Nevertheless, since there are two worlds in man, the real and the ideal, and both have indisputably a right to be, since God made the faculties of both, we must feel that it is a benefaction to mankind, that Scott was thus raised up as the link, in the ideal world, between the present and the past.  It is a loss to universal humanity to have the imprint of any phase of human life and experience entirely blotted out.  Scott’s fictions are like this beautiful ivy, with which all the ruins here are overgrown,—­they not only adorn, but, in many cases, they actually hold together, and prevent the crumbling mass from falling into ruins.

To-morrow we are going to have a sail on the Clyde.

LETTER V.

April 17.

MY DEAR SISTER:—­

To-day a large party of us started on a small steamer, to go down the Clyde.  It has been a very, very exciting day to us.  It is so stimulating to be where every name is a poem.  For instance, we start at the Broomielaw.  This Broomielaw is a kind of wharf, or landing.  Perhaps in old times it was a haugh overgrown with broom, from whence it gets its name; this is only my conjecture, however.

We have a small steamer quite crowded with people, our excursion party being very numerous.  In a few minutes after starting, somebody says,—­

“O, here’s where the Kelvin enters.”  This starts up,—­

  “Let us haste to Kelvin Grove.”

Then soon we are coming to Dumbarton Castle, and all the tears we shed over Miss Porter’s William Wallace seem to rise up like a many-colored mist about it.  The highest peak of the rock is still called Wallace’s Seat, and a part of the castle, Wallace’s Tower; and in one of its apartments a huge two-handed sword of the hero is still shown.  I suppose, in fact, Miss Porter’s sentimental hero is about as much like the real William Wallace as Daniel Boone is like Sir Charles Grandison.  Many a young lady, who has cried herself sick over Wallace in the novel, would have been in perfect horror if she could have seen the real man.  Still Dumbarton Castle is not a whit the less picturesque for that.  Now comes the Leven,—­that identical Leven Water known in song,—­and on the right is Leven Grove.

“There,” said somebody to me, “is the old mansion of the Earls of Glencairn.”  Quick as thought, flashed through my mind that most eloquent of Burns’s poems, the Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn.

  “The bridegroom may forget the bride
  Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
  The monarch may forget the crown
  That on his head an hour hath been;
  The mother may forget the child
  That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
  But I’ll remember thee, Glencairn,
  And a’ that thou hast done for me.”

This mansion is now the seat of Graham of Gartmor.

Now we are shown the remains of old Cardross Castle, where it was said Robert Bruce breathed his last.  And now we come near the beautiful grounds of Roseneath, a green, velvet-like peninsula, stretching out into the widening waters.