threw myself across his neck, and with my whole strength and weight squeezed his face and head down among the snow. The men and women shouted and clapped their hands until all the Grampian forests of Strathaven rang again. I found I now had him safe; for though he exerted himself with all his power, he could only drag himself backward through the snow, and as I kept my position firm, he was obliged to drag me along with him; so that, not being able to get any breath, his strength soon failed him, and in less than five minutes he could do no more than now and then move a limb, like a frog that is crushed beneath a waggon wheel.

None of them, however, offered to release their countryman, until I, thinking that he was clean gone, arose from above him of my own accord. I was saluted by all the women, and many of them clasped me in their arms and kissed me; and the prettiest and best dressed one among them took off my bonds and threw them away, at which the captain seemed nothing offended. I was then conducted back to the inn in triumph, while poor Finlay Bawn Beg Macalister Monro was left lying among the snow, and his sword sticking fast in the stump of the birch tree; and for any thing I know it is sticking there to this day.

I was loaded with little presents, and treated with the best that the village could afford. The captain paid his wager; but before we had done drinking our whisky I got as drunk as a boar, and I fear behaved in a very middling way. I had some indistinct remembrance afterwards of travelling over great hills of snow, and by the side of a frozen lake, and of fighting with some Highlanders, and being dreadfully mauled, but all was like a dream; and the next morning, when I awoke, I found myself lying in a dungeon vault of the castle of Brae-Mar, on a little withered heath, and all over battered with blood, while every bone of my body was aching with pain. I had some terrible days with these confounded

Farquharsons and Mackintoshes, but I got a round amends of them ere all the play was played; it is a long story, but well worth telling, and if you will have patience"

"Andrew," said old Margaret, "the supper is waiting; when we have got that an' the prayers by, we'll then hae the story out at our ain leisure; an' Andrew, ye sal hae the best i' the house to your supper the night.”

"Gudewife, ye're no just sic a fool as I thought you were," said Andrew; "that's twice i' your life ye hae spoken very good sense. I trow we'll e'en take your advice, for ye ken how the auld sang ends,

SIR,As every thing that relates to Loch Ketturin and its environs, that modern classic ground, is become interesting to the public, I have taken the resolution of sending you a short relation of a tour which I made through that district near the latter end of March last; in hopes you will not be displeased at meeting with some account of that romantic and favourite scene, even though by one ill fitted for such a description, and little acquainted with the rules of composition.

I went to Stirling in the mail-coach, and riding to Callander that night, had the peculiar satisfaction of meeting with the old chieftain of M'Nab, whose name had been familiar to me from my infancy; and whom I had always been extremely anxious to see. From the relations that I had heard of his youth

ful feats and eccentricities, I expected to find in him a rough imperious old gentleman, who would scarcely condescend to hold social intercourse with any man, far less with an inconsiderable wanderer like me; but I found his manners simple and condescending, and his politeness without any affectation. His inexhaustible store of Highland anecdotes, and his manner of telling them, are extremely amusing. Take him all in all; his form, manner, and character; and to these add the respect that is paid to him in the two villages, where he chiefly resides, he is certainly the finest model of an old Highland feudal baron that will ever again be seen in Scotland. His character evinces a high degree of obliging condescension, and haughty impatience of control, of the gentleness of the lamb and the boldness of a lion.

I took the road up Strathgartney on foot, intending to keep on the south side of the river, until I reached the old bridge a little below Loch Venachar; but observing, from the road, an artificial mound, on the level plain between the two rivers, and a small burial ground enclosed on the top of it, I could not resist the impulse to stem the water, though rough and deep, for the purpose of viewing it; not doubting but that it was the tomb of Roderick Dhu. I was rather disappointed on finding the names of other people recorded on the tomb; but as it was so nigh to the place of rencounter between FitzJames and Roderick, and knowing that our old heroes were always buried on the fields where they fought, I hoped that the tomb would be first erected to him, and these other peo ple buried in it afterwards.

I cannot help remarking here, that I think the greatest fault attached to the delightful poem of the Lady of the Lake, is, its containing no one fact, on which the mind of the enraptured peruser can rest as the basis of a principle so inherent in the human mind, as is the desire of affixing the stamp of reality on such incidents as interest us. The soul of

man thirsts naturally and ardently for truth; and the author that ceases to deceive us with the appearance of it, ceases in a proportional degree to interest our feelings in behalf of the characters which he describes, or the fortunes of the individuals to which these characters are attached. The stories contained in Mr Walter Scott's other poems, are all fairly without the bounds of probability; yet as they relate to some facts of which we are certain, and there being no proof that the most of the events are not founded on facts, which the bard has been pleased to embellish in his own fanciful and peculiar manner, they have the same pleasing effect upon the mind that is produced by an authentic narrative. But in this poem he never once leaves the enchanting field of probability, yet the mind is forced reluctantly to acknowledge, that it has been pursuing an illusion, and interesting itself in a professed fiction. The possibility is not even left of attaching the idea of truth to one event, which might have served as a pivot on which the rest would have turned; with which we would gladly have associated every other circumstance, and acquiesced with delight in the delicious deception. I admire the easy and simple majesty of that sweet tale as much as any person can possibly do; but I have never read it without regretting, that it had not been founded on a fact, though ever so trivial; and though my taste may be particular in this matter, I felt the effect rather distressing to reflection on viewing every scene of action referred to in the poem, which causes me to mention it in this place.

The whole of the scenery around Callander and Strathgartney is interesting, and to the man who has traversed the flat extent of the eastern counties of Britain, where the verge of the horizon is always resting on something level with or below his eye, the frowning brows of Ben-Ledi, (the hill of God,) with the broken outline of the mountains, both to the east and the westward, have a peculiarly pleasing effect. Still

as you advance, the scenery improves, and in the vicinity of the bridge of Turk, it is highly picturesque, and yields little in variety to the celebrated Trossacks. From the top of Lanrick Mead, the muster place of the Clan-Alpine, which is a small detached hill at the junction of the water of Glen-Finlas with Loch Venachar, the general effect of the view is more noble and better contrasted, than from any other spot I alighted upon in the Strath.

I had here a conversation of considerable length with an old crusty Highlander, with whose remarks I was highly amused. He asked me frankly where I came from? And what my business was in that country? And on my informing him that I was going to take a view of the Trossacks; he said that I was right to do so, else I would not be in the fashion, but it was a sign I was too idle, and had very little to do at home; but that a Mr Scott had put all the people mad by printing a lying poem about a man that never existed,"What the d was to be seen about the Trossacks more than in an hundred other places? A few rocks and bushes, nothing else." He gave me the outlines of the story of the Lady of the Lake, with great exactness, and added several improvements of his own. I asked him if there was any truth in it at all; or if it was wholly a fiction? He said, there was once indeed a man who sculked and defended himself in and about Loch-Ketturin; that an old Gaelic song related almost the same story, but that Mr Scott had been quite misled. with regard to the names— -he was mistaken about them altogether; he translated some parts of the song into English, which were not much illustrative of any story: He, however, persisted in asserting that the stories were fundamentally the

same.

He told me further, that Mr Burrel intended to build a bower in the lonely Isle of Loch-Ketturin, in which he meant to place the prettiest girl that could be found in Edinburgh,

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