and loves to startle the echoes. He becomes patriotic at the "Whangie." "It is a scene, in brief, to brood over rather than to describe; so, pulling forth pocket-pistol' (we always carry arms), and borrowing the necessary dilu

our

tion from the bonny wee well at our feet, let us, with all the honours and upstand ing, devote one lipping cup to the

'Land of the mountain and the flood.'

"What a stramash that hearty hurrah has kicked up among the peese-weeps and plovers! There they go in myriads, wheep-wheeping, as if they had never heard a cheer at the Whangie Well in the whole course of their lives."

When next we grasp our pilgrimstaff to ramble in the West, may Ile be of our company,

"Poet, philosopher, and guide, and friend."

In his Preface to the Rambles, Mr M'Donald writes:

"The district of which Glasgow is the centre, while it possesses many scenes of richest Lowland beauty, and presents many glimpses of the stern and wild in Highland landscape, is peculiarly fertile in reminiscences of a historical nature. In the latter respect, indeed, it is excelled by few localities in Scotland-a circumstance of which many of our citizens seem to have been hitherto almost unconscious. There is a story told of a gentleman who, having boasted that he had travelled far to see a celebrated landscape on the Continent, was put to the blush by being compelled to own that the had never visited a scene of superior loveliness than one situated on his own estate, and near which he had spent the greater part of his life. The error of this individual is one of which too many are guilty."

These words have our hearty approval. We are prone, in other and more important matters than scenery, to seek our enjoyments at a distance. We would gather that happiness from the far-off stars, which, had we the eyes to see, is all the while lying at our feet. You go to look at a celebrated scene. People have returned from it in raptures. You have heard them describe it, you have read about it, and you naturally expect something very fine indeed. When you arrive, the chances are

that its beauties are carefully stowed away in a thick mist, or you are drenched to the skin, or you find the hotels full, and are forced to sleep in an outhouse, or on the heather beneath the soft-burning planets, and go home with a rheumatism which embitters your existence to your dying day. Or, if you are lucky enough to find the weather cloudless and the day fine, you are doomed to cruel disappointment. Is that what you have heard and read so much about? That pitiful drivelling cascade! Why, you were led to expect the wavy grace of the "Grey Mare's Tail" combined with the flash and thunder of Niagara. That a mountain, forsooth! It isn't so much bigger than Ben Lomond, after all! You feel swindled and taken in. You commend the waterfall to the fiend. You snap your fingers in the face of the mountain. You're a humbug, sir. You're an impostor, sir. I- I'll write to the Times, and expose you, sir." On the other hand, the townsman, at the close of a useful and busy day, walks out into the country. The road is pretty; he has never been on it before; he is insensibly charmed along. He reaches a little village or clachan, its half-dozen thatched houses set down amid blossoming apple-trees; the smoke from all the chimneys, telling of the preparation of the evening meal, floating up into the rose of sunset. A labourer is standing at the door, with a child in his arms; the unharnessed horses are drinking at the trough; and the village boys and girls are busy at their sunset games; two companies, linked ing and receding, singing all the arm in arm, are alternately advancwhile with their sweet shrill voices

"The Campsie duke's a-riding, a-riding, a-riding."

There are a thousand such scenes in Scotland, and why does it yield more pleasure than the celebrated one that you have gone a hundred miles to see, besides spending no end of money on the way? Simply because you have approached it with a pure healthy mind, undebauched by rumour or praise. It has in it the element of unexpectedness, which indeed is the condition of all delight,

