Paul Jones a romance - 1826 Author:Allan Cunningham 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: beauty, while here and there the waters of some wide and noble river rolled brightly towards the sea, the course marked out by tower, and palace, and town. The F... more »rench mariner, Louis Groset by name, glanced his eye proudly on Macgubb, when the splendid scene before him had silenced the loquacious Scot, who, with his hands held over his eyes, and standing on a dismounted cannon, surveyed a country which one may see often, and still think fair and beautiful. Macgubb felt the loveliness of the land, and thought how mean the brown moors of the Mull, the narrow glens of Galloway, with their thatched cots and humble kirks, appeared in the comparison with a country to which nature had done as much as the hand of man. But he was resolved that cold and barren Caledonia should not be depreciated while he could maintain her pre-eminence. " Weel, now Louis Groset," he said, " if I had not seen the haughs of Dee, the glens of Galloway, and the rich holms of Nithsdale, I should have deemed this country of thine a passable place. Here, ye see, the whole land is as level as an onion-bed, as smooth as a wooer's chin, shaved with the scythe and levelled with the roller. Ye have nae such a thing as a bonnie brown moor, fragrant with heather-blossom and swarming with bees; and where's there an odorous wilderness of long yellow broom moving with the morningwind, and strewing the shepherd-maiden's road to the ewe-bughts with its ripe and plenteous blossom ? A bonnie green knowe, white to the summit with sheep, is a jewel that's not in your king's crown. Were I king of France now, I would make war on some country that could spare a hill for my land and a rock for my shore. It is no wonder the French fail in all their battles with the English,— they have not a country worth fighting for. When I want to...« less