tenfold gloom to the awful darkness of the long extended arches, and produced the most impressive effect on our minds. Turning a corner we issued out of those deep recesses and suddenly found ourselves in the inn-yard at Inver, where the house was all in a bustle and a party of ladies and gentlemen dancing to Neil Gow's animating music. The transition was so unexpected and so different, that for a moment we felt as if changing one state of existence for another. The ball having broken up, we got Neil and his bass to entertain us at supper with his admirable performance, and then went to bed highly gratified with the day." On the 24th they went to see the fall on the Bran in the grounds of Dunkeld Palace, and Ossian's hall and mirrored room beyond constructed to startle the spectator and enhance the effect of the fall. Thence to Dunkeld itself along a walk leading from the ferry to the greenhouse, of which Mr. Forsyth says: "It is beautiful, it is noble beyond any other we had seen. Here the river is broad, deep, and gentle, its banks quite full, and the luxuriant foliage on either side bending into it. This walk extends to a considerable length, and is ornamented with an elegant alcove seat and a cool sequestered grotto, in the rude unpolished masonry of which are placed a

number of fine quotations enjoining the love of solitude and the practice of all the virtues." It must be remembered it was the age of Zimmermann and the "Man of Feeling."

Having seen all the glories and beauties of Dunkeld, with which they were greatly pleased, they started after breakfast for Blair in Athol, or Blair Athol, as it is now called. Of this twenty miles, "the whole," he says, "is beautiful, and the first six or eight miles from Dunkeld particularly so," but though he must have ridden through the famous pass of Killiecrankie he does not allude to it in his journal. They visited the falls near Blair Athol both on the Bruar and in Glen Tilt. One, which he calls the York Cascade, he describes as very fine. At 7 P.M. they left Blair Athol on a ten-mile ride to Dalnacardoch Inn, which he describes as dreary, probably from fatigue, for they had thirtyone miles of road that day, besides all their sightseeing excursions. Next morning, they rode through the pass of Drumochter and down Glen Truim to the Bridge of Spey and Aviemore, passing quite across the district of Badenoch, a ride of thirty-nine miles. Of this day Mr. Forsyth says little. Next day, the 26th, they rode from Aviemore by Grantown down the Spey to Knockando, Tumdow, as Mr. Forsyth calls it,

and thence over the Mannock Hill through Birnie to Elgin, a distance of forty-two miles, and "arrived safe at home after an absence of twentyfive days, during which we had ridden 566 miles over a tract of country perfectly new and in general most interesting to us both. Though often weary, sometimes wet, put out of tune by the incidents natural to travelling, and at a considerable expense of money and time, yet are we highly gratified and richly repaid by the variety of information, the accession of new ideas, and the personal enjoyment which the tour has produced, and we offer our grateful acknowledgments to Providence, who has permitted us to accomplish it without danger or misfortune."

Considering this journal critically, I must admit that Mr. Forsyth had a more keen appreciation of the results of civilisation than of the unadorned beauties of nature. He enlarges on rich fields, gentlemen's seats, lawns, plantations, reclaimed land, and manufactories, quarries, and enterprise generally, rather than on the wonderful picture of Loch Lomond, the savage grandeur of Glencoe, the picturesque wildness of Killiecrankie, or the splendid panorama of mountain and strath before his eyes in the upper course of the Spey, from Grantown to the

Pass of Drumochter. It is true he speaks of the "gloomy grandeur and awful magnificence' of Glencoe; but he declares that to describe it is beyond his powers, while he dwells on the historical story of the massacre, and the evidences of modern civilisation at its mouth. Perhaps it needed Scott to educate the mind to the true appreciation of the wilder scenery of nature. Dr. Johnson did not understand it, and no poet of the eighteenth century, that I remember, makes it the subject of his verse. In fact the sense of it that Mr. Forsyth does show appears to be quite in advance of his time.

CHAPTER V.

AGRICULTURE IN MORAY.

MR. FORSYTH A

FARMER-STATE OF AGRICULTURE IN SCOTLAND AFTER THE UNION AND AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE PRESENT CENTURY-SUPERIORITY OF ENGLAND AT THIS TIME-SCOTTISH IMPROVEMENT-HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY-MORAYSHIRE FARMER'S CLUBMR. FORSYTH ITS SECRETARY-HIS ACTIVITY AND SERVICES-RETIRES THROUGH DEAFNESS-DEPUTED TO INQUIRE INTO NORFOLK FARMING-HOLKHAM AND MR. COKE -MR. FORSYTH'S REPORT TO THE CLUB-GREAT CHANGE IN THE CHARACTER OF SCOTTISH AGRICULTURE-THE LAND OF MORAY.

IN Mr. Forsyth's day it was the custom of men of his class in Elgin, and, I believe, in other Scottish country towns, to supplement their town work with a little farming, and he followed the fashion in this respect. He took the farm of Haughland, about a mile from Elgin on the lowland bordering on the Lossie, as its name implies, on the road to Pluscarden and Dallas. It was good land, but the farm was on too small a scale for it to be very profitable, and it was greatly damaged by the celebrated flood in August 1829, which covered a large portion of it with river sand. Before he took this farm