Next morning we passed on to Crieff, in whose neighborhood we visited Drummond Castle, the abode, or rather one of the abodes, of Lord Willoughby D’Eresby.  It has a noble park, through which you pass by an avenue of two miles long.  The old keep is still ascended to get the fine view of the surrounding country; and during Queen Victoria’s visit, her Guards were quartered there.  But what took my fancy most was the old-fashioned garden, full of old shrubs and new flowers, with its formal parterres in the shape of the family arms, and its clipped yew and box trees.  It was fresh from a shower, and now glittering and fragrant in bright sunshine.

This afternoon we pursued our way, passing through the plantations of Ochtertyre, a far more charming place to my taste than Drummond Castle, freer and more various in its features.  Five or six of these fine places lie in the neighborhood of Crieff, and the traveller may give two or three days to visiting them with a rich reward of delight.  But we were pressing on to be with the lakes and mountains rather, and that night brought us to St. Fillan’s, where we saw the moon shining on Loch Earn.

All this region, and that of Loch Katrine and the Trosachs, which we reached next day, Scott has described exactly in “The Lady of the Lake”; nor is it possible to appreciate that poem, without going thither, neither to describe the scene better than he has done after you have seen it.  I was somewhat disappointed in the pass of the Trosachs itself; it is very grand, but the grand part lasts so little while.  The opening view of Loch Katrine, however, surpassed, expectation.  It was late in the afternoon when we launched our little boat there for Ellen’s isle.

The boatmen recite, though not con molto espressione, the parts of the poem which describe these localities.  Observing that they spoke of the personages, too, with the same air of confidence, we asked if they were sure that all this really happened.  They replied, “Certainly; it had been told from father to son through so many generations.”  Such is the power of genius to interpolate what it will into the regular log-book of Time’s voyage.

Leaving Loch Katrine the following day, we entered Rob Roy’s country, and saw on the way the house where Helen MacGregor was born, and Rob Roy’s sword, which is shown in a house by the way-side.

We came in a row-boat up Loch Katrine, though both on that and Loch Lomond you may go in a hateful little steamer with a squeaking fiddle to play Rob Roy MacGregor O. I walked almost all the way through the pass from Loch Katrine to Loch Lomond; it was a distance of six miles; but you feel as if you could walk sixty in that pure, exhilarating air.  At Inversnaid we took boat again to go down Loch Lomond to the little inn of Rowardennan, from which the ascent is made of Ben Lomond, the greatest elevation in these parts.  The boatmen are fine, athletic men; one