as they ought-they have an aspect of antiquity which separates them from every-day things, and leads us back to a point in human history whence we look down to the present times with wonder and joy. For myself, rejoicing in the past, and confident of the future, I went on refreshed by my Day-dream at Tintagel.

In the days of Sam Johnson and of Pennant, it was deemed a vast and adventurous undertaking to reach the

Hebrid Isles,

Placed far amid the melancholy main.

It was then only one or two zealous travellers in an age, who accomplished so great and dangerous a voyage. In our boyhood, we read Johnson's "Tour to the Hebrides," and the poetic allusions of Collins and Thomson to the Western Isles, with a feeling that those regions of poetical wildness were only to be reached by a few fortunate mortals. What a change have

commercial wealth and steam produced! The turbulent ocean of the west is laid open-the mists that hang about the shores and mountains of its once mysterious isles are not cleared away, but they are daily penetrated by the barks of our summer tourists; and Staffa and Iona are as familiar to thousands, as St. Paul's or the Tower. So many are the accounts of trips to these places already published, that I am not intending to add another to them; and for the history, natural or unnatural, or supernatural, civil or uncivil, I shall content myself with the knowledge that there are such works as those of Martyn, Macculloch, and Gregory. I propose only to note down a few such impressions on my visit to these celebrated spots, as I imagine are the most common to those who generally go thither. What, indeed, is the great object of a voyage to the Western Isles? Without doubt, in nine cases out of ten, to unbend the mind from the stress of its ordinary occupations and cares. Το refresh it with whatever is most accessible of novelty and grandeur-to luxuriate in the poetic and the picturesque. Would it not then be difficult for the inhabitants of our cities to choose any track of a moderate extent, where they would meet with more to their purpose? What a change is here, in the course of a few short days; from the noise and crush of the metropolis, for instance, to the solitude of nature in her wildest aspectfrom heat and dust, to the fresh breeze and the fresh oceanfrom shops, factories, offices, invoices, and cash accounts, to splintered mountains, rolling billows, the misty isles of all the poetical traditions and superstitions of our early reading.

Nothing can be more unlike our ordinary existence, and therefore nothing for a brief period more agreeable. A trip to Staffa and Iona! it is an episode in our unromantic history of life, all romance, and all poetry. The spirit of Collins, and Thomson, of Ossian, of Leyden, and Scott, and Campbell is upon us. We desire to see the regions which they have invested with so many charms; to tread the lands of second-sight, and airy spirits; to touch at Icolmkill, the primitive asylum of British learning and religion; we would look on the tombs and shattered images that stood when

Aodh, famed afar,

In Iona preached the word with power;

And Reullura, beauty's star,

Was the partner of his bower.

We are bound for the regions of ghosts and fays, mermaids and kelpies, of great sea-snakes, and a hundred other marvels and miracles. To accomplish all this, we have nothing more to do than step on board the steam-packet that lies at the Broomielaw, or great quay at Glasgow. The volume of heavy black smoke, issuing from its nickled chimney, announces that it means to be moving on its way speedily. Hark! the bell rings; your fellow-travellers are running aboard; the plank is pulled back to the pier, and you are bound on as fair a voyage as ever prince or paladin attempted. or paladin attempted. If it were only to skirt the busy banks of the Clyde; to traverse the romantic kyles of Bute; to sit on deck quietly, but delightedly gazing on the cloudy heights and hollows of Arran; on the solitary shores of

Cowal and Cantire,-it were a little voyage of bold beauty, not readily to be matched in the same distance in any other quarter. But, steering along the western shore of Loch Fine, you soon arrive at Loch Gilp-head, where your steam Genie suspends his energies, stops his busy paddles, and you are feasted on salmon and white herrings, drawn fresh from the deep beneath you; a feast, indeed, of such delicacy, that an epicure would think it worth going all the way for, solely. Your entertainment over, your vessel enters the Crinan canal, which runs across the Mull of Cantire, and while it leisurely winds along, through a delightful country of wooded hills and moorland solitudes, you may walk on a-head, and find, when you come to speak with the inhabitants, that you are in the Highlands, where Gaelic is the native speech. But, emerging from the Crinan canal, you issue forth into the Sound of Jura, and feel at once that you are in the stern and yet beautiful region of your youthful admiration. There is the heavy swell and the solemn roar of the great Atlantic. You feel the wild winds that sweep over it. You see around you only high and craggy coasts, that are bleak and naked with the lashing of a thousand tempests. All before you are scattered rocks that emerge from the restless sea, and rocky isles, with patches of the most beautiful greensward, but with scarcely a single tree. The waves are leaping in whiteness against the cliffs, and thousands of sea-birds are floating in long lines on the billows, or skimming past you singly, and diving into the clear hissing waters as they near your vessel. One of the very first objects which arrests your senses is the