I often please myself in thinking that many of my readers feel as kindly towards me as I feel towards them; and yet I should rather not be within hearing of your remarks, if, one of these fine summer mornings, you were to catch me in my garden, neglecting my lilies and roses, and watching, and watering, and tending with care the toadstools, chickweed, and groundsel, and nettles, which I had suffered to spring around them. You would very soon, I fear, connect with this strange vagary all my other eccentricities, and at once conclude that I was beside myself. "Aha!" you would say, "we have for some time observed a strangeness about the old gentleman, an odd inclination for what is singular and fantastic, and now the thing is accounted for. Who would have thought that it would have come to this?" If you, then, would feel justified in thus speaking freely of me in the case that I have imagined, shall not I be justified in speaking freely of you in a case that is real? Are you not, in the garden of your heart and mind, neglecting the goodly flowers of piety and love, and gentleness, and forbearance, and kindness; and do you not therein foster the funguses of pride and hatred, and nourish the stinging-nettles of resentment against those who have offended you? If you know this to be so, be honest to yourselves, and treat your own inconsistencies as you would treat mine.

We read in the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, of a certain servant, who, after being forgiven a great debt, instead of having a heart brim full, and running over with kindly emotions towards other debtors, went forth and savagely took by the throat a fellow-servant, who unfortunately owed him a trifle. I wonder how many, after reading this account, and feeling almost angry enough to strangle the cruel ruffian of a servant, have, in their dealings with mankind, acted with as little compassion themselves! We have no excuse for cruelty. If we compare for a moment our demerits with our mercies-if we put side by side human transgression and Divine forbearance-an act of cruelty to our fellow-men will be seen to be an act of the grossest inconsistency.

The fable of the Cat and the Fox you may have read over and over again; but it seems so well adapted to the subject before me, that I cannot resist the temptation to relate it here after my own

fashion. A fox and a cat, says the fable, who were travelling together, made their journey appear shorter by discourses of a moral kind. "How great is justice!" said the fox; "when we make it our guide we never err, and are kept from wantonly trespassing on the rights of others." "How exalted is mercy!" exclaimed the cat; "it ought to be practised through every day and every hour."

While thus they proceeded, they were absolutely horrified by seeing a wolf rush from the wood upon an innocent lamb. The lamb, poor thing, struggled and bleated for mercy. Mercy!" says the wolf, "no! no! that will not do; for I am hungry, and mutton is not always to be had. You will make me an excellent supper."

"What a wretch," said the cat, "to feed upon flesh, when herbs and roots are in abundance around him!" "What a tyrant," cried the fox, "to spill innocent blood, when the oaks are laden with acorns!" Just in the midst of this fit of virtuous indignation, they came to a mill, where some poultry were raking up a heap of chaff with their heels, when reynard, without ceremony, pounced upon a pullet, and grimalkin sprang, with talons extended, on a poor little mouse that happened to venture from a hole. A spider, sitting in her web that she had woven against the mill, was quite distressed at the unhappy end of the poor victims. "I cannot think," said she, "how creatures can be so cruel! and saying this, she ran off to suck the blood of a thoughtless young fly, which at that moment was entangled in her web. I must give you the moral of the fable in the words in which it is already written, for I should fail were I to attempt to put inconsistency in a clearer or a stronger light:

"The faults of our neighbours with freedom we blame,

But we tax not ourselves though we practise the same."

We are, indeed, creatures of inconsistency; and this knowledge should at least the errors of others. The yearnings of keep us from bitterness in pointing out the sinful heart, and the aspirations of the renewed spirit, are so much at variance, that many a Christian man lamenting his I may possibly have used before, inconsistencies, may say, in language that

"Oh what a silly thing am I to swallow

The bubbles of the world so light and hollow! To drink its frothy draughts in lightsome mood, And live upon such empty, airy food!

And cringe and fawn for what is valueless.
Fool that I am, to follow forms that spurn me,
And spend my breath in fanning flames that burn
me!

