Hampstead to Port Patrick, and thence to Glasgow. You must think me, by this time, a very pretty fellow.

One of the pleasantest bouts we have had was our walk to Burns's Cottage, over the Doon, and past Kirk Alloway. I had determined to write a sonnet in the Cottage. I did; but it was so wretched I destroyed it: however, in a few days afterwards I wrote some lines cousin-german to the circumstance, which I will transcribe, or rather cross-scribe in the front of this.

Reynolds's illness has made him a new man; he will be stronger than ever: before I left London he was really getting a fat face.

Brown keeps on writing volumes of adventures to Dilke. When we get in of an evening, and I have perhaps taken my rest on a couple of chairs, he affronts my indolence and luxury, by pulling out of his knapsack, first, his paper; secondly, his pens; and last, his ink. Now I would not care if he would change a little. I say now, why not, Bailey, take out his pens first sometimes? But I might as well tell a hen to hold up her head before she drinks, instead of afterwards.

Your affectionate friend,
JOHN KEATS.

There is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain,
Where patriot battle had been fought, where glory had the gain;
There is a pleasure on the heath, where Druids old have been,
Where mantles grey have rustled by, and swept the nettled green;
There is a joy in every spot made known in times of old,
New to the feet altho' each tale a hundred times be told;
There is a deeper joy than all, more solemn in the heart,

More parching to the tongue than all, of more divine a smart,

When weary steps forget themselves upon a pleasant turf,
Upon hot sand, or flinty road, or sea-shore iron surf,
Toward the castle or the cot, where long ago was born

One who was great through mortal days, and died of fame unshorn.

Light heather-bells may tremble then,--but they are far away;
Wood-lark may sing from sandy fern,—the Sun may hear his lay;
Runnels may kiss the grass on shelves and shallows clear,—
But their low voices are not heard, tho' come on travels drear;
Blood-red the sun may set behind black mountain peaks,

Blue tides may sluice and drench their time in caves and weedy creeks,

Eagles may seem to sleep wing-wide upon the air,

Ring-doves may fly convulsed across to some high cedared lair,— But the forgotten eye is still fast lidded to the ground,

As Palmer's that with weariness mid-desert shrine hath found.

At such a time the soul's a child, in childhood is the brain,
Forgotten is the worldly heart,-alone it beats in vain!
Aye, if a madman could have leave to pass a healthful day,
To tell his forehead's swoon and faint, when first began decay,
He might make tremble many a one, whose spirit had gone forth
To find a Bard's low cradle-place about the silent north!

Scanty the hour, and few the steps, beyond the bourn of care,
Beyond the sweet and bitter world,-beyond it unaware!
Scanty the hour, and few the steps,- because a longer stay
Would bar return and make a man forget his mortal way!
O horrible! to lose the sight of well-remembered face,
Of Brother's eyes, of Sister's brow,-constant to every place,
Filling the air as on we move with portraiture intense,
More warm than those heroic tints that pain a painter's sense,
When shapes of old come striding by, and visages of old,
Locks shining black, hair scanty grey, and passions manifold!

No, no,-that horror cannot be! for at the cable's length

Man feels the gentle anchor pull, and gladdens in its strength:
One hour, half idiot, he stands by mossy waterfall,

But in the very next he reads his soul's memorial;

He reads it on the mountain's height, where chance he may sit down,

Upon rough marble diadem, that hill's eternal crown.

Yet be his anchor e'er so fast, room is there for a prayer,

That man may never lose his mind in mountains black and bare; That he may stray, league after league, some great birthplace to find, And keep his vision clear from speck, his inward sight unblind.

MY DEAR TOM,

DUNANCULLEN,
July 23d, [1818].

Just after my last had gone to the post, in came one of the men with whom we endeavoured to agree about going to Staffa: he said what a pity it was we should turn aside, and not see the curiosities. So we had a little tattle, and finally agreed that he should be our guide across the Isle of Mull. We set out, crossed two ferries, one to the Isle of Kerrera, of little distance; the other from Kerrera to Mull, nine miles across. We did it in forty minutes, with a fine breeze. The road through the island, or rather track, is the most dreary you can think of; between dreary mountains, over bog, and rock, and river, with our breeches tucked up, and our stockings in hand. About eight o'clock we arrived at a shepherd's hut, into which we could scarcely get for the smoke, through a door lower than my shoulders. We found our way into a little compartment, with the rafters and turf-thatch blackened with smoke, the earth-floor full of hills and dales. We had some white bread with us, made a

good supper, and slept in our clothes in some blankets; our guide snored in another little bed about an arm's length off. This morning we came about sax miles to breakfast, by rather a better path, and we are now in, by comparison, a mansion. Our guide is, I think, a very obliging fellow. In the way, this morning, he sang us two Gaelic songs-one made by a Mrs. Brown, on her husband's being drownedthe other a Jacobin one on Charles Stuart. For some days Brown has been inquiring out his genealogy here; he thinks his grandfather came from Long Island. He got a parcel of people round him at a cottage door last evening, chatted with one who had been a Miss Brown, and who, I think, from a likeness, must have been a relation: he jawed with the old woman, flattered a young one, and kissed a child, who was afraid of his spectacles, and finally drank a pint of milk. They handle his spectacles as we do a sensitive leaf.

July 26th.-Well! we had a most wretched walk of thirty-seven miles, across the Island of Mull, and then we crossed to Iona, or Icolmkill; from Icolmkill we took a boat at a bargain to take us to Staffa, and land us at the head of Loch Nakeal, whence we should only have to walk half the distance to Oban again and by a better road. All this is well passed and done, with this singular piece of luck, that there was an interruption in the bad weather just as we saw Staffa, at which it is impossible to land but in a tolerably calm sea. But I will first mention Icolmkill. I know not whether you have heard much about this island; I never did before I came nigh it. It is rich in the most interesting antiquities. Who would expect to find the ruins of a fine cathedral church, of cloisters, colleges, monasteries, and

nunneries, in so remote an island? The beginning of these things was in the sixth century, under the superstition of a would-be-bishop-saint, who landed from Ireland, and chose the spot for its beauty; for, at that time, the now treeless place was covered with magnificent woods. Columba in the Gaelic is Colm, signifying "dove;" "kill" signifies "church;" and I is as good as island: so I-colm-kill means, the Island of St. Columba's Church. Now this St. Columba became the Dominic of the Barbarian Christians of the North, and was famed also far south, but more especially was reverenced by the Scots, the Picts, the Norwegians, and the Irish. In a course of years, perhaps the island was considered the most holy ground of the north; and the old kings of the afore-mentioned nations chose it for their burial place. We were shown a spot in the church-yard where they say sixtyone kings are buried; forty-eight Scotch, from Fergus II. to Macbeth; eight Irish; four Norwegians; and one French. They lay in rows compact. Then we were shown other matters of later date, but still very ancient, many tombs of Highland chieftains-their effigies in complete armour, face upward, black and moss-covered; abbots and bishops of the island, always of the chief clans. There were plenty Macleans and Macdonalds; among these latter, the famous Macdonald, Lord of the Isles. There have been three hundred crosses in the island, but the Presbyterians destroyed all but two, one of which is a very fine one, and completely covered with a shaggy coarse moss. The old school-master, an ignorant little man, but reckoned very clever, showed us these things. He is a Maclean, and as much above four feet as he is under four feet three inches. He stops at one