I
tried to be tactful for once, like Mrs. West, and changed the subject.

This was the road which Carlyle thought the most beautiful in the
kingdom. Going to Mainsriddle and Dalbeattie we skimmed through dark,
haunted-looking woods, to sudden glimpses of far-down yellow sands and
floating forms of mountains. The tide was running out or running in,
veining the floor of gold with misty blue traceries, and making bright
pools like bits of broken glass. The trees along our way were a
procession of benevolent giants holding green umbrellas over our heads,
because they mistook us for expected royalties; and on the smooth white
surface of the road they had scattered shadows like torn black Spanish
lace. Criffel followed us everywhere, trying jealously to keep us from
noticing that the noble mountains of Cumberland were still watching us
out of sight, across the Solway Firth. And indeed, Criffel, with some
small brother hills he had to-day collected, like the hasty gathering of
a clan, did manage to destroy the effect of distance so far as he and
his brethren were concerned. He and all the rest, no matter how far off,
pushed themselves into the foreground by means of their colour, so
violent a purple that it struck at the eyes, and vibrated in the ears
like rich wild notes of an organ rolling over the uplands of Scotland.
Only the sands and the sea looked distant, though really they were near;
and I worried about the groups of cattle gossiping so pleasantly
together about their cuds and calves. They had a placid air of ignoring
such large facts of life as incoming tides, and could never have read
what happened to Mary and her cows on the sands of Dee, a resort only
less fashionable in the cattle world than their own.

Lights on sky and sands, seen through the netting of tree branches, were
like sweet bursts of laughter in the forests; and the glory of the
heather was a wordless song in praise of Scotland. Yet in these flying
Galloway landscapes there was an impression of the mystic and
melancholy, which reminded Sir S. of "The Twilight of the Gods": strange
purple rocks jutting out into water coldly bright as a sheet of mercury,
and desolate islands remote and haunted as the place where Gunter and
his sister lived in the opera. We seemed to be travelling through vast,
lonely places, though it was but a part of Galloway, and all Scotland is
but small--just large enough to give an eyeful of beauty always.

When we came to the