; and if you had seen him (with whom the responsibility
of the omission rested) running in and out of the sitting-room and the
two bedrooms with a great pair of bellows, with which he distractedly
blew each of the fires out in turn, you would have died of laughing. He
had on his head a great Highland cap, on his back a white coat, and cut
such a figure as even the inimitable can't depicter. . . .

"The inns, inside and out, are the queerest places imaginable. From the
road, this one," at Loch Earn Head, "looks like a white wall, with
windows in it by mistake. We have a good sitting-room, though, on the
first floor: as large (but not as lofty) as my study. The bedrooms are
of that size which renders it impossible for you to move, after you have
taken your boots off, without chipping pieces out of your legs. There
isn't a basin in the Highlands which will hold my face; not a drawer
which will open, after you have put your clothes in it; not a
water-bottle capacious enough to wet your toothbrush. The huts are
wretched and miserable beyond all description. The food (for those who
can pay for it) 'not bad,' as M. would say: oat-cake, mutton,
hotch-potch, trout from the loch, small beer bottled, marmalade, and
whiskey. Of the last-named article I have taken about a pint to-day. The
weather is what they call 'soft'--which means that the sky is a vast
water-spout that never leaves off emptying itself; and the liquor has no
more effect than water. . . . I am going to work to-morrow, and hope before
leaving here to write you again. The elections have been sad work
indeed. That they should return Sibthorp and reject Bulwer, is, by
Heaven, a national disgrace. . . . I don't wonder the devil flew over
Lincoln. The people were far too addle-headed, even for him. . . . I don't
bore you with accounts of Ben this and that, and Lochs of all sorts of
names, but this is a wonderful region. The way the mists were stalking
about to-day, and the clouds lying down upon the hills; the deep glens,
the high rocks, the rushing waterfalls, and the roaring rivers down in
deep gulfs below; were all stupendous. This house is wedged round by
great heights that are lost in the clouds; and the loch, twelve miles
long, stretches out its dreary length before the windows. In my next I
shall soar to the sublime, perhaps; in this here present writing I
confine myself to the ridiculous. But I am always," etc. etc.

His next letter bore the date of "Ballechelis