and mutton 9d. the weight half more than in England.

Sept. 7.-We are just returned from Loch Katrine. The distance from Callender to the Guide's house, is about eight miles of rough roads. We went in two hours and a half, and returned in two hours, and have spent eight hours on a spot celebrated for its natural beauties, and still more now as the scene of the most picturesque poem that ever was written.

You approach this consecrated spot spot with your imagination considerably exalted, and prepared for something very wonderful. In this unfavourable state of mind, the first sight of Loch Venachoir and Loch Achray did not satisfy us. The latter lake receives the waters of Loch Katrine, by an outlet through the Trosachs, a confused jumble of rocks and tops of mountains, which seem to have slid down from higher mountains, Benvenue on the left, and Ben-Ledi on the right, to bar the passage,

Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world.

One of these odd pieces of rocks (Binean) pointed like a steeple, is said to be 1800 feet high, half of which is perpendicular. The general ef

11

fect of this anti-chamber of Loch Katrine is, upon the whole, more grotesque than great or beautiful. We entered it by a narrow defile, between two ramparts of rocks, finely rent and broken, and overgrown with old trees, their mossy trunks and fantastic branches hanging over on each side. Turning the last corner, Lake Katrine burst upon us,-not in its full beauty at first, but twenty yards farther the sight was indeed glorious. The following rough sketch may render the description more intelli. gible. Advancing by the road cut into the rocky base of Ben-Ledi, you see, on the other side of the lake, the mountain of Benvenue rising in bluish grandeur, behind the rocks and wood of the shore, which are deeply indented with bays and promontories. The retrospect of the Trosachs you have left, presents still the same aspect of grotesque wildness which serves to set off the simple and rich composition of Benvenue. We had provided a guide, who took us in his boat to the island of the Lady of the Lake; which the imagination of the poet has, if not embellished, at least much enlarged. We knew at first sight"The aged oak, That slanted from the islet rock," and did not fail to gather a few leaves and acorns, which will render us an object of envy among the numerous readers of Mr Scott in Ame

rica. The Naiad of the Strand was unfortunately

not there,

With head upraised, and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent,
And locks flung back, and lips apart,

Like monument of Grecian art.

We next rowed across the lake to the foot of Benvenue, about one mile and a half. The view of the shore we had left, and of Ben-Ledi above, it, appeared thence rather bare and rude. The goblin cave was of course not forgotten, but it is, I must say, a mere dog-hole. The episode of the women taking shelter on the island,—the attempt of one of the soldiers to get at the boat by

swimming, and his being killed by one of the women, is founded on the tradition of an event of that sort in Cromwell's time.

The day was very fine, an uncommon circumstance, and the sun setting in full splendour, spread over the wonderful landscape of Loch Katrine its richest tints," one burnished sheet of living gold."

Returning through the Trosachs, they appeared to more advantage; and we remarked a narrow and wild pass on the left, along the base of Ben-Ledi, which we pronounced to be the very spot of the ambuscade of Roderick Dhu ;-the whole scene between him and Fitz-James was before us. I wish it were possible to convey, in the French language, something of the beauty of this description, unparalleled for vigour and truth of painting,-for simple, energetic, and just expression,-for generosity and heroism of sentiments, and even for strength of reasoning. But, in translating into French verse, you must submit to lose the poetry-if into prose, the harmony of the original; and although there can be no hesitation in the choice, yet it is a great deal to lose. The mechanical harmony of verse, is, to the sense, exactly what harmony in music is to melody. True poets in France write in prose. First among them I should certainly name Jean Jaques Rousseau, who wrote nothing

worth reading in verse; the author of Paul and Virginia,―of Telemaque,-of Corinne. If poetry was only what the dictionary of the academy calls it, l'art de faire des ouvrages en vers, or, according to Johnson's definition, metrical composition, then indeed these writers were no poets. But they were eminently so, if poetry is the art of exciting the imagination, either by a represen tation of material objects, or by an imitation of the language of our passions and of our affections, and in doing this with the truth of nature, in a manner that all may feel who are capable of feeling;-awakening the dormant powers of the mind to new ideas and sentiments, and giving to them an impulse which goes further than the written thought, as fire is kindled by a spark. This idea was most happily expressed in the Edinburgh Review of Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming. "The highest delight which poetry produces does not arise from the mere passive perception of the images or sentiments which it presents to the mind, but from the excitement which is given to its own internal activity, and the character which is impressed on the train of its spontaneous conceptions; and the true lover of poetry is often indebted to his author for little more than the first impulse, or the key-note of a melody, which his fancy makes out for itself."