al grandeur of
mountain-scenery, where there are indeed vestiges of convulsion and
agony, but where age has softened the storm into stillness, and where
the memory of former strife and upheaving only serves to deepen the
feeling of repose--vestiges which, like the wrinkles on the stern brow
of the Corsair,

"Speak of passion, but of passion past."

With these records of bygone "majestic pains," on the other hand, the
genius of Milton and Wordsworth seemed made to sympathise; and the
former is never greater than standing on Niphates Mount with Satan, or
upon the "hill of Paradise the highest" with Michael, or upon the
"Specular Mount" with the Tempter and the Saviour; and the latter is
always most himself beside Skiddaw or Helvellyn. Byron professes vast
admiration for Lochnagar and the Alps; but the former is seen through
the enchanting medium of distance and childish memory; and among the
latter, his rhapsodies on Mont Blanc, and the cold "thrones of eternity"
around him, are nothing to his pictures of torrents, cataracts,
thunderstorms; in short, of all objects where unrest--the leading
feeling in _his_ bosom--constitutes the principal element in _their_
grandeur. It is curious, by the way, how few good descriptions there
exist in poetry of views _from_ mountains. Milton has, indeed, some
incomparable ones, but all imaginary--such, at least, as no actual
mountain on earth can command; but, in other poets, we at this moment
remember no good one. They seem always looking up _to_, not down from,
mountains. Wordsworth has given us, for example, no description of the
view from Skiddaw; and there does not exist, in any Scottish poetical
author, a first-rate picture of the view either from Ben Lomond,
Schehallion, Ben Cruachan, or Ben Nevis.

After all, Burns was more influenced by some other characteristics of
Scotland than he was by its scenery. There was, first, its romantic
history. _That_ had not then been separated, as it has since been, from
the mists of fable, but lay exactly in that twilight point of view best
adapted for arousing the imagination. To the eye of Burns, as it glared
back into the past, the history of his country seemed intensely
poetical--including the line of early kings who pass over the stage of
Boece' and Buchanan's story as their brethren over the magic glass of
Macbeth's witches--equally fantastic and equally false--the dark
tragedy of that terrible thane of Glammis and Cawdor--the deeds