Yesterday, as the sun was very bright, and there was no wind, I took
a fishing-rod on chance and Scott's poems, and rowed into the middle
of St. Mary's Loch. Every hill, every tuft of heather was reflected
in the lake, as in a silver mirror. There was no sound but the
lapping of the water against the boat, the cry of the blackcock from
the hill, and the pleasant plash of a trout rising here and there.
So I read "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" over again, here, in the
middle of the scenes where the story is laid and where the fights
were fought. For when the Baron went on pilgrimage,


"And took with him this elvish page
To Mary's Chapel of the Lowes,"

it was to the ruined chapel HERE that he came,


"For there, beside our Ladye's lake,
An offering he had sworn to make,
And he would pay his vows."


But his enemy, the Lady of Branksome, gathered a band,


"Of the best that would ride at her command,"


and they all came from the country round. Branksome, where the lady
lived, is twenty miles off, towards the south, across the ranges of