an interest about myself in you, for whom I have long since conceived a particular friendship and esteem. It would be sad, were all the attachment to remain on one side. Do not, here, accuse me of insincerity on the grounds that I do not know you, therefore cannot care about you; that, whether you are a venerable old man, or a bloom ing maiden, must ever be a mystery by me unfathomed.

I tell you that I have by me a vast stock of unappro priated affection, which is to be bought with this book, and is ready to accommodate itself to any person, of whatever age or station. Nay, I have also drawn upon my imagination, to furnish me forth a separate type for each class of my readers, in order that I may be friends with them beforehand, individually as well as collectively. Do not be afraid. My types are all beau ideals. If old, you are full of wisdom ; if young, of grace and vivacity; if middle-aged, of — but enough ! Under any circumstances, you must be beyond measure agreeable. I am determined to think so, and I do think so. Ought you not, injustice, to requite my good opinion by caring a little about me? For (and here comes the pith of the matter) if you do not conceive somewhat of a partiality for me, this my book will be unto you merely as a guide-book.

Now, this would give me pain; for (according to Deville's cra nioscopical judgment) I have "love of approbation" very large, and I have also a sort of uneasy craving after sympathy, on an extensive scale. But how attain my end? Could I boast ofa great literary reputation, I should have nothing to do but to prefix my name to my work, and, behold ! all the world would discover an interest in its barest details; an importance in its most trivial observations. But I have no such blad ders and corks to buoy me up in my present undertaking; though, unfortunately, it is of a kind that more peculiarly calls for such extraneous assistance. Letters and per sonal narratives, more than any other forms of composition, depend for their success upon an author's esta blished notoriety; and, however admirable a desert they may form to a literary banquet, they are generally but a poor first course.

Who cares to know the adventures of a Figgins or a Spriggins (pray heaven, reader, that neither of these names be thine ! ) ? or who makes a pilgrimage to the spots that have been hallowed by the footstep of a Hogsflesh? Had Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides been the production of a 31r. Twig, its first rising, methinks, had glimmered but faintly on the horizon of public opinion *. On the other hand, how eagerly we inquire where a Gray or a Rousseau wandered; where a Thomson gathered peaches, or a Pope ate his chop! How we gather up every minutest particular relating to a Byron! Even his raven, on whose " toe " (as he com memorates in his journal) " some fool trod," becomes a great personage. Then, how the breath of Genius kindles and animates those scenes of insensible nature, which have been once touched into life by its creative presence !

To use Schiller's expression, " the dumb one finds a language," and speaks to us of human feelings, passions, joys, or agonies. Hence, round the rocks of Meillerie murmurs a * In choosing non-celebrated and non-authorial names, I met with an unexpected difficulty. There is scarcely a name so common as not lo have been ennobled by genius. Beau Brummel's joke about Johnson and Thomson is pointless. Even Smith (which some have said is no name at all) has risen to celebrity through Adam Smith's philosophy. Charlotte Smilh's poetry, and James Horace Smith's wit ami fancy. Hobbes is raised out of the mire by him who (according to Mackintosh) '• gave a new character lo European philosophy;" Hogg is spiritualized by the bard of Ihe Queen's Wake ; and Pringle has been graced by a poet and a philanthropist.

V voice more musical than that of the wave which breaks al their foot, and over the woods of the Island of St. Pierre, where Rousseau had fain have fled from himself, lingers a Hush of beauty richer than the glow of an autumnal sunset. But for the scenes that I invite you, my reader, to visit with me, there is none of this ready-made interest; or, if there be, it is an interest independent of myself, bestowed by some such mighty magician as the Ariosto of the North. I labour under all the disabilities of innotoriety. I cannot give fame to trifles; and yet, in the work before you, I have sought no mighty means of reflecting back fame upon myself. I did not, before starting upon my tour, store my pockets with introductions to celebrated people; I have not meddled with politics, nor spiced my narrative wilh personalities.

I cannot even point you to any previous publication of mine (however humble) and say, "Behold my thoughts!" And yet you may have met with the children of my brain ; for they do exist : but, then, they are hidden under the quiet shelter of magazines, those foundling hospitals, to which so many, like Rousseau, send their offspring to be ushered into the world without a father's name. Haply, too, some stray feeling, some idle word may, in the following pages, strike upon you like some" remember'd tone " which you have heard long since, but in what region you cannot tell. Should you be perplexed by any such " obstinate questionings " and bewildering VI glimpses, it is possible that you may formerly have lit upon a volume of neglected verses of my very early days, which even now I occasionally encounter in newspapers, or miscellanies, but always bearing other signatures than mine.

