Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1856-03-21
tflistflIanrous articles.
HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND.
BY T. D. MACAULEY.

1t is not easy for an Englishman, who
can pass in a day from his club IN 81
James street to his shoot-box among the
Grampians, and who finds in his shooting
box all the comforts and luxuries OF his
club. to believe that in the times OF his
prandfathers, St. James street had as
little connection with the Grampians as
with the Andes. In the south of our
island scarcely anything was known about
the Celtic part of Scotland, and what was
known excited no feeling but contempt
and loathing. The crags and the glens,
the woods and the waters, were, indeed,
the same that now swarm every autumn
with admiring gazers and sketcherS.-
The Trosachs wound, as now, between
gigantic walls of rock tapestried with
broom and wild rose. Foyers came
down headlong through the brentwood
with the same leap and the same roar
with which he still rushes to Loeb Ness;
and in defiance to the sun Of June, the
snow scalp of Ben Cruechan rose, as it
still rises, over the willowy islets Of Loeb
Awe. Yet none of these sights had
power, till a recent period, to attract a
single poet or painter from more opulent
and more tranquil regions. Indeed, law
and policy, trade and industry, have done
far more than people of romantic dispo-
sitions will readily admit TO develop in
our midst a sense of the wilder beauties
of nature. A traveller must be freed
from all apprehension of being murdered
or starved before he can be charmed by
the bold outlines and rich tint of the hills.
He is not likely to be thrown into costa
cies by the abruptness Of a precipice
from which he is in imminent danger of
falling two thousand feet perpendicular;
1 by the boiling waves of torrent which
suddenly whirls away his baggage, and
forces him to run for life; by the gloomy
grandeur of place where he finds a
corpse which marauders have just strip
ped and mangled; or by the screams of
those eagles whose next meal may prob
ably be on his own eyes. About the
year 1880, Capt. Burt, one of the first
Englishmen who caught glimpse Of the
spots which now allure our tourists from
every part of the civilized world, wrote
an account of his wanderings. He was
evidently man of quick, an observant
and a cultivated mind, and doubtless, had
he lived in our age, have looked with
mingled awe and delight on the mountain.
of Inverness shire. But writing wifi
the feeling which was universal in hi
age, he pronounced those mountains mon
strous excresences. Their deformity, h
said, was such, that the most sterile plain
seemed lovely by comparison. Fin
weather, he complained, only made ba,
worse, for the clearer the day the NOR
disagreeably did those misshapen masse
of gloomy brown and dirty purple affec
the eye. What a contrast, he exclaimed
between these horrible prospects and tn
beauties of Richmond-hill. Some per
sons may think that Burt was a man c
vulgar and prosaical mind but they wi
scarcely venture to pass similar judg
ment on Oliver Goldsmith. Goldsmit
was one of the very few Saxons VIII
more than a century ago, ventured to e.
plore the Highlands. He was disguise
by the hideous wilderness, and declare
that he greatly preferred the charmir
country round Legion, the vast expan
of verdant meadow, and the villas wi
their statues and grottoes, trim flow
beds and recktillinear avenues. Yet it
difficult TO believe that the author of Il
Traveller" and of the Deserted V
lage" was naturally inferior in taste al
sensibility TO the thousands of clerks al
milliners who are now thrown into "a
ture by the sight of Loeb Katrine a
Loeb Lomond. His feelings may
easily explained. 1t was not till roa
had been cut out of the rocks, till bride
had been flung over the courses of t
rivulets, till inns had succeeded the de
of robbers, till there was as little dang
of being slain or plundered in the wild
defile of Badenoch or Lochaber as
Cornhill, that strangers could be encha
cd by the blue dimples of the lakes 3
by the rainbows which overhung the v
terfall, and could derive a solemn pl
sure even from the clouds and tempe
which lowered on the mountain tops.
The skeptic is ever expert at puzzli
a debate which he finds himself unable