celebration of its "Birks" to glorify those of
Aberfeldy, which are far inferior in the
prodigality of sylvan grace. When the valley
expands again, it is enlivened by the smoke of
a large, old-fashioned village; you are at
Braemar, where the Roman Catholic faith,
not incited by proselyting zeal, but stiffened
with old Jacobite remembrances, holds its
station between handsome chapels of the
Scottish Kirk and the Free Church; and find
a good old-fashioned inn, such as railways have
seldom shared— the Invercauld Arms—pre-
pared with every hospitable device to receive
you, or, when completely crammed, to billet
you in the small clean chamber of one of the
neighbouring cottages. Here I ascertained
the possibility of reaching the summit of the
Cairngorm cluster in a long day, by the aid of
a guide and a stout horse; but the information
was attended with a strongly-expressed
proviso as to the weather, and an intimation
that there was but slender chance of the
morrow's favour. That chance, however, I
had resolved to take; and my hostess's son
kindly undertook provisionally to make due
arrangements, and to call me at sunrise, if
the day should promise better things than the
damp and cloudy evening suggested.

I did not wait for his summons; for a bright
sunbeam found its way into my small cabin,
and induced me to appear in what Macbeth
calls " manly readiness " before the appointed
hour; the guide was summoned, and just as
I finished a hasty breakfast, which had started
up as if by magic on a suddenly swept table,
welcomed me to horse. He would willingly
have taken his share of the day's journey on
foot; but this would have been more painful
to my apprehension than to his sensation;
and, therefore, he condescended to ride with
me; so, about six o'clock, we set forth on two
as clumsy, willing, honest steeds as ever did
pony-duty among the hills, beneath a sky of
doubtful promise—too blue for despondency,
too pink for assurance,— but in the meanwhile
of exquisite beauty.

Our road lay by the side of the Dee, an
excellent road, the more charming from the
sense that it leads nowhere except to the wilds
—and winding usually without fences through
the woods, which spread upwards to walls of
rock, blackened by lofty pines, and downwards
to the river, clad with weeping birches, and on
both sides often edged with thickets of
raspberry bushes, speckled with the red berries,
which it was pleasant to think urchin hands
would gather before night-fall. About four
miles from Braemar, a stream, descending from
the rocks on the left, passes under the arched
road, and falling into a deep and richly wooded
chasrn in a pleasure-ground on the right, forms
one of those cascades which only want water
to be magnificent falls. My guide invited me
to inspect this linn, pointing at a low open
wicket, by which I might enter on the descent,
and telling me that if I would keep the path,
it would lead me out again into the road a few
hundred yards onward, at a spot to which he
would lead the horses. I did so—and record
the little deviation, not for the sake of attempting
to describe the long embowered staircase
which led to the deep bottom of the dell; nor
the lofty walls of birch which, rising thence,
just gave space for the water to fall like a
fine veil of lace over the fronting strip of
rock; nor the path which winds thence along
the open magic of the Dee, after it has received
the fallen rivulet, until, through a grove of
birch, it issues on the road; but to express the
gratification which such a use of property
inspires. The fall is called—The Linn of
Caramelyie; what name its owner bears I know
not; but the only exclusive benefit he derives
from its possession is the pleasure of keeping
it accessible to the steps and beautiful to the
eyes of all who may choose to enjoy it.

About six miles from Braemar, the carriage
road terminates at the entrance of the open
forest, and the Linn of Dee, which is not, as its
name would suggest, a fall of the river, but a
narrow rapid, where its broad waters have
wrought out a channel through the rock, of
scarcely four feet wide, through which the
great volume of water rushes with the roar of
a cataract, having hollowed the rock both
above and below its narrowest bed, into semi-
circular basins of exact symmetry, and
embossed them with fantastic devices. Here a
stream of existence as strong, as feverish, and
as tortured—was nearly stopped in its " first
sprightly running,"—that of the infant Byron,
who had fallen over the upper ledge, and was
rescued from the gulf by the intrepid grasp of
a Highland servant, who flung himself forward
to catch him.

Here we crossed the Dee by a bridge which
overlooks the deep basin at the rapid's foot,
and struck into a trackless open ground,
covered with heather, until we came in sight
of another stream, the Lui, smaller, but as
gay as the Dee, which it is hastening to join,
and passed into a glen which bears its name.
From the ridge which bounds it, we saw the
clustered mountains we sought, high in air—
Breirach and Cairntoul in front, with round
summits, supporting the cone of Ben Muich
between them, and concealing the other
summits: they looked, indeed, hence, to be a single
huge mountain, loftier than Loch-na-gar, but
not of outline so graceful. The glimpse was
only for a moment; for clouds rolled round
the tops; and we were soon embosomed in
the nearer hills. Passing gently onward, over
a rugged but flowery ground, where
vegetation held perpetual contest with the torrents
that scarred it, we entered an immense grove
of pines, which, thickly furnished with dark
boughs at the top, upheld a huge mass of
gloomy foliage, but below even and bare as
pillars, and, played upon by the slanting
sunbeams, produced a mixture of the gay and
solemn, rarely permitted in the architecture
of nature. Beyond this, which might well be
taken for an enchanted grove, another stream,