As you go down the avenue leading from the bridge to the present house of Ballindalloch, gentlemen, you cross a small rivulet¹ that rushes headlong with a cheerful sound from the wooded banks rising on your right hand, the which, after finding its way under the road through what is commonly called a cundy bridge, throws itself over the rocks directly into the pellucid² stream of the Aven, that accompanies you on your left. If you should chance to go down that way, and if you should be tempted³ to trace that little rill upwards⁴ through the wild shrubbery, and among the tangled⁵ roots of the venerable oaks and other trees which shoot up everywhere in fantastic shapes from its sides, and by throwing their outstretched arms across its bed here and there, produce a pleasing contrast of checkered⁶ light and shade, you will find many a nook amid its mazes⁸ which a fanciful yemagination might set apart as a haunt befitting those frisking creatures of the poet’s brain, Oberon and Titania, and where the sly tricks and pawky gambols⁹ of Puck and the fairy folk might well be played. I think, indeed, that I could almost venture to assert, that no one truly filled with what may be termed the romance of poetry, could well pass a few hours’ vigil in the thick retirement¹¹ of that lovely and sequestered¹² grove¹³, with the full moon piercing through the openings in the

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