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and declared that he greatly preferred the charming countryround Leyden, the vast expanse of verdant meadow, and thevillas with their statues and grottoes, trim flower beds, andrectilinear avenues. Yet it is difficult to believe that the authorof the Traveller and of the Deserted Village was naturally in-ferior in taste and sensibility to the thousands of clerks andmilliners who are now thrown into raptures by the sight of LochKatrine and Loch Lomond.* His feelings may easily be ex-plained. It was not till roads had been cut out of the rocks,till bridges had been flung over the courses of the rivulets, tillinns had succeeded to dens of robbers, till there was as littledanger of being slain or plundered in the wildest defile ofBadenoch orLochaber as in Cornhill, that strangers could beenchanted by the blue dimples of the lakes and by the rainbowswhich overhung the waterfalls, and could derive a solemn plea-sure even from the clouds and tempests which lowered on themountain tops.

The change in the feeling with which the Lowlanders re-garded the Highland scenery was closely connected with achange not less remarkable in the feeling with which they re-garded the Highland race. It is not strange that the WildScotch, as they were sometimes called, should, in the seventeenthcentury, have been considered by the Saxons as mere savages.But it is surely strange that, considered as savages, they should

* “ Shall I tire you with a description of this unfruitful country, whereI must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their valleysscarce able to feed a rabbit. . . . Every part of the country presents thesame dismal landscape. No grove or brook lend their music to cheer thestranger.” — Goldsmith to Bryanton, Edinburgh, Sept. 26. 1753. In aletter written soon after from Leyden to the Reverend Thomas Contarine,Goldsmith says, “I was wholly taken up in observing the face of thecountry. Nothing can equal its beauty. Wherever I turned my eye, finehouses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas presented themselves.Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast: there, hills and rocksintercept every prospect; hero it is all a continued plain.” See AppendixC. to the First Volume of Mr. Forster’s Life of Goldsmith.