ARRAN. GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 313 



recesses, which exhibit to the painter all the sober and 

 harmonious tints of reflected light as it is reverberated 

 from rock to rock and from the clouds that occasionally 

 rest on their lofty boundaries. It is in Glen Sannox, 

 above all, that the effects arising from magnitude of 

 dimension, combined with breadth of forms, and with 

 simplicity of composition and colouring, are most strongly 

 felt; and the sensations thence produced are similar to 

 those which are experienced in the valley of Coruisk, 

 which this glen resembles in every thing but extent, and 

 variety of picturesque effect.* Independently of the 

 subjects which these scenes afford for the pencil, the 

 distant landscape, although beyond the reach of its 

 powers, presents a striking display of variety and beauty ; 

 the rocky foregrounds contrasting with the gentler emi- 

 nences of the lower land, the rich variety and fading 

 tints of the distant hills of Argyll, the windings of the 

 Clyde, and the splendent reflections of the numerous 

 lochs and inlets which branch from it among the sur- 

 rounding mountains. 



In a different style of landscape, Brodick bay is no 

 less beautiful, affording, in one point of view, a picture 

 approaching to perfect composition in a degree rarely 

 seen in Nature. The elegantly conical shape of Goat- 

 fell forms the extreme outline of this picture ; while the 

 middle ground consists of a rich valley sprinkled with 

 trees and houses, rising up the sides of the lower hills 

 on one side, and skirting, on the other, the beautiful 

 expanse of sea which forms the bay ; where the presence 

 of occasional shipping, the rocky shores, and the activity 



* The effect of silence as a source of the sublime, is strongly felt 

 in these situations as on the summit of the mountain. It is the 

 silence of that which is seen but is not heard, the fall of the 

 foaming torrent, the business of the world below, too distant to 

 reach the ear, that convey the impression. It is the silence of ex- 

 pectation amid the vastness of dimension and the appearance of power. 

 It is like that awful moment which precedes the thunder or the volcano. 



