The Scottish Highlands, Highland Clans and Highland Regiments: On the Basis of Browne's History of the Highlands and Clans (Complete‪)‬

In no other country does Nature exhibit herself in more various forms of beauty and sublimity than in the north of England and the Highlands of Scotland. This is acknowledged by all who, having studied their character, and become familiar with the feelings it inspires, have compared the effects produced on their minds by our own mountainous regions, with what they have experienced among the scenery of the Alps. There, indeed, all objects are on so vast a scale, that we are for a while astonished as we gaze on the gigantic; and all other emotions are sunk in an overwhelming sense of awe that prostrates the imagination. But on recovering from its subjection to the prodigious, that faculty everywhere recognises in those mighty mountains of dark forests, glittering glaciers, and regions of eternal snow—infinite all—the power and dominion of the sublime. True that all these are but materials for the mind to work on, and that to its creative energy Nature owes much of that grandeur which seems to be inherent in her own forms; yet surely she in herself is great, and there is a regality belonging of divine right to such a monarch as Mont Blanc.

Those are the very regions of sublimity, and if brought into immediate comparison with them in their immense magnitude, the most magnificent scenery of our own country would no doubt seem to lose its character of greatness. But such is not the process of the imagination in her intercourse with Nature. To her, sufficient for the day is the good thereof; and on each new glorious sight being shown to her eyes, she employs her God-given power to magnify or irradiate what she beholds, without diminishing or obscuring what she remembers. Thus, to her all things in nature hold their own due place, and retain for ever their own due impressions, aggrandized and beautified by mutual reaction in those visionary worlds, which by a thought she can create, and which, as they arise, are all shadowy representations of realities—new compositions in which the image of the earth we tread is reflected fairer or greater than any realities, but not therefore less, but more true to the spirit of nature. It is thus that poets and painters at once obey and control their own inspirations. They visit all the regions of the earth, but to love, admire, and adore; and the greatest of them all, native to our soil, from their travel or sojourn in foreign lands, have always brought home a clearer insight into the character of the scenery of their own, a profounder affection for it all, and a higher power of imaging its attributes in colours or in words. In our poetry, more than in any other, Nature sees herself reflected in a magic mirror; and though many a various show passes processionally along its lustre, displaying the scenery of “lands and seas, whatever clime the sun’s bright circle warms,” among them all there are none more delightful or elevating to behold than those which genius, inspired by love, has framed of the imagery, which, in all her pomp and prodigality, Heaven has been pleased to shower, through all seasons, on our own beautiful island. It is not for us to say whether our native painters, or the “old masters,” have shown the greatest genius in landscape; but if the palm must be yielded to them whose works have been consecrated by a reverence, as often, perhaps, superstitious as religious, we do not fear to say, that their superiority is not to be attributed in any degree to the scenery on which they exercised the art its beauty had inspired. Whatever may be the associations connected with the subjects of their landscapes—and we know not why they should be higher or holier than those belonging to innumerable places in our own land—assuredly in themselves they are not more interesting or impressive; nay, though none who have shared with us the spirit of the few imperfect sentences we have now written, will for a moment suppose us capable of instituting an invidious comparison between our own scenery and that of any other country, why should we hesitate to assert that our own storm-loving Northern Isle is equally rich in all kinds of beauty as the Sunny South, and richer far in all kinds of grandeur, whether we regard the forms or colouring of nature—earth, sea, or air—

“Or all the dread magnificence of heaven.”

What other region in all the world like that of the Lakes in the north of England! And yet how the true lover of nature, while he carries along with him its delightful character in his heart, and can so revive any spot of especial beauty in his imagination, as that it shall seem in an instant to be again before his very eyes, can deliver himself up, after the lapse of a day, to the genius of some savage scene in the Highlands of Scotland, rent and riven by the fury of some wild sea-loch! Not that the regions do not resemble one another, but surely the prevailing spirit of the one—not so of the other—is a spirit of joy and of peace. Her mountains, invested, though they often be, in gloom—and we have been more than once benighted during day, as a thunder-cloud thickened the shadows that for ever sleep in the deepest dungeons of Helvellyn—are yet—so it seems to us—such mountains as in nature ought to belong to “merry England.” They boldly meet the storms, and seen in storms you might think they loved the trouble; but pitch your tent among them, and you will feel that theirs is a grandeur that is congenial with the sunshine, and that their spirit fully rejoices in the brightness of light. In clear weather, verdant from base to summit, how majestic their repose! And as mists slowly withdraw themselves in thickening folds up along their sides, the revelation made is still of more and more of the beautiful—arable fields below, then coppice woods studded with standard trees—enclosed pastures above and among the woods—broad breasts of close-nibbled herbage here and there adorned by rich dyed rocks, that do not break the expanse—till the whole veil has disappeared; and, lo! the long lofty range, with its wavy line, rising and sinking so softly in the blue serenity, perhaps, of an almost cloudless sky. Yet though we have thus characterised the mountains by what we have always felt to be the pervading spirit of the region, chasms and ravines, and cliffs and precipices, are there; in some places you see such assemblages as inspire the fear that quakes at the heart, when suddenly struck in the solitude with a sense of the sublime; and though we have called the mountains green—and during Spring and Summer, in spite of frost or drought, they are green as emerald—yet in Autumn they are many-coloured, and are girdled with a glow of variegated light, that at sunset sometimes seems like fire kindled in the woods.