The Clyde river and firth Author:Neil Munro Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV LANARK. AND THE FALLS A Sympathetic passion for the wild and picturesque in nature is so modern, that the mountains of the Firth, which doubtles... more »s were no more than unpleasant and inconvenient mounds of earth to Agricola, and abominable protuberances to early eighteenth century travellers from the suave and sylvan south, must have kept the secret of their beauty and charm solely for the native eye. Even to the savage Caledonian without any theories of beauty—possibly, like the Hindu, ignorant of such a fine abstraction— there would be something dear in each familiar peak, each pass traversed on the hunt or foray, remembered in tranquillity. Captain Burt, who boasted in one of his " Letters from the North " that he never made one retrograde step when he was leaving the mountains, yet found it " pretty strange, though very true (by what charm I know not)," that he should have been " well enough pleased to see them again on my return from England, and this has made my wonder cease that a native should be so fond of such a country." Ossian Macpherson, Rousseau, the Romantic movement and CORRA LINN the increase of travel, revealed the beauty of the wild hills, made it so obvious to every modern eye, that we can hardly believe there was a time when they were regarded but as rude excrescences which marred true beauty, an attribute that for early thought was either smoothness, harmony, usefulness, goodness, or proportion alone. As with mountains so with water-falls. To Father Hennepin, the first white man who saw Niagara, the sight was hideous, the roar infernal, and yet to-day, with a fuller vision, we often ponder with regret on undiscovered cataracts in untracked wilds, glistening in the sun with no eye to see them, wasting their fragrance on the desert air. Wa...« less