I have seen one of my poems attributed lo Heber (that was flattering); another to a grand-daughter of Gibbon (that might be tolerated); and a third (but that was not to be borne) was claimed by the Giles Scroggins of some County Herald. To such doubtful and pirated celebrity it is plain that I cannot refer in the hope of finding favor in your eyes, my reader. Rather, the less that is said about it the belter. And yet some plan I must strike out, whereby I may gain you over to my side. This plan I have hit upon it ! I have resolved to take you into my confidence. Yes, you, and you alone ; for you only, I am persuaded, can understand me. It it true that others may, with their eyes, run over the external symbols of my thoughts, the pothooks and hangers of the printer; but will they read with the understanding also?

Cer tainly not. To all the world, save and except yourself, this book is as a sealed book. Its esoteric meaning shall be unveiled for you alone. Not even to ray most intimate personal friend would I thus unbosom myself. Indeed, intimate friends are gene rally the worst confidants, and from them, more espe cially, we hide (if they can be hidden) our humiliating infirmities of mind or body, not enduring the infliction of a pitying eye perpetually fixed upon them. To you I can speak freely; for you will not see me make a wry mouth during my confession. I am conversing with you, mind to mind, not face to face. There lies the difference. The secret which I have to tell you, is this (come a little closer, if you please) : " / am a decided hypochon driac." It is an ugly word, this last; and, though I can apply it to myself, I should of all things dislike lo have others apply it to me.

Why, you will easily comprehend. It has all that spiteful vagueness which Forster, in one of his delightful essays, has detected in the epithet " romantic." It is, like the word 3Iethodist, or Enthusiast, one of those brands of opprobrium so loose, so general in the signification, as to imply everything, without precisely meaning anything : one of those convenient sweeping gene rics which save the idle the trouble of thinking or defining, and supply the malignantat once with spear and buckler, a safe and sneering means both of offence and defence. You can scarcely challenge a man for calling you a hypochondriac ; and yet there is something so mysteriously unplea sant in the very sound of the appellation, that you feel as if you could more easily suffer to have liar flung in your face. For what is the image (if image there be, where, as in 31ilton's picture of Death, there is so much of dark and shadowy) which presents itself to the many when they hear tell of a hypochondriac ?

Is it not an image compounded of a lean and slippered pantaloon, dieted on gruel, " not too thin," and of a living tea-pot, " One arm held out, One bent— the handle this, and that the spout ;" to which add a quantum sufficit of weakness, vapours, and megrims, cotton night-caps, nonsense and blue-pill? But thou, my reader, art not of the common herd. Thou shalt not thus rashly judge. At the word hypochondriac, haply, the wise yet melancholy Cowper shall rise before thy imagination (though he too wore a night cap); or Rousseau, the eloquent, the keenly sensitive, the " apostle of affliction; " or Chatterton, the wondrous boy, self-haunted, self-destroyed; and, following these, a troop of illustrious phantoms, poets, painters, musicians, sculp tors; for where, indeed, amongst the children of genius, shall we find one who was not, more or less, by nature, hypochondriac?

Now, by the sympathy that exists between us, I am certain that you, my reader, will not so mistake me as lo suppose that I dub myself a child of genius, because 1 am hypochondriac. You will understand that I only mean to hint that, possibly, though hypochondriac, I may neither wear a cotton night-cap, nor live on water-gruel, nor be precisely a drivelling malade imaginaire, thinking of nothing but the draughts of some Dr. Purgon. With you I have no need of the " Tais-toi; on ne le comprend pas" which so often checked the tongue and the pen of Rousseau. When I say that I have suffered from a com plaint of the nerves, you will at once perceive that 1 do not speak of those shadowy unrealities which serve so conveniently as an excuse for all the tempers and fancies of a sine lady, or the ignorance of a fashionable physician, but of the bond fide nervous system, the derangement of which is one of the most serious calamities that can befal a human being.

