28 NATURE IN ENGLAND. 



like a permanent shadow, and one longs to see the 

 trees stand up and wave their branches. The tor- 

 rents leaping down off the mountains are very wel- 

 come to both eye and ear. And the lakes nothing 

 can be prettier than Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, 

 though one wishes for some of the superfluous rocks of 

 the New World to give their beauty a granite setting. 



IV. 



IT is characteristic of nature in England that most 

 of the stone with which the old bridges, churches, and 

 cathedrals are built is so soft that people carve their 

 initials in it with their jackknives, as we do in the 

 bark of a tree or in a piece of pine timber. At 

 Stratford a card has been posted upon the outside 

 of the old church, imploring visitors to refrain from 

 this barbarous practice. One sees names and dates 

 there more than a century old. Often, in leaning 

 over the parapets of the bridges along the highways, 

 I would fiud them covered with letters and figures. 

 Tourists have made such havoc chipping off frag- 

 ments from the old Brig o' Doon in Burns's country, 

 that the parapet has had to be repaired. One could 

 cut out the key of the arch with his pocket-knife. 

 And yet these old structures outlast empires. A few 

 miles from Glasgow I saw the remains of an old 

 Roman bridge, the arch apparently as perfect as 

 when the first Roman chariot passed over it, prob- 



