And we heard him describe the Cotter's Saturday Night, when
"Wi' joy unfeigned brothers and sisters meet,

And each for others' welfare kindly spiers;
The jovial hours, swift-winged, unnoticed fleet;
Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears.
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years,
Anticipation forward points the view;
The mother wi' her needle and her shears

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new ;

The father mixes a' wi' admonition due."

Our hearts beat in sympathy when we remembered the words: "From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,

That makes her loved at home, revered abroad.

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,

An honest man 's the noblest work of God!"

Our thoughts ascended in the prayer:

"O Thou who poured the patriotic tide

That streamed thro' Wallace's undaunted heart,
Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,

Or nobly die, the second glorious part,
Oh, never, never Scotia's realm desert."

Burns' cottage is now used as a small public house.

Half a mile fur

ther and again we stood before an old churchyard, and in memory, aided by imagination, went back to the time of Tam o' Shanter, when he had lingered at the old inn with Souter Johnnie, till

"The time approaches when Tam maun ride.
That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane,
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in.

Weel mounted on his gray mare Meg,

A better never lifted leg,

Tam skelpit on through dust and mire,

Despising wind and rain and fire;

Whiles glow'ring round wi' prudent cares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares,

Kirk Alloway was drawing nigh,

Where ghaists and houlets nightly cry.
* * * Tam saw an unco sight,
Warlocks and witches in a dance.
There sat auld Nick in shape o' beast,
A loosie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge.
Coffins stood round like open presses,
That showed the dead in their last dresses,

Wi' mair so horrible and awfu'

Which even to name wad be unlawfu'.

"Tam stood like one bewitched," then

"Laist his reason a'thegether

And roars out, "Weel done, cutty-sark!"

And in an instant all was dark;

And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,

When out the hellish legion sallied."

Feeling as though the witches were after us, we rode on to the "running stream they dare na' cross," where

"Nannie, far before the rest,

Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And flew at Tam wi' furious ettle;

But little wist she Maggie's metal.

Ae spring brought off her master hale,

But left behind her ain gray tail."

This was by the Auld Brig o' Doon, and we rode by its braes where the poet said,―

"Oft hae I roved by bonnie Doon,

To see the rose and woodbine twine;

And ilka bird sang o' its luve,

And fondly sae did I o' mine."

Last of all we visited the monument erected in 1820 to the one whose words are his own best monument. Here are preserved many mementoes of Robert Burns and his Highland Mary, of whom he wrote:

"The golden hours on angel wings

Flew o'er me and my dearie;
For dear to me as light and life
Was my sweet Highland Mary.”

Here is his library and the very Bible he gave to her. All of a sudden, as we went round a projecting corner, there sat Tam o' Shanter,

"And at his elbow Souter Johnny,

His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony,"

so natural that we were tempted to flee away, feeling that the witches had not finished their work in this noted town. We left Ayr saying:

"Read the names that know not death,

Few nobler ones than Burns' are there,
And few have worn a greener wreath
Than that which binds his hair."

A delightful excursion to the Falls of the Clyde, where nature plays most wonderful freaks in rowing her waters to the sea "a fall of a few feet, a fall of about thirty feet, a cataract of ninety feet, and a grand final leap," where Romance circles with rainbows of light the dark retreat of the chief of Scottish Chiefs, Sir William Wallace; and to Lanark, where, in an Established Church of 1777, a colossal statue of this same chief is elevated high over the entrance, as he stands high in their records of fame; and we leave Glasgow, to return no more till the year again comes around.

SCOTTISH LAKES.

CHAPTER III.

COTLAND acknowledges Rob Roy as one of her most celebrated characters, and everywhere we were met by reminders of this bold mountaineer as we passed through the regions where

"The eagle he was lord above, and Rob was lord below."

The journey was fraught with interest for its historical associations, and also because

"It was so wondrous wild, the whole sight seemed

The scenery of some fairy dream."

Under very favorable circumstances for this country, we took a steamer at the foot of Loch Lomond. No fog or glaring sunlight interfered with our view, and beautiful fleecy clouds sailed in the blue above and were mirrored in the blue below. All around us rose

"The mountains that like giants stand

To sentinel enchanted land."

As we glided along on the bosom of this lovely lake, the most beautiful dissolving views were presented, and before we could fairly take in one it became another, each more pleasing than all the rest.

"The rocky summits, split and rent,

Formed turret, dome, or battlement,
Or seemed fantastically set

With cupola or minaret."

The ghost of Rob Roy seemed to haunt the entire scene, and the dark heather and the broom on the mountain sides to be evil spirits seeking

whom they might devour. Many of the Bens "heaved high their forehead bare" in apparent veneration for their hoary brother, Ben Lomond, whose aged head is much of the time covered with the white cap which served as a signal to get ready the Scotch umbrellas. We were constantly shut in by those many mountains, all run in a different mold, some lifting a huge bare peak all unadorned, others bearing vegetation to their very summits, while their sides were varied with the dark moss growing in large patches here and there, intermingled with the broom, which gives great variety by its different appearance at different stages of growth-bright green when young, and becoming very dark, and covered in time of blossoming with the yellow papilionaceous flowers. The numberless little islands were all bowers where Cupid might dwell, and the names of many of them very appropriately commence with Inch, giving only an exaggerated idea of their baby size. Seventeen of the twenty-one miles where this romantic lake finds for itself a bed, winding around at the base of these heathery mountains, receiving to its bosom the leaping, sparkling waterfalls, taking up the burns hastening on their way to the sea, and giving frequent glimpses of realms little less than fairy through the glens and dingles on its sides, - seventeen miles among the islands Inchcruachan, Inchgalbraith, Inchtaranach, and all the other Inches, from the wee ones with scarcely soil for a single tree to find root, to Inchlonaig, where are still growing the yew trees planted by Robert Bruce, and Inchmurrin, the largest of Lomond's isles, measuring a mile and a half in length by three-quarters of a mile in breadth, where one of Scotland's dukes now feeds his deer, seventeen miles the U. S. G. sailed from the foot of the lake, where the Leven takes these waters on to the Clyde, to within four miles of its head where it receives Falloch Water. We landed at Inversnaid in the face of two tall Bens across the lake, and in the neighborhood of Craigroyston Cave, where Rob Roy oft retreated to hold council with his men. At Inversnaid a