glory of Scotland. The huts stand at a small distance from each
other, on a high and perpendicular rock, that rises from the bed of the
lake. A road, which has a very wild appearance, has been cut through the
rock; yet even here, among these bold precipices, the feeling of
excessive beautifulness overcomes every other. While we were upon the
lake, on every side of us were bays within bays, often more like tiny
lakes or pools than bays, and these not in long succession only, but all
round, some almost on the broad breast of the water, the promontories
shot out so far.

After we had landed we walked along the road to the uppermost of the
huts, where Coleridge was standing. From the door of this hut we saw
Benvenue opposite to us--a high mountain, but clouds concealed its top;
its side, rising directly from the lake, is covered with birch-trees to a
great height, and seamed with innumerable channels of torrents; but now
there was no water in them, nothing to break in upon the stillness and
repose of the scene; nor do I recollect hearing the sound of water from
any side, the wind being fallen and the lake perfectly still; the place
was all eye, and completely satisfied the sense and the heart. Above and
below us, to the right and to the left, were rocks, knolls, and hills,
which, wherever anything could grow--and that was everywhere between the
rocks--were covered with trees and heather; the trees did not in any
place grow so thick as an ordinary wood; yet I think there was never a
bare space of twenty yards: it was more like a natural forest where the
trees grow in groups or singly, not hiding the surface of the ground,
which, instead of being green and mossy, was of the richest purple. The
heather was indeed the most luxuriant I ever saw; it was so tall that a
child of ten years old struggling through it would often have been buried
head and shoulders, and the exquisite beauty of the colour, near or at a
distance, seen under the trees, is not to be conceived. But if I were to
go on describing for evermore, I should give but a faint, and very often
a false, idea of the different objects and the various combinations of
them in this most intricate and delicious place; besides, I tired myself
out with describing at Loch Lomond, so I will hasten to the end of my
tale. This reminds me of a sentence in a little pamphlet written by the
minister of Callander, descriptive of the environs of that place. After
having taken up