“Peninsula!” said C——.  “Why, Walter Scott said it was an island.”

Certainly, he did declare most explicitly in the person of Mr. Archibald, the Duke of Argyle’s serving man, to Miss Dollie Dutton, when she insisted on going to it by land, that Roseneath was an island.  It shows that the most accurate may be caught tripping sometimes.

Of course, our heads were full of David Deans, Jeanie, and Effie, but we saw nothing of them.  The Duke of Argyle’s Italian mansion is the most conspicuous object.

Hereupon there was considerable discussion on the present Duke of Argyle among the company, from which we gathered that he stood high in favor with the popular mind.  One said that there had been an old prophecy, probably uttered somewhere up in the Highlands, where such things are indigenous, that a very good duke of Argyle was to arise having red hair, and that the present duke had verified the prediction by uniting both requisites.  They say that he is quite a young man, with a small, slight figure, but with a great deal of energy and acuteness of mind, and with the generous and noble traits which have distinguished his house in former times.  He was a pupil of Dr. Arnold, a member of the National Scotch Kirk, and generally understood to be a serious and religious man.  He is one of the noblemen who have been willing to come forward and make use of his education and talent in the way of popular lectures at lyceums and athenaeums; as have also the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Carlisle, and some others.  So the world goes on.  I must think, with all deference to poetry, that it is much better to deliver a lyceum lecture than to head a clan in battle; though I suppose, a century and a half ago, had the thing been predicted to McCallummore’s old harper, he would have been greatly at a loss to comprehend the nature of the transaction.

Somewhere about here, I was presented, by his own request, to a broad-shouldered Scotch farmer, who stood some six feet two, and who paid me the compliment to say, that he had read my book, and that he would walk six miles to see me any day.  Such a flattering evidence of discriminating taste, of course, disposed my heart towards him; but when I went up and put my hand into his great prairie of a palm, I was as a grasshopper in my own eyes.  I inquired who he was, and was told he was one of the Duke of Argyle’s farmers.  I thought to myself, if all the duke’s farmers were of this pattern, that he might be able to speak to the enemy in the gates to some purpose.

Roseneath occupies the ground between the Gare Loch and Loch Long.  The Gare Loch is the name given to a bay formed by the River Clyde, here stretching itself out like a lake.  Here we landed and went on shore, passing along the sides of the loch, in the little village of Row.