LOCHS. 



CHAPTER II. 



LOCHS. 



LOCHS ! we love the word LOCHS, as applied to those 

 hill-girdled expanses which decorate our native land. 

 Lake is too tame a designation a shallow epithet. It 

 has nothing to do with mountains and precipices, 

 heaths and forests. Beautiful it may be, very beauti- 

 ful ! Winandermere is very beautiful ; Derwent water 

 is very beautiful ; Buttermere, Ullswater, and Conis- 

 ton, are very beautiful ; nay, in truth, they are of a 

 higher nature than beautiful ; for these all lie among 

 hills but not Scottish hills ; not the unplanted places 

 dwellings of the storm and the eagle. 



What is of all things on earth the most changeable 

 appears so the least we mean water, taken in a wide 

 sense, as the sea, or a loch. There is no mountain 

 in the land which we can certify as presenting the same 

 aspect it did five centuries ago. Forests then grew 

 where the bare turf lies, and what is now wooded may 

 have been naked and desert. So with valleys : the 

 ploughshare hath altered Nature, and mansions occupy 

 the lair of the brute and the resort of the robber ; but 

 waters, seas, lochs, and many rivers, are still the same. 

 Our forefathers saw them, calm or agitated, as we be- 

 hold them. The olden names are as appropriate as 

 ever. Looking on them, we see histories verified, le- 

 gends enhanced ; we descry the fording of armies, the 

 flight of queens, the adventures of forsaken princes, 

 hunted like wolves in their own shackled realm a 

 price on their anointed heads 



" The sleuths of fate unbound 

 To track their solitary flight 

 O'er the disastrous ground!" 