for pleasure must surprise if it is to be worthy of the name. The pleasure that is expected and looked for never comes; or if it does, it is not its glorious self, only its vapid ghost. Besides, you have found out the scene, and have thereby a deeper interest in it. This same law pervades everything. You hear of Coleridge's wonderful conversation "creating a soul beneath the ribs of death," and in an evil hour make your appearance at Highgate. The mildbeaming silvery-haired sage, who conceived listening to be the whole duty of man, talks away about everything for the space of three mortal hours by you happily unheard. For after the first twenty minutes you are conscious of a hazy kind of light before your eyes, a soothing sound is murmuring in your ears, a delicious numbness is creeping over all your faculties, and by the end of the first half-hour you are snoring away as comfortably as if you were laid by the side of your lawful spouse. You are disappointed, of course; of the musical wisdom which has been flowing in plenteous streams around, you have not tasted one drop; and you never again hear a man praised for power or brilliancy of conversation without an inward shudder. The next day you take your place on the coach, and are fortunate enough to secure your favourite seat beside the driver. Outside of you is a hard-featured man, wrapt in a huge blue pilotcoat. You have no idea to what class of society he may belong. It is plain he is not a gentleman, in the superfine sense of that term. He has a very remarkable gift of silence. When you have smoked your cigar out, you hazard a remark about the weather. He responds. You try his mind as an angler tries a stream, to see if anything will rise. One thing draws on another, till after an hour's conversation, which has flown over like a minute, you find you have really learned something. The unknown individual in the pilot-coat, who has strangely come out of space upon you, and as strangely returns into space again, has looked upon the world, and has formed his own notions and theories of what goes on there. On him life has pressed as

well as on you; joy at divers times has kindled up his hard grim features; sorrow and pain have clouded them. There is something in the man ; you are sorry when he is dropped on the road, and say 'Good-by' with more than usual feeling. Why is all this? The man in the pilot-coat does not talk so eloquently as S.T.C., but he instructs and pleases you-and just because you went to hear the celebrated Talker, as you go to see the Irish Giant or the Performing Pig, you are disappointed, as you deserved to be. The man in the pilotcoat has come upon you naturally, unexpectedly. At its own will "the cloud turned forth its silver lining on the night." Citizens of large towns, the scenery in your immediate vicinity may not be at all celebrated. It has not the reputation of the Tyrol or the Rhine; but, like the man in the pilot-coat, it is worth knowing and exploring. Get an affection for it, for, like everything else,

"You must love it ere to you

sweet

It shall seem worthy of your love."

If it has ruins, get up what historical or traditionary events it may be associated with. If villages are scattered about, visit them. If it has streams, ramble along their banks, and you will be surprised how much you will be gainers. Happiness may be extracted from the homeliest objects strewn around you. Depend upon it, the theory on which our loud tumultuary modern life is based-that we can go to Pleasure, that if we frequent her haunts we will be sure to meet her-is a heresy and a falsehood. She will not be constrained. She obeys not the call of the selfish and greedy. To those she loves most her visits seem accidents. Depend upon it, she is as frequently found on homely roads, and among rustic villages and farms, as among the glaciers of Chamouni or the rainbows of Niagara ?

In one of his earliest rambles Mr M'Donald follows the river for some miles above the city. The beauty of the Clyde below Glasgow is well known to the civilised world. Even the roué of landscape, to whom the Rhine is weariness and the Alps

commonplace, has felt his heart leap within him while gazing on that magnificent estuary. But it is not only in her maturity that the Clyde is fair. Beauty attends her from her birth on the grassy side of Rodger Law until she is wed with ocean-Bute and the twin Cumbraes bridesmaids of the stream, Arran groomsman of the main. With Mr M'Donald's book in our pocket, to be our companion at intervals, for we require no guide, having years ago learned every curve and bend of the river-we start along its banks to ward Carmyle and Kenmuir wood. We pass Dalmarnock Bridge, and leave the city with its windowed factories, and droning wheels, and everlasting canopy of smoke behind. The stream comes glittering down between green banks that rise so high on the left that farther vision in that quarter is intercepted. On the right there are villages and farms on the lower ground, afar the Cathkin Braes, the moving shadows of the clouds mottling their sunny slopes; and straight ahead, and closing the view, the spire of Cambuslang Church distinctly etched upon the pallid azure of the sky. We are but two miles from the city, yet everything around us is bright and green. The butterfly flutters past; the dragon-fly darts hither and thither. See, he poises himself on his winnowing wings about half a yard from our nose, which he curiously inspects; that done, off darts the winged tenpenny nail, his rings gleaming like steel as he goes. There are troops of swallows about. Watch one. Now he is high in air -now he skims the Clyde. You can hear his sharp querulous twitter as he jerks and turns. Nay-it is said that the kingfisher himself has been seen gleaming along these sandy banks, illuminating them like a meteor. At some little distance we see a white house pleasantly situated among trees. It is Dalbeth Convent. As we pass, one of the frequent bells summoning the inmates to devotion is stirring the sunny Presbyterian air.

