my fate, the other had been yours!

[*--"Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou
hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year."

So they begin. It was the month of May; the cuckoo sang shrouded in
some woody copse; the showers fell between whiles; my friend repeated
the lines with native enthusiasm in a clear manly voice, still resonant
of youth and hope. Mr. Wordsworth will excuse me, if in these
circumstances I declined entering the field with his profounder
metaphysical strain, and kept my preference to myself.]

You startled me every now and then from my reverie by the robust voice,
in which you asked the country people (by no means prodigal of their
answers)--"If there was any trout fishing in those streams?"--and our
dinner at Luss set us up for the rest of our day's march. The sky now
became overcast; but this, I think, added to the effect of the scene.
The road to Tarbet is superb. It is on the very verge of the
lake--hard, level, rocky, with low stone bridges constantly flung across
it, and fringed with birch trees, just then budding into spring, behind
which, as through a slight veil, you saw the huge shadowy form of Ben
Lomond. It lifts its enormous but graceful bulk direct from the edge of
the water without any projecting lowlands, and has in this respect much
the advantage of Skiddaw. Loch Lomond comes upon you by degrees as you
advance, unfolding and then withdrawing its conscious beauties like an
accomplished coquet. You are struck with the point of a rock, the arch
of a bridge, the Highland huts (like the first rude habitations of men)
dug out of the soil, built of turf, and covered with brown heather, a
sheep-cote, some straggling cattle feeding half-way down a precipice;
but as you advance farther on, the view expands into the perfection of
lake scenery. It is nothing (or your eye is caught by nothing) but
water, earth, and sky. Ben Lomond waves to the right, in its simple
majesty, cloud-capt or bare, and descending to a point at the head of
the lake, shews the Trossacs beyond, tumbling about their blue ridges
like woods waving; to the left is the Cobler, whose top is like a castle
shattered in pieces and nodding to its ruin; and at your side rise the
shapes of round pastoral hills, green, fleeced with herds, and retiring
into mountainous bays and upland valleys, where solitude and peace might
make their lasting home, if peace were to be found in solitude! T