The fairest island on the lake

Is the island of the nuns.

Crosses and sepulchral slabs of old chieftains of the hills mark this lonely island of the dead. The burial-ground is still a sacred object, and in the chapel of the convent service was performed down to the time of George II., but now the chapel has disappeared.

Monuments of the feudal ages likewise remain on the shores of Loch Awe, and the chief of them is the famous Kilchurn, which appears to rise out of the water that nearly insulates it under the dark slopes of Ben Laoidh. It occupies the whole of a rock which seems to have been formerly an island at the mouth of the river Orchay; its aspect is well in keeping with its situation amidst the dark and solemn mountains, and it brings before us vividly the wild and picturesque life of its ancient lards. Although much ruined and very wild looking, it retains its massive strength, and has traces of ancient stateliness. And who can forget Kilchurn's well known legend about Sir Colin Campbell (its owner in the time of our Henry V.), who, after long absence in the wars, returned hither, disguised as a mendicant, to find that his wife (a very strongminded woman she must have been) had during his absence built this keep tower as a surprise for him, but having given him up for dead, was on the very day of his return about to marry again, when he opportunely revealed himself at the wedding feast. On Fraoch Eilan are the ruins of the MacNaughton's castle, with a great tree growing in what was the chieftain's hall.

The Orchay and Cladich rivers, and some lesser rills, fall into Loch Awe, but the river Awe is its only outlet, and within living memory the waters of the lake permanently submerged lands upon its shore, on which thriving plantations have risen since the channel of the river was artificially deepened. The Pass of Awe opens through very wild and impressive scenery. As the shores narrow towards its straits, the steep side of the mountain, covered to a great height by a thick wood of dwarf timber and coppice, leaves only a narrow strip of stony beach, above which the road from Obanto Dalmally has been formed; while the southern shore is almost a wall of steep and barren rock, rising precipitously from the water. This arm or outlet of the lake, after gradually contracting, ends at the rocks of Brandir, which approach so near that a tall mountain-pine might reach across the strait, and, indeed, a rude bridge did probably exist at this spot in the days when great timber flourished in the forests of Glen Etive. From this outlet there is a gradual descent to the sea loch of Etive, and the Awe rushes foaming over a bed strewn with the débris of the neighbouring heights. The defile where the mountains approach is dark and gloomy, and the ceaseless waterfall and the rushing torrent of the Awe fill the rocky pass with a sound like the roar of the sea. It was in this pass that the warlike clan of MacDougal of Lorn were nearly all destroyed by Robert Bruce. And by an old oak-tree-described by Scott as growing at the foot of a cliff from which a mountain stream leaps in a fall of sixty feet, near the bridge of Awe, on the left hand side of the river as it descends, and where the rocks retain few remains of the wood that probably once clothed them-the superstitious believe that "the Woman of the Tree," Scott's Highland Widow, may still be seen seated, as was her wont.

Ben Cruachan, "one of the noblest of Scotland's mountain kings," is about the same height as Snowdon, but its base has a circumference of more than twenty miles, and, with its five wave-like peaks, it is conspicuous for its majestic outline as well as for its mass. The mountain seems to be composed of red and grey granite, with veins of porphyry, but clay slate and mica slate, veined with quartz, are found on its sides.

Some of the most beautiful scenery in the vicinity of Loch Awe is in Glen Nant, a pass which lies between it and Loch Etive, and Ben Cruachan forms a very grand object from the road. The rocky stream which traverses the glen is overhung in part by wild crags, and the other side of the ravine is covered with dense hanging woods of native oak, and birch, and hazel.

The scenery of Loch Etive derives a peculiar character from the granite hills that bound its shores, and from lying at the foot of the grand precipices and dark ridges of Ben Cruachan, while on the other side the deer forests rise steep from the water's edge in wild hills of grey crag and dark-green coppice, which are reflected in deepened colour in the still and tinted water. The head of Loch Etive presents one of the finest landscapes to be seen in the Western Highlands, for there the glen opens to Buachaille Etive and the other mountains which extend northward and eastward towards Glencoe. But Cruachan is the Giant of the Loch. Loch Etive could boast at least one religious foundation

Lone Ardchattan's abbey gray

which was founded more than six centuries ago for Benedictine monks. Robert Bruce is said to have held a parliament here, the business of which was transacted in Gaelic. The buildings of the monastery are much dilapidated, but the basement walls of the church remain. This edifice and the prior's house appear to have faced the loch, and the house is almost entire. A green pasture ground adjacent is still called "the Monks' Garden," and the aspect of the spot is such that one of the most beautiful scenes in Argyllshire seems here fitly consecrated to religious calmness.