I do the thing I hate, and would pursue not;
And what I most desire to do, I do not;
Leave what I dearly love, with weeping eyes,
And closely cling to what I most despise."

We shall all do well, looking upwards for aid, and around for knowledge, to meditate deeply on our infirmities, that thereby we may at least avoid the glaring inconsistency of branding the brow, and wounding the heart of another, for the very

same errors that we ourselves commit.

DISTANT COUNTRIES BROUGHT NEAR.

THE Voyage from Sydney to Port Essington usually occupies from fifteen to twenty-five days. The colonists are bent upon opening, if practicable, an overland route from the present frontier of the province of New South Wales to the shores of the Indian Ocean, with a view to secure the advantage of the Indian Overland Mail. Mr. Davidson thinks that, during the north-west monsoon, the navigation of Torres' Straits from west to east would be found practicable for steamers, and that the mail might be better transmitted by sea. By this route, "the passenger for Sydney would find himself at his journey's end in sixty-three or sixty-five days from Southampton, while the mail, via Marseilles, would be of four days' shorter date." Such are the wondrous facilities afforded by the application of steam to navigation, for the rapid interchange of mercantile communications, the strengthening of social ties, and the diffusion of the benefits of civilization by means of commerce over all the regions of the earth. The marvellous regularity and certainty of the intercourse thus established between this country and the chain of colonies which encircle the globe, are not less striking and important than the shortening, in point of time, of geographical distance. No settler in any British colony, however remote, can now feel himself a hopeless exile, cut off from the means of hearing of friends at home, except at distant and uncertain intervals. In Dr. Morrison's journal, we find the following affecting entry, under the date of July 18, 1834:-"Two hundred and twenty days are now nearly completed since you left. Surely in twenty days more, if the Lord spare my life, I shall hear of

end of those twenty days the letters arrived, but the heart so deeply interested in their contents had ceased to beat! Mrs. Morrison had arrived in England on the 6th of April, after a favourable voyage of nearly four months. Her lamented husband died on the 1st of August, without having heard of her arrival. This was not quite twelve years ago. Now, Calcutta in less than forty days, and London letters by the overland mail reach Hong Kong, or Canton, in about forty more. Thus, in less than twelve weeks, intelligence from London will reach Canton by this route; and the time is probably not very distant, when, by means of more perfect arrangements, answers to letters from Calcutta to London may be obtained in seventy days; and answers to letters from Hong Kong to London, in one hundred and forty, instead of two hundred and forty days. China is not merely "opened," but half the intervening distance is annihilated; while India is brought nearer to us than the further shores of the Atlantic used to be.-Eelectic Review.

THE TROSACHS.

THE road which traverses the Trosachs, in the Highlands of Scotland, is rather more than a mile in length. The opening into the Pass is flanked on the left by Benvenue, 2,800 feet high, and on the right by Benan.

"High on the south, huge Benvenue

Down on the lake in masses threw
Craggs, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl'd,
The fragments of an earlier world;
A wildering forest feather'd o'er
His ruin'd sides and summit hoar;
While on the north, through middle air,
Benan heaved high his forehead bare."

On entering the Trosachs, or the "Bristled Territory," a most magnificent and sublime scene meets the eye. There we find ourselves at the threshold of one of the most difficult passes into the Grampians. It is surrounded on every hand by mountains, from whose steep sides stretch out the oak, diversified with the more delicate alder, and the most graceful and elegant of all foliage, that of the weeping birch.

The exuberance of vegetation here is indeed strikingly contrasted with sterility. The richly-tinted valley appearing in combination with grey mountain-summits, while no sound reaches the ear save

the delicious melody of the distant waterfalls, which flow through tangled thickets, unseen, but on this account only the more enchanting.

In the midst of this once impenetrable labyrinth is a gloomy dell, Beal-an-Duine, where it has been recorded that Fitz

James lost his "gallant grey," which fell

from exhaustion-fell while his master was cheering on the hounds, and

"Touch'd with pity and remorse,

He sorrow'd o'er the expiring horse."

