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KILMARNOCK. 
and the other Hampstead, doubtless in allusion to 
the somewhat similarly situated villages in the 
neighbourhood of London. It is spoken of as 
something rather wonderful in the country round, 
that in these elevated dwellings the apartments are 
furnished ^lih. fire-places. 
The scenery about this part is singularly romantic. 
Large, round hills, almost hemispherical in their 
contour, rise out of the valleys in great number, 
apparently without any order ; yet so regular in 
their form that they seem as if cast up by art. The 
road often winds round the sides of these, and opens 
delightful and ever changing panoramas. The valleys 
and plains beneath, smiling in verdure, and studded 
over with clumps of ornamental trees, now hidden 
and interrupted by these conical hills, now breaking 
into view between them, strike the passenger with 
ever fresh delight; and the various hills themselves, 
half in the glowing sunlight, half in deep shadow, 
changing their relative places as he moves on, have a 
wonderfully beautiful effect, totally unlike anything 
I have ever seen elsewhere. We look across a deep 
grassy vale from the hill-side around which we are 
winding, and see another similar mound, with the 
narrow line of road passing across its rounded side in 
like manner. We are told that we shall presently 
pass along that line : it looks almost within gunshot, 
but we wind on, and lose sight of the opposite hill, 
and it is perhaps half an hour before we arrive at it, 
having made many tortuous courses and opened 
many new scenes in the intermediate space. The 
summits of many of these hills have been planted 
