The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1803-01-29 00:00:00

LI lER.iTURE.

La opere trefium cognorcers.

f

Hoa.

Having presented the reader in oar last Paper'
with a view of some of the deformities of the Molt A t.
Woat.u, we will now place before him some of the
sublime and terrible beauties of the Naasre t.
Though the scene,which is replete with human interest,
at ill always the more forcibly controul the attention of
man, yet the lineaments of inanimate and wild na-
ture are infested with their own peculiar attraction,
and can please, without harrassing or alarming the
imagination. The precipice and the cataract, while
they strain the eye, or stun the ear, are not clothed
with the terror which rests upon the fierceness of the
passions : those enlarge and elevate the fancy, but
this seises and gives a shock to the heart. From
the works Which now lie before us of two tra-
%idlers who have visited the northern and some of
the western parts of our island, we shall select two
descriptions of nearly similar scenes, the first from
Mr. Campbell's ".tourney from Edinburgh through
Parts of North Britain," and the second from Mr.
Lipscomb's " Journey into South \Vales." In Ca-
ta nos tA, Nature is generally of a larger stature,
and a wilder niten than she is in Cast BR : but in
tte instances, which we have chosen as parallels, she
appears to be as great in the latter as in the former.
The two narratives were published in the last year ;
they cannot consequently be made the subjects of our
particular remarks.
" From Inver we pmceed along the banks of the
I:rahan, which, as we advance, becomes more and
more rapid, impetuous, and noisy, till turning a
little to the left, where an arch is thrown over a
thasm through which the river hurries onward, we
command a view of its fall, while the car is stunned
by the mighty roar of so vast a volume of water in
its precipitation over huge and dark coloured rocks,
that seem in vain to arrest it in its course. The ef-
fect that so grand an object is calculated to raise in
the mind, it is sincerely to be regretted, is much in-
jnred by the appearance on the right, immediately
opposite to the cataract, cat a pavilion of modern
taste, placed on a hanging precipice called, by way
of eminence, Os:ian's Hall*. The stranger is ushered
into this mansion with ridiculous ceremony. Suffice
it to say, that,elegant as by some it may be deemed,
a lover of the chaste simplicity of nature views this
pavilion as not consistent with the grandeur of the
scenery around it. It ought to be removed.
" We proceed in our ramble along the Brahan
through paths conducted with much taste and fancy,
to what is called The Rumbling Brig. On our way
thither, we frequently meet with huge fragments of
Tech, grouped so fantastically, as to lead the ima-
gination to conceive them the labour of the giants of
old, or of the heroes celebrated in the poems of Os-
Sian. The artist who conducted the pathways along
the hanks of the Brahan, availing himself of these
accidental appearances, formed with appropriate
skill and taste, a rude and dark apartment in which
the following lines, the composition of a ladyt, are
inscribed : . .

! see the form that faintly gleams;
"Ili Oscar, come to cheer my dreams:
On wreathes of mist it glides away :
Oh' star, my lovely Oscar, nay.
Awake the harp to doleful lays,
And soothe my soul with Oscar's praise.
Wake, Ossian, last of Finaal's line,
And mix thy sighs and tears with mine.
The shell lit-sued in Oscar's hall,
Since gloomy CJ irbac saw thee fall.
The me o'er Nlarven playful bounds,
?Jro hrars the cry of Oscar's hounds,
Thy four grey stones the hunter spies :
Peace to the hero's ghnat !" he cries.
Several inscriptions are to he seen in our ramble
along the rugged banks of the Braban, characteris-
tic of the scenery around.
4, When by heavy falls of rain the Brahan rises to
its greatest possible swell, the rapidity and force
that it displays is truly amazing,
Witte o'er the brim, with many a torrent swell'd,
Ant the mis'd ruin of its banks cierspread,
At last the roued-up river pours along ;
Resistless' roaring, dreadful, down it comes
VTOIII the ride mountain and the maw" wild,
Tumbling through the racks abrupt, and sounding far ;
Then o'er the sandy valley floating spreads,
Calm, sluggish, silent; tillagain, coostrain'd
B tween two meeting hills, it bursts away,
Where rocks and woods o'crhang the turbid stream;
There gathering triple farce, rapid and deep,
It boils, and wheels, and foams, and thunders through.
Tnosisras.—Worter

" A rude arch joins the chasm through which the
Brahman " boils, and wheels, and foams and thun-
ders." It has been called by the country people of
the lowland districts " The Rundimg Brg," and by
those of the higher " ai Drechd chleich," the Bridge
of the Stone ; perhaps from the appearance the
chasm exhibits ; having a huge fragment of rock
wedged mid-way down the yawning steep, under
Which the fury of the fall is hid for a moment, but
is again caught by the eye in the dark pool a little
beyond the bending brows of the rocks, over which
the arch is thrown, sullen, silent, and deep."

• From its lame, one would naturally expect to find this
Lill in a stile of rude magnificence suitable to our idea of the
era of Ossian. Nothlop can be conceived more diametrically
cippogite. It is elegant, and finished to a degree of finical
nicety rarely tube met with. On the inner door of this hall,
so hermitage, as it is sometimes called, it painted a figure re-
presenting Dalian. It is, in fact, a copy of the Belisarius of
R üben4 or Vandyke, by a young artist of the uante of Stuart,
snt elive of the late Duke of Athol.
t Mer. D. Fordyce.