the bottom through the limpid and breezeless water. To the north, beyond the rocks which guard the entrance to this salt lake, spreads a great extent of sandy shore, dimpled into bays, and broken near the centre by the estuary of the Ithuna, which there falls into the sea. There is nothing peculiarly picturesque in the line of coast; still, it is not without a certain bleak beauty, especially when the sun strikes athwart the sandhills, and throws a golden line between the threatening sky and the murky water. I do not know if it be generally felt, but a low line of barren bent or moor, beaten by and lying along the margin of the wintry sea, always conveys to me an impression of desolateness that nothing else does. When the tide is full, the river mouth swells into a lake which runs some three or four miles inland; but at low water nearly the whole of this surface is uncovered, and it is then the resort of thousands of wading birds, who find abundant food in the shellfish and marine insects which the tide leaves behind. On both sides the banks stretch away into sandy bents, among which the rabbit burrows and the curlew breeds. Returning to the point of the coast from which we started, and sailing in a southerly direction, the shore gradually becomes more precipitous, until the rocks assume a wildness, picturesqueness, and terrible grandeur, which I would in vain attempt to describe. During the spring and summer, these rocks are whitened by clouds of snowy birds, who then gather together by a kind of tacit understanding from all quarters of the ocean. Such is

the appearance of the coast- -the interior is not less characteristic. Immediately around the lawn, with its stunted masses of brushwood, there is a considerable extent of cultivated land, where the partridge-shooting in October is not by any means to be despised. From this the country rises up in gentle undulations till it reaches the heather. These flat, dreary, uplying moors, with the thatched cottage of the crofter, and his scanty patch of cultivation, scattered along their borders, stretch away toward the west for many miles, and form a district where the wailing cry of the plover, and the hoarse crow of the gor-cock, are almost the only sounds that disturb the solitude. In the hollows the autumn rains collect, and form enormous bogs, in which, as they are quite impassable except occasionally in the height of summer, the snipe, the mallard, and the teal bring up their families in perfect seclusion. Among these marshy fens, when the snow is on the ground, and the whole land hard with winter-frost,

On midnights blue and cold,

Long strings of geese come clanging from the stars. Still further inland there are extensive fir woods, worth a visit were it only for that most gorgeous and picturesque combination—a golden sunset seen through the ragged masses of the pine! Woodcock and pheasants frequent these sombre covers, and among the gnarled oaks the delicately fashioned roe moves silently past, like the stealthy creature of a dream! And as a frame for the picture, beyond the moor and the forest rise up one over the other a long succession of snow

capped mountains.

You cannot well believe what a comfort these cool white crests become to us in

the lovely summer night. The Alpine ridge sprinkled with snow, and brought out fresh and roseate against the horizon, has always been a favourite with the painter; but no painting ever rightly conveys to me the sense of mysterious depth and solemnity which the presence of the inviolate and virgin snow communicates to the blue void beyond! Who can forget the Jungfrau, hanging like a golden cloud in the sky, long after night has fallen upon all the valleys?

The rocks of which I have just spoken lie within a few miles of us, and few things can be more enjoyable than a day spent among them in spring-either by land or water. About the centre of the "Heughs," as they are called by the fishermen, they converge into a large land-locked bay, and there is a perilous seat half-way down the cliff, where I have often sat for hours watching the on-goings of a most orderly society. The sea is very worthy of our truest love at all times; but never more so than here. The cliff hangs overhead, and shuts out all communication with the prosaic country behind-the country of corn, and turnips, and oxen, and red-faced farmers, and agricultural principles. We are done with the old world, and the new stretches away from our feet to the furthest horizon, a luminous plain of waters. It is the ocean itself that lies below us, mapped out into great spaces of light and shade-of light where the April sunshine simmers upon the sea, of shade as the soft breeze follows

the cloud along the water. We are all conversant with the plastic character of this season, the rapid and noiseless changes of expression that pass over the face of the sky in the course of a forenoon; and surely the April shadows that shift upon the sea, are even more fickle and capricious than those that cross the land. And is not the heaven that arches the main richer and more brilliant than it is elsewhere? What a delicious depth of colour has been shed over the nearer sky! how delicate those more fickle tints that linger along the horizon! how exquisite the grace and intricacy of that fretted network of cloud which clings to the ether! how pure and lustrous those great white masses overhead that sweep slowly away toward the purple hills! Among the shadows, white sails in the blue distance speed noiselessly hither and thither, and closer to the rocks groups of auks caress each other with their bills, and enjoy the languid motion of the sea. And about us there is a great quiet-a cold and stately seclusionbroken though it be by the rustling murmur of the water upon the rocks, and the shrill complaints of a varied and animated life. The whole of this sweet, calm, Italian-like bay is shut in by the strange devices of a vagrant imagination-devices more quaint and daring than any artist ever ventured to work into his marble. The bold belfry of the Florentine, the crazy minaret of the Mussulman, the solemn strength of Notre Dame, the network meshes of the exquisite Antwerp spire, all crowded and mingled together without the slightest deference to the scruples of architec

tural etiquette. Sportive columns, fantastic arches, eccentric domes, bridges fitly dedicated to the devil, long quiet coves in which the sea is always silent, proud defiant buttresses, against which the white passion of the surf never relents! Fashioned by the action of the water upon the rock through long silent centuries, no poet was ever visited by fancies more wild and forlorn than may here be traced, wrought in the stormy architecture of the waves! And even these craggy precipices feel the gentle influences of the spring-time. The pale

convolvulus creeps timidly along the giddy height; the blue violet and the yellow primrose peer curiously from among the long rank grasses; tufts of sea-pink and feathery ferns grow down to the very margin of the water, and touch the black and stern face of the rocks with a bright and delicate beauty.

There is one rock, about a mile from the shore, which, at high water, is entirely covered, and which always strikes me by its desolate loneliness. It represents, I believe, that "Craig of Classnessie," on which one of the most tragical murders recorded in the criminal jurisprudence of the district took place. An unfortunate tenant having incurred the displeasure of his superior, was bound hand and foot, and carried in a boat to this same rock, where (as the old indictment proceeds), "having been left, the tide overflowed the said Craig, and so he was pitifully drowned, and carried away to the main-ocean sea." What a frightful death! Fancy the wretch there when the boat has left, and the plash of its oars has