A little on this side of the convent a rapid brook comes rushing to the Clyde, crossed by a rude bridge of planks, which have been worn by the feet of three generations

at the very least. The brook, which is rather huffy and boisterous in its way, particularly after rain, had, a few days before, demolished and broken up said wooden planks, and carried one of them off. Arriving, we find a woman and a boy anxious to cross, yet afraid to venture. We proffer our services, of course; and after some little trouble, land both in safety on the farther bank. The woman is plainly, yet neatly dressed, and may be about forty-five years of age, or thereby. The boy is about eleven, has long yellow hair, and looks thin and slender for his years. With them they have something wrapt up in cloth, which, as it is lifted across, seems to our touch to be poles of equal length; for what purpose they may be employed we cannot divine. The woman thanked us for our little service in a tone which smacked of the southern counties of England. We bade them "good-bye," and went on puzzling ourselves a good deal as to what kind of people they are, what their business may be in these parts; but can make nothing of it. However, it doesn't matter much, for we have passed the iron-works now, and the river banks are beautiful: they are wooded on either side, and at a turn the river flows straight down upon you for a mile, with dusty meal-mills on one side, a dilapidated wheel-house on the other, a crescent fall right across its course, over which the water tumbles in indolent foam-a sight which a man who has no pressing engagements, and is fond of exercise, may walk fifty miles to see, and be amply rewarded for his pains. Just within the din of that shallow fall lies the village of Carmyle, an old, quiet, sleepy place, where nothing has hap pened for the last fifty years, and where nothing will happen for fifty years to come. Ivy has been the busiest thing here; it has crept up the walls of the houses, and in some instances fairly "put out the light" of the windows. The thatched roofs are covered with emerald moss. The plum-tree which blossomed a month ago, blossomed just the same in the spring that saw the birth of the Oldest Inhabitant. Glasgow

has been growing rapidly as the raincloud which blackens half a province with its shadow. For half a century not one stone has been placed upon another here. It is the centre of the world. All else is change; this alone is stable. There is a repose deeper than sleep in this little antiquated village-ivy muffled, emerald-mossed -lullabied for ever by the fall of waters. The meal-mills, dusty and white as the clothes of the miller himself, whirr industriously: the waters of the lade come boiling out from beneath the wheel, and reach the Clyde by a channel dug by the hand of man long ago, but, like a work of nature's now, covered with whin as it is. Look down through the clear amber of the current, on which balls of foam are floating, and you see the "long green gleet of the slippery stones, streaming like the tangles of a Nereid's hair." Woe betide the luckless village urchin that dares to wade therein. There is a sudden splash and roar. When he gets out, he is laid, with shrill objurgations, across the maternal knee, and his fright and wet clothes are avenged by sound whacks, administered by the broad maternal hand. Leaving the village, we proceed onward. The banks come closer the stream is shallower, and whirls in eddy and circle over a rocky bed. There is now a woodland loneliness about the Clyde, enhanced by the solitary angler standing up to his middle in the water, and waiting patiently for the bite that never comes; or by the water-ousel flitting from stone to stone. In a quarter of an hour we reach Kenmuir Bank, a place which our rambler has frequently visited, and sincerely loves. The bank rises some seventy feet or so, filled with trees, their trunks rising bare for a space, and then spreading out with branch and foliage into a matted shade, "not pierceable by power of any star;" permitting only the passage of a few flakes of sunshine at noon, resembling, in the green twilight of the wood, a flock of golden butterflies alighted and asleep. Within it is jungle-you wade to the knees in brushwood and bracken. The trunks are clothed with ivy, and snakes of ivy stretch from tree to

"At the foot of the bank, near its upper extremity, there is a fine spring, which is known by the name of the Marriage Well,' from a couple of curiously-united trees which rise from its side, and fling their shadows over its breast. To this spot, in other days, came wedding-parties on the day after marriage to drink of the crystal water, and in a cup of the mountain dew to pledge long life and happiness to the loving pair, whom, on the previous day, old Hymen had made one in the bands which death alone can sever."

