ed at the house of Sir James Colquhoun, who is
owner of almost all the thirty islands of the Loch, which we went in a
boat next morning to survey. The heaviness of the rain shortened our
voyage, but we landed on one island planted with yew, and stocked with
deer, and on another containing perhaps not more than half an acre,
remarkable for the ruins of an old castle, on which the osprey builds her
annual nest. Had Loch Lomond been in a happier climate, it would have
been the boast of wealth and vanity to own one of the little spots which
it incloses, and to have employed upon it all the arts of embellishment.
But as it is, the islets, which court the gazer at a distance, disgust
him at his approach, when he finds, instead of soft lawns; and shady
thickets, nothing more than uncultivated ruggedness.

Where the Loch discharges itself into a river, called the Leven, we
passed a night with Mr. Smollet, a relation of Doctor Smollet, to whose
memory he has raised an obelisk on the bank near the house in which he
was born. The civility and respect which we found at every place, it is
ungrateful to omit, and tedious to repeat. Here we were met by a post-
chaise, that conveyed us to Glasgow.

To describe a city so much frequented as Glasgow, is unnecessary. The
prosperity of its commerce appears by the greatness of many private
houses, and a general appearance of wealth. It is the only episcopal
city whose cathedral was left standing in the rage of Reformation. It is
now divided into many separate places of worship, which, taken all
together, compose a great pile, that had been some centuries in building,
but was never finished; for the change of religion intercepted its
progress, before the cross isle was added, which seems essential to a
Gothick cathedral.

The college has not had a sufficient share of the increasing magnificence
of the place. The session was begun; for it commences on the tenth of
October and continues to the tenth of June, but the students appeared not
numerous, being, I suppose, not yet returned from their several homes.
The division of the academical year into one session, and one recess,
seems to me better accommodated to the present state of life, than that
variegation of time by terms and vacations derived from distant
centuries, in which it was probably convenient, and still continued in
the English universities. So many solid months as the Scotch scheme of
education joins together, allow and