The range of rocks on the left is remarkable as producing an echo which distinctly gives back a word several times.

The description given by Sir Walter Scott of this ravine, thus situated between two lines of high and precipitous ground, filled up and contracted by detached crags of great height, and here and there partially covered by birches, hazels, and a beautiful variety of other mountain-trees, softening its ruggedness, and adding to its beauty and sublimity, renders all farther detail unnecessary:

"The western waves of ebbing day
Roll'd o'er the glen their level way;
Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravine below,
Where twined the path in shadow hid,
Round many a rocky pyramid,
Shooting abruptly through the dell
Its thunder-splinter'd pinnacle;
Round many an insulated mass,
The native bulwarks of the pass,
Huge as the towers which builders vain
Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain.
The rocky summits, split and rent,
Form'd torrent, dome, and battlement;
Or seem'd fantastically set
With cupola and minaret,
Wild crests as pagod ever deck'd,
Or mosque of eastern architect.

Nor were these earth-born castles bare,
Nor lack'd they many a banner fair;
For from their shivering brow display'd,
Far o'er the unfathomable glade,
All twinkling with the dew-drops sheen,
The briar-rose fell in streamers green,
And creeping shrubs of thousand dyes
Waved in the west-winds summer sighs.
Boon nature scatter'd, free and wild,
Each plant or flower, the mountain's child;
Here eglantine embalm'd the air,
Hawthorn and hazel mingled there;
The primrose pale, and violet flower,
Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
Foxglove and night-shade, side by side,
Emblems of punishment and pride,
Group'd their dark hues with every stain
The weather-beaten crags retain.
With boughs that quaked at every breath,
Grey birch and aspen wept beneath;
Aloft the ash and warrior oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock;

And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung

Its shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung,
Where seem'd the cliffs to meet on high,
Its boughs across the narrow'd sky.
Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,
Where glistening streamers waved and danced,

The wanderer's eye could barely view
The summer heaven's delicious blue:
So wondrous wild, the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream."

whose appellation originated in the cirOn issuing from this sublime defilecumstance of a party of Cromwell's solleaving one of their comrades dead on diers having been forced to retire, after the spot, and whose grave marks the scene of action, and gives name to the passwe catch the first glimpse of Loch Kateran, which signifies the Loch of the Robbers:

"With fair Loch Kateran, two most beauteous lakes
Are link'd by winding Teith's rejoicing stream;
And each such kindred loveliness partakes,
That oft, methinks, hereafter shall they beam
In sweet harmonious union on my dream;
Like three fair sisters, who, though each apart
Lovely and pure, yet purer, lovelier seem, —.
Not from the vain embellishments of art,
But from the flow of soul that links them heart
to heart.

To these mild smiling lakes a thousand rills
With joyful purlings wind their destined way,
For mid the bristling woods and rugged hills
So calm and pure and beautiful are they,
To them each mount his tribute loves to pay;
Even as rough valour and uncultured might
To beauty's gentle yet resistless sway,
And to fair modest purity, delight

To pay an homage felt to be their sacred right."

On reaching the banks of this lovely lake-which is of a serpentine form, and encircled with lofty mountains, ten miles in length, and in some parts two broad—a magnificent landscape meets the eye, of a wild and romantic aspect, as though mountains and rocks, wildly confused, and beautified with trees and shrubs of every variety, had been collected to render this scenery grandly and surpassingly attractive.

In beholding such scenes, the heart is conscious of sentiments and emotions serious and instructive, bubbling up from the well-spring within, like those of the psalmist, who in a strain of devotional joyousness exclaimed, "Wonderful are thy works, O Lord!—the mountains show forth thy praise"-"the trees clap their hands, and the little hills rejoice on every side."

It would be impossible to leave scenes like these without regret-a sickening thought that we may never visit them again. The lovely lake, we say, will continue to flow on, the sublime mountains remain unmoved, the rushing torrent pursue its course, and the breezes still sigh among the stately pines; but where shall we be, and those our companions who now participate with us the sweet pleasures derivable from objects so soulelevating as those which we here behold?