Seated by this well, we have the full feeling of solitude. An angler wades out into mid-channel; a bird darts out of a thicket, and slides away on noiseless wing; the shallow wash and murmur of the Clyde flows through a silence deep as that of an American wilderness; and yet by to-morrow, the water which mirrors as it passes the beauty of the luckengowan hanging over the stream asleep, will have received the pollutions of a hundred sewers, and be bobbing up and down among the crowding vessels at the Broomielaw. Returning by the top of Kenmuir Bank, we gaze westward. Out of a world of smoke the stalk of St Rollox rises like a banner - staff, its vapoury streamer floating on the wind; and afar, through the gap between the Campsie and Kilpatrick hills, Ben Lomond himself, with a streak of snow upon his shoulder. Could we but linger here for a couple of hours, we would of a verity behold a sight the sun setting in yonder lurid ocean of smoke. The wreaths of vapour which seem so commonplace and vulgar now, so suggestive of trade and swollen purses and rude manners, would then become a glory such as never shepherd beheld at sunrise on his pastoral hills. Beneath a roof of scarlet flame you would see the rolling edges of the smoke change into a brassy brightness, as if with intense heat the dense mass and volume of it dark as midnight, or glowing

--

with the solemn purple of the thunder, while right in the centre of all this, where he has burned a clear way for himself, the broad fluctuating Orb, paining the eye with his concentrated splendours, sinking gradually down, a black spire cutting his disc in two. But we cannot wait for it, and the apparition will be unbeheld but by the rustic stalking across the field in company with his prodigious shadow, who, turning his face to the flame, conceives it the most ordinary thing in the world. On our return we keep the upper road, and in a short time are again at the village of Carmyle: we have no intention of tracing the river-banks a second time, and so turn up the narrow street. But what is to do? The children are gathered in a circle, and the wives are standing in the cottage doors. There is a performance going on.

The tambourine is

sounding, and a tiny acrobat, with a fillet round his brow, tights covered with tinsel lozenges, and flesh-coloured shoes, is striding about on a pair of long stilts, to the no small amazement and delight of the juveniles. He turns his head, and-why, it is the little boy I assisted across the brook at Dalbeth three hours ago, and of course that's the old lady who is thumping and jingling the tambourine, and gathering in the halfpennies. God bless her jolly old face! who would have thought of meeting her here? As we pass we drop a sixpence, and mutter something about "entertaining angels unawares;" she smiles and curtsies, thumps her tambourine, and rattles the little bells of it with greater vigour than ever. The road to Glasgow is now comparatively uninteresting the trees wear a dingy colour at mid-day; we pass farmhouses with sooty stacks standing in the yards; a coaly, dusty district, which has its characteristics, worth noting, and not without beauty and interest. As the twilight falls dewily on far-off lea and mountain, folding up gowan and buttercup, putting the linnet to sleep beside his nest of young in the bunch of broom, here the circle of the horizon becomes like red-hot steel, the furnaces of the Clyde iron

works lift up their mighty towers of flame, throwing

"Large and angry lustres o'er the sky, And shifting lights across the long black roads ;"

and so, through chase of light and shade, through glimmer of glare and gloom, we find our way into Glasgow.

The tourist who travels by train from Glasgow to Greenock must pass the town of Paisley. If he glances out of the carriage-window, he will see beneath him a third-rate Scotch town, through which flows the foulest and shallowest of rivers.

The principal building in the town, and the one which first attracts the eye of a stranger, is the jail, then follow the church spires as they come into view. Unfortunately the train passes not through Paisley, but over it; and from his "coign of vantage" the tourist beholds much that is unknown to the passenger in the streets. All the back-greens, piggeries, filthy courts, and other unmentionable abominations of the place, are revealed to him for a moment as the Express flashes darkly across the railway bridge. For seeing a Scotch town, a bird's-eye view is plainly the worst point of view. In all likelihood, the tourist, as he passes, will think Paisley the ugliest town he has ever seen, and feel inwardly grateful that his lot has not been cast there. Should he be a political economist, a regenerator of the people, or even a close reader of newspapers, he may look at it with some little interest, remembering that bad trade is chronic there, that the unemployed are always within its walls, and that the soup-kitchen is a standing institution, and conclude that the place is as ugly as it is wretched, and as prosaic as it is ugly. Not so, however. Paisley is a remarkable place--one of the most remarkable in Scotland. Ugly as it may be, it is a favourite seat of the Muses. Apollo, clad in hodden grey, has walked about these narrow streets, and driven the shuttle industriously at the loom. At this moment-and the same might have been said of any moment since the century came in fifty-eight years ago