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After tea we walked out, and visited a little kirk that stands near the shore of Loch Achray, at a good point of view for seeing the hills round about. This morning opened cloudily; but after breakfast I set out alone, and walked through the pass of the Trosachs, and thence by a path along the right shore of the lake.
Thus, I saw a wild and confused assemblage of heights, crags, precipices, which they call the Trosachs, but I saw them calmly and coldly, and was glad when the drosky was ready to take us on to Callender. The hotel at the Trosachs, by the by, is a very splendid one, in the form of an old feudal castle, with towers and turrets.
Just across the lake, which gradually grew narrower as we went north, lay the low Scotch mountains, their green outlines subdued by a soft blue haze, but forming a striking background to the ever-varying scenery of the lake and opposite shore. Near the northern end on the farther side is the entrance to the Trosachs, made famous by Scott's "Lady of the Lake."
But vain would be the attempt to marshal before my mind's eye the glorious pageantry of the Trosachs, though, at the time of its actual revelation, it certainly seemed to make a far more vivid impression. The delight and exhilaration which such magnificence inspired are easily summoned back, but not the incarnate features of them.
The walk back to the Trosachs showed me Ben Venue and Ben An under new aspects, the bare summit of the latter rising in a perfect pyramid, whereas from other points of view it looks like quite a different mountain. Sometimes a gleam of sunshine came out upon the rugged side of Ben Venue, but his prevailing mood, like that of the rest of the landscape, was stern and gloomy.
Yes! it was a peculiar beauty of those sunsets and moonlights on the levels of Chicago which Chamouny or the Trosachs could not make me forget. Notwithstanding all the attractions I thus found out by degrees on the flat shores of the lake, I was delighted when I found myself really on my way into the country for an excursion of two or three weeks.
The rocky steeps that enclose the town have a Scottish air, and traveled visitors, beholding them, are fain to allude to the Trosachs; but the river that rolls through the mountains, and has whirled them into a hollow as the potter turns a vase, is continental in its character, and plunges through the landscape with a swell of eddy and a breadth of muscle that are like nothing amid the basking Scottish waters.
After tea we walked out, and visited a little kirk that stands near the shore of Loch Achray, at a good point of view for seeing the hills round about. This morning opened cloudily; but after breakfast I set out alone, and walked through the pass of the Trosachs, and thence by a path along the right shore of the lake.
Away scudded the delighted Kate; and after having lamented her gallant grey, and admired the Trosachs, came up too-tooing through her hand with all her might, but found poor Ellen, very unlike a monument of Grecian art, absolutely crying, and Allan Bane using his best English and kindest tones to console her.
In his description of the Trosachs, he has produced something very beautiful, and as true as possible, though certainly its beauty has a little of the scene-painter's gloss on it. Nature is better, no doubt, but Nature cannot be exactly reproduced on canvas or in print; and the artist's only resource is to substitute something that may stand instead of and suggest the truth.
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