"And now I rove upon thy peaceful shore,
Monteith's sweet lake. The moon is in the sky,
Shedding her mild and hallow'd radiance o'er
Thy placid waters; giving to the eye
The beauteous isles that in thy bosom lie,
Like some fair beings from a world of care
And sin dissever'd by their purity;
While soft waves wafted by the balmy air,
From them on all around a blessing seem to bear."

In the centre of this lake are two small islands, Inchmachome, or the Isle of Rest, and Talla, or the Earl's Isle. The circumference of the former is computed at five acres. There are here the ruins of a priory, where queen Mary resided during the invasion of the English in 1547, her removal to France. It was founded by Walter Cumming; in 1238, who by his marriage with the countess became earl of Monteith. The buildings connected with this priory are supposed to have been destroyed at the time of the Reformation. It is now, with the island, the property of the duke of Montrose,

"Chief and most lovely of these verdant isles-
That well might seem the islands of the blest-
Radiant with soft yet melancholy smiles,
Image of holy peace-the "Isle of Rest"
Reclines upon the lake's pure tranquil breast,
A sacred place in by-gone ages deem'd;
For men deem'd holy, there, of old, possest
Their calm abode, nor marvel if it seem'd
That round that peaceful isle a heavenly lustre
beam'd !"

Talla, the smaller of the two, contains the remains of the castle of the Grahams, earls of Monteith-a race now extinct. Their garden was on the Isle of the Priory, but their pleasure-grounds were on the neighbouring shore. These were beautifully adorned with trees of various kinds and of ancient growth-oak, plane, and chestnut. Some of the chestnuts, at five or six feet from the ground, are no less than seventeen feet in circumference, and cannot be less than three centuries old.

Sir Walter Scott, in his "Tales of a Grandfather," has related a curious story respecting this family.

The earls of Monteith, you must know, had a castle, situated upon an

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island in the lake, or loch, as it is called, of the same name. But though this residence, which occupied almost the whole of the islet, upon which its ruins now exist, was a strong and safe place of abode, and adapted accordingly to such perilous times, it had this inconvenience, that the stables and other domestic offices were constructed on the banks of the lake, and were therefore in some sort defenceless.

"It happened upon a time, that there was to be a great entertainment in the castle, and a number of the Grahams were assembled. The occasion, it is said, was a marriage in the family. To prepare for this feast, much provision was got ready, and, in particular, a great deal of poultry had been collected. While the feast was preparing, an unhappy chance brought Donald of the Hammer to the side of the lake; returning at the head of a band of hungry followers, whom he was conducting homewards to the West Highlands, after some of his usual excursions into Stirlingshire. Seeing so much good victuals ready, and being possessed of an excellent appetite, the Western Highlanders neither asked questions, nor waited for an invitation, but devoured all the provisions that had been prepared for the Grahams, and then joyously went on their way, through the difficult and dangerous path which leads from the banks of the Loch of Monteith, through the mountains, to the side of Loch Kateran.

"The Grahams were filled with the highest indignation. The company who were assembled at the castle of Monteith, headed by the earl himself, hastily took to their boat, and, disembarking on the northern side of the lake, pursued with all speed the marauders and their leader. They came up with Donald's party in the gorge of a pass, near a rock, called CraigVad, or the Wolf's Cliff. The battle then began, and was continued with much fury till night. The earl of Monteith, and many of his noble kinsmen, fell; while Donald, favoured by darkness, escaped with a single attendant. The Grahams obtained, from the cause of the quarrel, the nickname of Gramoch-an-Garrigh, or Grahams of the Hens."

To the west of the lake is Gartmorehouse, and to the east Rednock-house; both striking objects, having a very picturesque effect.

Aberfoyle, the scene of so many romantic incidents connected with Rob Roy, is not many miles removed. Fraught