A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 31 



as to lie in the regions of the clouds. Occasionally they sweep 

 along the base, leaving its huge and black mass involved in 

 additional gloom, and resembling the castle of some Arabian 

 enchanter, built on the clouds, and suspended in air." It 

 might be perhaps deemed somewhat invidious to deal with 

 pictures such as these in the style the connoisseur in the 

 " Yicar of Wakefield" dealt with the old painting, when, seiz- 

 ing a brush, he daubed it over with brown varnish, and then 

 asked the spectators whether he had not greatly improved 

 the tone of the colouring. And yet it is just possible, that 

 in the case of at least M'Culloch's picture, the brown varnish 

 might do no manner of harm. But a homelier sketch, traced 

 out on almost the same leading lines, with just a little less 

 of the aerial in it, may have nearly the same subduing ef- 

 fect ; I have, besides, a few curious touches to lay in, which 

 seem hitherto to have escaped observation and the pencil ; 

 and in these several circumstances must lie my apology for 

 adding one sketch more to the sketches existing already. 



The Scuir of Eigg, then, is a veritable Giant's Causeway, 

 like that on the coast of Antrim, taken and magnified rather 

 more than twenty times in height, and some five or six 

 times in breadth, and then placed on the ridge of a hill nearly 

 nine hundred feet high. Viewed sideways, it assumes, as de- 

 scribed by M'Culloch, the form of a perpendicular but ruin- 

 ous rampart, much gapped above, that runs for about a mile 

 and a quarter along the top of a lofty sloping talus. Viewed 

 endways, it resembles a tall massy tower, such a tower as 

 my Mend Mr D. O. Hill would delight to draw, and give de- 

 light by drawing, a tower three hundred feet in breadth 

 by four hundred and seventy feet in height, perched on the 

 apex of a pyramid, like a statue on a pedestal This strange 

 causeway is columnar from end to end ; but the columns, 

 from their great altitude and deficient breadth, seem mere 

 rodded shafts in the Gothic style : they rather resemble bun- 



