s such a desert as the red-deer
love. We are now high up on the breast of the mountain, which appears to
be Cairngorm; but such heights are deceptive, and it is not till we
again see the bed of the Aven that we are assured we are still in the
glen. Prodigious precipices, belonging to several different mountains,
for between mass and mass there is blue sky, suddenly arise, forming
themselves more and more regularly into circular order, as we near; and
now we have sight of the whole magnificence; yet vast as it is, we know
not yet how vast; it grows as we gaze, till in a while we feel that
sublimer it may not be; and then so quiet in all its horrid grandeur we
feel too that it is beautiful, and think of the Maker.

This is Loch Aven. How different the whole region round from that
enclosing Loch Ericht! There, vast wildernesses of more than melancholy
moors--huge hollows hating their own gloom that keeps them
herbless--disconsolate glens left far away by themselves, without any
sign of life--cliffs that frown back the sunshine--and mountains, as if
they were all dead, insensible to the heavens. Is this all mere
imagination--or the truth? We deceive ourselves in what we call a
desert. For we have so associated our own being with the appearances of
outward things, that we attribute to them, with an uninquiring faith,
the very feelings and the very thoughts, of which we have chosen to make
them emblems. But here the sources of the Dee seem to lie in a region as
happy as it is high; for the bases of the mountains are all such as the
soul has chosen to make sublime--the colouring of the mountains all
such, as the soul has chosen to make beautiful; and the whole region,
thus imbued with a power to inspire elevation and delight, is felt to be
indeed one of the very noblest in nature.

We have now nearly reached the limits assigned to our "Remarks on the
Character of the Scenery of the Highlands;" and we feel that the
sketches we have drawn of its component qualities--occasionally filled
up with some details--must be very imperfect indeed without
comprehending some parts of the coast, and some of the sea-arms that
stretch into the interior. But even had our limits allowed, we do not
think we could have ventured on such an attempt; for though we have
sailed along most of the western shores, and through some of its sounds,
and into many of its bays, and up not a few of its reaches, yet they
contain such an endless variety of all th