At the head of this loch some of the large oak-trees, which appear to have abounded in this country in the time of Edward's wars, are, or lately were, remaining; and, though they stand in rocky soil, some of the trunks measure more than twenty feet in circumference. And near Inverawe, at the base of Cruachan, a group of noble and gigantic fir-trees of great age, standing together, form quite a dark and solemn grove.

Returning by the Pass of Awe, I traversed the really noble vale of Glenorchy (from which the Marquis of Breadalbane takes a second title), one of the most attractive scenes in the Highlands. The grand mountainous forms of Glenorchy, rising one beyond another, compose landscapes which continually change as you advance; and from the peaceful village of Dalmally, whose English-looking white church-tower in the vale marks the site of Clachan Dysart-" the place of the High God"the hills rise in many a grand unbroken sweep, and over their crests the white wings of the mists are floating, while rivulets that here only gleam like silent lines of quicksilver are traversing their furrowed sides.

On a hill near Dalmally, commanding a fine view of his native glen, a monument in granite has lately been raised in honour of Duncan Bane Macintyre, the bard of Glenorchy, who is stated to have served in the

Argyll militia at the battle of Falkirk, and to have denounced in a poem (which led to his imprisonment) the vindictive attempts which were made by the government, after the rising of 1745, to crush the national spirit and the inborn loyalty of the Highlanders. Admirers of this native bard have ascribed to him the descriptive power of Thomson with the versatile genius of Burns. He could not have pointed out a finer situation for his monument than the height on which it stands.

The vicinity of Tyndrum-a station at the head of Strathfillan, between Dalmally and Loch Lomond, is wild and dreary, yet Strathfillan was probably not so desolate a tract when St. Fillan was the apostle of the vale. The lead mines worked at Tyndrum, on the property of Lord Breadalbane, are a proof of the intelligent zeal of the noble marquis in mineralogical researches. At Crianlarich, (where the Perthshire road diverges from that to Loch Lomond), the river takes the name of the Dochart, and a linn, called "the pool of St. Fillan," was in repute for the cure of insanity, but the process was a trying one, for the patient was immersed at sunset, and left bound in the ruins of St. Fillan's neighbouring church until the morning! After traversing "the chilling deserts of Tyndrum," the wooded banks of Glenfalloch are quite refreshing to the eye, and the course of the river is diversified by more than one rocky cataract, and by scenes of grandeur as well as beauty when the glen opens to the mountains round the head of Loch Lomond."

It is not surprising that the palm of pre-eminence in beauty has been awarded to this charming lake. It would be the Mediterranean of the Highlands if it was an arm of the sea. Its shores are full of varied scenery; the grand and rugged mountainous forms that surround the upper or higher end of the lake, are as remarkable for the picturesque character of their outlines as its shores and rocky promontories and islets are for their wooded beauty; while the majestic heights of Ben Lomond, which culminate above the wild mountains of its eastern shore, form a magnificent and distinguishing feature of its scenery; and there the giant and master-presence of the Loch seems serenely looking down for ever on mountains, and lakes, and far-off western isles. In the lower part, where the lake expands into such a breadth that it seems an inland sea, it is crossed by a belt of wooded islets rich in picturesque beauty, and (many of them) distinguished by legendary associations, and marked by white villas now inhabited by "descendants of clansmen at enmity no more." The reader may like to be reminded that it was chiefly in the mountains between Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, then a Highland border country, that the ancestors of the Robin Hood of Scotland, popularly known as Rob Roy, had their abode. He appears to have held, and was perhaps entitled to hold, the domain of rock and forest called Crag Rostan, lying on the eastern side of Loch Lomond, where its bright waters are narrowed by the approach of the dark mountains of Glen Falloch, and here his cave, not far to the northward from Inversnaid, is shown. But to mention the spots with which his name is associated, would be to dwell longer on the Loch Lomond country than the limits of this article permit.

* The neighbourhood is one of great interest to the geologist, and presents one very remarkable feature-viz. a vein of quartz running for miles like a high wall over hill and vale.

A good road and the "Roderick Dhu" coach, and a steam-boat on the lake, afford facilities for traversing Rob Roy's country, which, if they had existed in his days, would have deprived us of much of the attractive romance which surrounds his exploits.

