Loch Lomond is the paragon of Scottish lakes.  In island beauty unrivalled, for all that forms romance is here—­scenery varying and increasing in loveliness, matchless combinations of grandeur and softness united, forming a magic land from which poesy and painting have caught their happiest inspirations.  Islands of different forms and magnitude.  Some are covered with the most luxuriant wood of every different tint; but others show a beautiful intermixture of rock and coppices—­some, like plains of emerald, scarcely above the level of the water, are covered with grass; and others, again, are bare rocks, rising into precipices and destitute of vegetation.

Scotland has produced many men mighty in mind as well as in body, and their ideas have doubtless been enlarged not only by their advanced system of education, but by the great things which have surrounded them—­the great rocks and the great waters.  So long as these qualities are turned in a good direction, all goes well, but when in a bad one like the “facilis descensus” described in George Cruikshank’s great picture “The Worship of Bacchus,” then all goes badly.  An illustration of these large ideas turned to a bad account appeared in a story we read of a degenerate son of the North to whom the gods had granted the fulfilment of three wishes:  First, he would have a Loch Lomond of whisky; secondly, a Ben Lomond of snuff; thirdly, (with some hesitation) another Loch Lomond of whisky.

We did not attempt the ascent of Ben Lomond, as our experiences of mountain climbing hitherto had not been very encouraging.  Nor did we require the aid of those doubtful articles so ardently desired by the degenerate Scot as we walked along the good road, sheltered with trees, that lay alongside Loch Lomond, with the slopes of the high hills to the right and to the left, the great loch with its lovely islands backed by the mountains beyond.

Tarbet, which we soon left behind us, was notorious as the port of Magnus the Norseman, whose followers dragged their boats there from the sea to harry the islands whither so many of the natives had fled for safety.

Ninnius, writing in the eighth century, tells of the great King Arthur, who defeated the Scots and drove them for refuge to Loch Lomond, “in which there were sixty islands and sixty rocks, and on each an eagle’s nest.  Every first of May they came together, and from the sound of their voices the men of that country knew what should befall during the coming year.  And sixty rivers fell into this remarkable lake, but only one river ran from the lake to the sea.”  The exactness of every point rather amused us, for of course the invincible Arthur, like all other mythological heroes, must ever succeed, and he soon cleared the Scots from their stronghold.

Sir Walter Scott has made this district famous, and we could have lingered long in the region of the Trossachs, and should have been delighted to see Loch Katrine, close by, which the “Lady of the Lake” had rendered so familiar, but time is a hard taskmaster and we had to be content with what Loch Lomond provided for us.