ly, in a rude state, is usually just, because it is unfettered
by system and affectation; and of this I had an example in the choice
these mountaineers had made of a place to receive their guests. It has
been said that a British monarch would judge well to receive the embassy
of a rival power in the cabin of a man-of-war; and a Highland leader
acted with some propriety in choosing a situation where the natural
objects of grandeur proper to his country might have their full effect on
the minds of his guests.

We ascended about two hundred yards from the shores of the lake, guided
by a brawling brook, and left on the right hand four or five Highland
huts, with patches of arable land around them, so small as to show that
they must have been worked with the spade rather than the plough, cut as
it were out of the surrounding copsewood, and waving with crops of barley
and oats. Above this limited space the hill became more steep; and on its
edge we descried the glittering arms and waving drapery of about fifty of
MacGregor's followers. They were stationed on a spot, the recollection of
which yet strikes me with admiration. The brook, hurling its waters
downwards from the mountain, had in this spot encountered a barrier rock,
over which it had made its way by two distinct leaps. The first fall,
across which a magnificent old oak, slanting out from the farther bank,
partly extended itself as if to shroud the dusky stream of the cascade,
might be about twelve feet high; the broken waters were received in a
beautiful stone basin, almost as regular as if hewn by a sculptor; and
after wheeling around its flinty margin, they made a second precipitous
dash, through a dark and narrow chasm, at least fifty feet in depth, and
from thence, in a hurried, but comparatively a more gentle course,
escaped to join the lake.

With the natural taste which belongs to mountaineers, and especially to
the Scottish Highlanders, whose feelings, I have observed, are often
allied with the romantic and poetical, Rob Roy's wife and followers had
prepared our morning repast in a scene well calculated to impress
strangers with some feelings of awe. They are also naturally a grave and
proud people, and, however rude in our estimation, carry their ideas of
form and politeness to an excess that would appear overstrained, except
from the demonstration of superior force which accompanies the display of
it; for it must be granted that the air of punctilious defer