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form round, and the sloping sides thick-planted,with 

 many avenues cut in the stairway down to the lakes. 

 It looks like a magician's castle in romance, shut up 

 by dark woods and lakes. It strikes me as a fine 

 place, and wants only a long range of hill on the 

 opposite side of a lake, and to have a thick mass of 

 planting. I resolved to push on to Glasgow, to re- 

 view early scenes of happiness in my college days ; 

 — went in my way to look atCullean, LordCassilis's. 

 It is a magnificent castle, lately built. It stands on 

 the edge of a precipice 150 feet above the sea ; fine 

 views of the Arran mountains at a great distance; 

 the plantations extensive, and all thriving in the 

 most exposed situation that can be imagined ; it is 

 a prodigious fine place. 



Glasgow has double the inhabitants since I first 

 knew it. I spent ten days there with an old friend. 

 The town is now elegantly built, but they assured 

 me was nothing to Edinburgh. I returned .to Port 

 Patrick by another road, Paisley, Port Glasgow, and 

 Greenock. The view when you come to the Frith 

 of Clyde is beyond anything seen in Wales : the 

 vast expanse of water ; Dumbarton, with its double 

 summits, on the opposite side ; Ben Lomond's vast 

 pyramid rising behind ; the mountains of Bute and 

 Arran; the numerous cultivated seats and planta- 

 tions on the low ground near the water, — form the 

 noblest assemblage that can be imagined. 



The remainder of the journey was coastways to 

 Port Patrick ; very charming, but the weather was 

 bad. Ayrshire and all about Glasgow is richly im- 

 proved ; the trees only want age, and twenty years 

 hence the country will look as well as England. 