Perhaps, those beautiful lines of Cowper may occur to your recollection : '• Man is a harp, whose chords elude the sighl. " Each yielding harmony, disposed aright. '• The screws revers'd — a task, which, if he please, '• God in a moment executes with ease — " At once ten thousand thousand .strings go loose, " Lost, till he tune them, all their power anil use." Read, then, the following letters with the abiding con sciousness that the tour which they describe was under taken in the hope of procuring for the author that respite from self-contemplation which, in every nervous dis order, is the essential condition of cure. Keep with you the idea that your fellow traveller has been commanded to dally with the present, and (if possible) neither to look back nor forward. It is the more needful to tell you this, inasmuch as it may not appear on the face of the letters themselves; for, when I wrote them, " the least of all my thoughts " was to make myself interesting, or to turn my sufferings to account by parading them in the eye of the public.

X By considerations such as these I would beget in you a kindly feeling towards myself, together with a charily that shall cast a graceful mantle over the defects of the following pages. Prepared by my previous confession, you will neither wonder why, in my writings, I am so serious, or so little serious. Should you be disposed to quarrel with me for the absence of grave reflections, po litical, statistical, ethical, or religious, you will remember that a stern necessity had handed me this motto : " Glissez, et nappuyez pas." A celebrated author of my acquaintance avers that he hates to quit his desk and chair, but, for his health's sake, takes duty walks. In like manner I may affirm that it is not my'disposition to trifle, but that I have been forced to take duty happiness. " To be a moment merry" has been as obligatory upon me, as to reflect seriously is imperative on the generality of man kind.

But this has not always been possible; and, for many of my readers, I shall be, I dare say, a vast deal too solemn. Others again will complain of a want of depth, and of a perception of what a clever writer (stigmatizing modern affectation ) calls , " the under current of things. " But you, my chosen reader, have the clue to all this. You will see that the work is in harmony with its writer and with itself; that it could not be other than it is. You will accept it as the journal of one whose business it was to keep his own thoughts at bay. NOTICE TO THE PUBLIC. At the time that the following work was printed, the Author was travelling abroad, on account of his health , and was thus prevented from giving to it that personal superintendence which alone can secure typographical accuracy. This circumstance the Reader is requested to bear in mind during the perusal of these pages, in which the alteration of a single letter will often be found considerably to change the Author's meaning, and even to invest it with something of the ludicrous.

A general list of the Errata, numerous as they are, is not attempted. The principal alone are noticed; — especially such as con cern the names of places, and which, in a book that partly aims at fulfilling the office of a guide, would seem more especially to require revision. ERRATA. PACK 11NE PHO tI!0'" 10 . . 6 Rusted . . Rushed. 18 . . 1 .Off . . Aft. 33 . . 7 . And . . Ah ! 40 . . 20 . Arrochac . . Arrochar. 43 . . 14 . Achsay . . Achray. 59 . . 24 . Loch Lay . . Loch Tay. 64 . . 16 . Luve . . Ewer. 76 . 16 et 17 . Arrochan . . Arrochar. 85 . . 10 . Glenmore . . Glencroe. 86 . . 12 . Loch Bettal . . Loch Restal. 89 . . 18 . Loch Rive . . Loch Awe. 92 . . 23 . Lake . . Pass. 101 . . 22 . Tobermore . . Tobermory. 139 . . 26 . Bronessan . . Bonessan. 154 .. 6 . Buchel Etwie . Buchael Etive. 158 . . 6 .

Engagement . . Enjoyment. 174 . . 24 . Ardavasen . . Ardavaser. 202 . . 8 . Loch Hapin . . Loch Slapin. 226 . . 17 . The Story . . The Storr. 253 . . 28 . Five . . Fine. 282 . last line. . Ben-mae-Dhui . Ben-mac-Dhui. 284 . . 1 . Corrymbzie . . Corrymulzie. 306 . . 14 . Five . . Fine. DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER FOR PLACING THE PLATES. Loch Lomond from Rowardennan . . . to face page 18 Glen Dochart 36 Loch Ewer . 64 Glencroe 84 Small Lake in the Laird of Coil's grounds, near Tobermory 106 Looking towards Iona from the interior of Fingal's Cave , Staffa 132 Clamshell Cave, SlafTa • • • • . 134 St. Mary's Cathedral in Iona 136 Loch-na-Garr 278 Braemar Castle 280 Dunkeld 328 Perth

LETTER I.