Loch Katrine is a scene of wondrous beauty, marked by features which, in many respects, give its scenery a character different from that of other lakes. Its waters are so tranquil, its shores of emerald green are so beautiful in form, they rise against a background of grey mountains so picturesque in character, its islands, or peninsulas of rock and wood, are so charmingly picturesque, and their graceful trees come down to the water's edge, and stand

With their green faces fixed upon the flood,

doubled in such magical clearness and beauty of tint, that the whole scene may appear a fit realm for Titania and a glimpse of fairyland. Then there is the beautiful declivity of Ben Venue, and there are the belts of natural wood hanging on the mountain's side, or marking the course of a waterfall in some deep ravine, and there is the softened tint of purple in which the regions of dark heather glow in the sunshine, and the changes of colour on the hills when the cloud-shadows sweep their distant sides or darken their mysterious hollows; and there is the subjective and ideal charm which some of the most charming poetry in the English language has thrown over the scenery of Loch Katrine. I shall not attempt to describe that unique labyrinth the pass of the Trosachs-the "bristled territory"-where a narrow winding mountain-gorge or ravine is clothed almost to the grey crests of the wild rocks with luxuriant native wood, and every turn in the defile exhibits

These native bulwarks of the pass

under some new form of picturesque beauty. The waters were rippling in the morning light, and the feathery birch "that waves and weeps on Loch Achray," was bending to the breeze, when, with renewed love for the Highland hills, and with a pleasant recollection of the hospitalities of friends, of the salmon and mutton, and of the cream and butter of Highland farms, and the pure buoyant air, and the thousand scenes of beauty and grandeur, and the high-arched skies that spread above them, I quitted these realms where Nature seems commissioned from Heaven to awaken the delight and gratitude of man, to return by the interesting valley of the Teith, between Loch Katrine and Callandar, to the more prosaic lowlands,

Where wrangling courts and stubborn law,

To smoke and crowds and cities draw.

I have aimed at describing-not all that is worth seeing even on the route embraced in these notes, but-only what I saw in a few pleasant days in Scotland; and glad, indeed, shall I be if these pages shall recal to the reader pleasant recollections of places which have been to him also scenes of enjoyment.

W. S. G.

TOO CLEVER BY HALF.

ALTHOUGH not brought up with Belgravian ideas on the subject of matrimony, Miss Augusta Molesworth, at five-and-forty, remained unmarried. In this case the men were clearly to blame, and not her extravagant expectations; for if, at one period of her life, she had rejected innumerable suitors, there came a time when she was less fastidiouswhen, in the language of selling-off tradesmen who seek to dispose of damaged goods, no reasonable offer would have been refused.

What the men's motives were in neglecting so charming a person as Augusta Molesworth, it may be difficult to say: some might have thought her too tall and thin, too scraggy, in fact, for their notions of beauty; some might have stood in awe of a certain acerbity of temper; others might have thought her too learned, or too strong-minded; while others, again, were possibly deterred from asking her hand because of her want of fortune, an annuity of a hundred a year constituting the whole of her worldly possessions.

Augusta Molesworth, nevertheless, was hopeful. She reasoned like Malvolio: there was "example for 't;" she had herself been acquainted with a spinster-a bosom friend, indeed (until the event took place)-who actually became a wife at fifty. Then why not she? And, in the circle in which she moved, were there not available that estimable bachelor, Reginald Pith, who, having retired with pockets well lined from the practice of the law, had nothing now left to do but to seek out a trusting bosom on which to repose for the rest of his days? Reginald Pith was good natured, gave her advice, gratis, on matters of business, took an interest generally in her affairs, and invited her now and then to very pleasant little dinners: so she thought herself perfectly justified in setting her cap at him.

A lady with only one hundred a year must, of necessity, be economical; and though, when thirsting after knowledge, she developed her strong-mindedness by going in an omnibus to the British Museum, a cab -which she called a fly-always conveyed Augusta Molesworth when she accepted one of Mr. Reginald Pith's invitations to dinner.

The memory of the late Mr. Fitzroy is not, perhaps, much cherished by the fraternity who ply the thong and urge the labouring steed, but cabmen, like princes, and other great ones, may still be occasionally unjust; and if they took into consideration the fact that Mr. Fitzroy fixed his minimum rate at too low a figure for delicate minds to take advantage of it, they would rather bless than revile the author of the Act of Parliament which substituted a sixpenny for an eightpenny fare.

Miss Augusta Molesworth was unquestionably endowed with great delicacy of feeling, but, after all, she was a woman, and did not like to be done; besides, the more she could husband her resources until a real husband saved her the trouble of doing so, the better for her slender income. Now the star of Miss Augusta Molesworth had very frequently been in opposition to the stars of sundry cabmen who drove her, not only to Mr. Reginald Pith's, but to various other places. She felt convinced-"morally convinced" were the words she used—that she over