Glasgow, 4'1' July. Aweel, dearest E — , I am "over the border" and safe and sound in the good town o' Glasgow. How strange it appears lo be actually in Scotland, so long my land of promise — the "Yarrow unvisited" of my childish dreams ever since the days when my old nurse, who had spent her youth in the service of a noble Scotch family, used to tell me of the gloomy lochs, dark fir forests, and ancient castles of our sister nation. The time since I left you is so short and seems so long that there is a queer sort of puzzle in my feelings between wonderment at being here already and surprise that I am not rather at John o' Groat's House. The whirl of mail-travelling is not yet out of my head; and, like the old woman whose petlicoals were cut shorter as she slept, I should ask "Can this be 1?" did not the weather somewhat reassure me of my identity by remaining just as bad as when we left K — .

II — is crying out, " Here is another weeping day for aunt S — to moan over, and to call forth the usual question of the breakfast-table, 'Does it always rain in Cumberland?'" You may comfort the dear lady with the assurance that it also rains in Scotland. But I must give you an account of our proceedings, seriatim. In our way lo Penrilh, on Tuesday, we saw nothing but dim visions of mountains, looming through " the fog and filthy air ; " but between Penrith and Carlisle we actually had a peep of "Dan Apollo" for the first time I forget how many weeks. He looked rather sickly, though, after his long drenching, and there was a good deal of Thomson's "yellow mist, far-smoking o'er the interminable plain." At Carlisle, where we slept, we preferred taking our chance for places in the London and Glasgow mail, to securing berths in the old heavy, which goes 18 miles about, gossips by the way, and does not get into Glasgow till nine or ten at night.

We were called at "past vour o'clock," not that I wanted much calling ; for, when I know that 1 must be off at a certain hour, I have one certain — because involuntary — method of being ready, namely, by scarcely sleeping at all. In the present case I heard the watchman every hour convey the pleasing intelligence that it was a rainy night and al last that it was a rainy morning. Luckily we found places in the mail, and then, all anxiety being over, sleep and I made it up together for a time. An exclamation from one of the passengers, "Here we are at Gretna Green," roused me up, and made me open my eyes to look at this celebrated haven of persecuted lovers. It is a real green, about which are two or three houses, an inn, and a church. The tender couples are not joined together in holy wedlock at the church, but at the inn.

Jolly doings truly! I offended one of the passengers, a Scotchman, by asking if the noose-tier was a real blacksmith. " No, sir, tis all gallimawfry. He's a minister o' the Scottish kirk. D'ye think the marriages would hold good, if they were not performed by a regular minister?" "Pooh, pooh!" exclaimed the fourth per son of our party (a shrewd-looking man, who had not yet spoken); "he may be ordained in the Scottish Church, but he is a blacksmith." I entered into con versation with this person, who was evidently a man of talent, and by his remarks on politics and the West Indies, whence he was returning to Glasgow after an absence of thirteen months, I began to suspect he was somebody. He then talked of interviews with ministers — Mr. Stanley in particular — and of corresponding with the Duke of Wellington.

I almost immediately con jectured that he must be Macqueen, Blackwood's clever correspondent. Soon after, some one on the outside of the mail called out to him by that very name, and put the matter out of doubt. I was much amused and interested by his conversation, particularly (as I am not you know much of a politician) by his really eloquent and beautiful descriptions of West Indian scenery. Just as he had completed a splendid picture of a Barbadian moonlight night, my Scotch friend opposite gravely asked whether i. the moon was at the full there all the year round. I really gave Macqueen credit for the corresponding gravity with which he replied, "Not exactly that : I only meant to say that, when it does shine, it is far brighter than in our own climate." As for me, I was not so forbearing.

To suppress a laugh exceeded my powers both of mind and muscle; and, as I happened to be stowing in a slice of bread and meat that I had bought at the last stage to appease the powerful cravings of appetite, a most unseemly sputtering took place thereupon. The Scotchman looked at me more in surprise than in anger, unconscious, I suppose, that he had said any thing particular. I begged pardon for my explosion, and I hope that all was attributed to a crumb going the wrong way. Macqueen has shown in Blackwood that he has a vein of powerful objurgation. In his conversation I was perhaps a little surprised to find a considerable touch of pathos. This was called forth by the sight of his native village, a small wild-looking hamlet in a bare bleak valley, which extends for miles and miles in treeless desolation.

There was something fine, too, and independent in a man avowing a birth-place of such mean appearance. I like the feeling based upon the thought "I have made my way in the world, and I care not who knows from what humble beginnings." There is more true nobility in the pride of talent, than there ever can be in the pride of lineage. I wish I could remember verbatim Mac queen's pathetic descant on his native place, whose very bleakness and wildness had charms for him, and whose russet heaths had so often risen before his eyes when he was divided from all he loved by "half the convex world;" but, as my memory fails me, I will neither garble the matter, nor follow the example of historians by composing a speech for the occasion. How charmed aunt S — would have been with the road between Carlisle and Glasgow!

There is not a pretence at a hill the whole way. It was to me, however, a little disappointing lo find that I had got over the border without knowing it. What Lord Byron says of the absence of a marked boundary between Spain and Portu gal would be equally applicable here. England blends into the sister country without any interposition of " Horrid crags, or mountains dark and rail: " and, whatever may have been the strength of the old Pictish rampart, there is now no "barrier wall" to be seen. This leads one to wonder why it is that, soon after crossing the imaginary border line, one perceives a marked difference in the physiognomy, general appear ance, and dialect of the people. The very circumstance of seeing so many weans and lasses padding and tripping about with naked feet, gives one the idea of being in a stranger land.

The lower orders do not here, as in Wales, carry their shoes and stockings in their hands, as if in thrifty care of the most luxurious part of their apparel, but seem to discard these articles altogether . I have not even seen a Cumberland clog in wear. We reached Glasgow by half past two, having accom plished ninety-five miles in nine hours and a half. I asked my fellow-passeugers which was the best inn, and my friend of the perennial moon strenuously recommended one, which I thought he called the Back Seat. However I was not at all taken by the name (which I afterwards discovered really to be the Buck's Head), and I determined upon that which Macqueen mentioned, — the Tontine. I have had no reason to repent this decision. It is situated in a broad cheerful street, through which flows a tide of population so full and unceasing as to give a favorable idea of the prosperity of the city.

The attendance, the eatables, the apartments, the beds are quite as good as at a London hotel. You may suppose how well I slept with no fear of "past vour o' clock" before my imagination *. This morning after a capital breakfast, at which we did full justice to the Scotch marmalade, we went a rambling about the town. The street in which our hotel is, had already shown us the best of it. Most of the others are dirty and ill-conditioned and abounding in abominable savours. A drizzle (which was something more than a Scotch mist) added neither to their beauty nor their cleanliness. We poked our way through a sort of market, where old women, with handkerchiefs on their heads, were squatting in the mud amongst decayed vege tables, and stinking herrings; and by dint of inquiry we at last found out the University.

Had I not been told what it was, I should certainly have taken it for a mad house. H — said that at any rate it was calculated to make men fit for one, and blessed his slars that there was nothing like it at Cambridge. We went into a gloomy court, and peeped into a sort of rotunda which * This refers to a clever article, On the Miseries of Early Rising," in ihe New Monthly Magazine. seemed to be fitted up as a museum. While we were spying at stuffed bears and ostriches, a man came up and wanted us to go in ; but, having seen as much as we wished, and having no spare time, we politely declined his disinterested offer. The cathedral, to which we next went, is poor when compared with many of our own, but antiquarians admire it as a pure specimen of the early Gothic. The interior has little of the pomp of a cathedral, for it is in fact only the high church; and there is no organ, as the Presbyterians do not admit instrumental music into their worship.

Nevertheless, the part fitted up as a church, answering to the choir in our cathedrals, is picturesque and striking. Three tiers of deep and complete arches enclose it on either side, and richly carved wood-work forms the facing of a gallery between the pillars. But what will you say to us for omitting to see the crypt, which has been rendered so celebrated by the adventures of Frank Osbaldistone therein ? You must lay the blame partly on our re stricted time, causing hurry and forgetfulness, and partly on the stupidity of the woman who acted as guide, and who left the most important part of her duties unful filled. We now set ourselves to find out the New Ex change, a building which Macqueen had yesterday urged us by all means to visit. We had to retrace our steps and to walk a long distance before we reached it ; but our trouble was well repaid.

Even I, with all my predilection for the gloomy Gothic, could not avoid being greatly struck with this noble specimen of Grecian architecture. Its proportions are worthy of its size. Within it is a gorgeous apartment, the ceiling of which is sup ported by two ranges of columns, forming aisles, as it were, at the sides. One drops some fathoms deep into bathos on discovering that a room of such colossal grandeur — fit for the divan of an Eastern monarch — is appro priated to the reading of newspapers and periodicals. Certainly the arrangements for this purpose are most luxurious. In the side aisles are many tables, each lettered with the name of the paper or review to which it is devoted ; and at the upper end of the centre is a sort of swing desk, on which is fixed a newspaper expressly for the use of strangers, who may at all times walk in without paying anything.