Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/399

Rh dame Nature's lovely honest face. Smooth lawns, the rose, the pink, the jessamine, the twining honeysuckle, and flower border, are sweet and lovely, but in some instances they are out of place.

Hamilton is a tolerable town. The Duke's palace, on the outside (I did not see the inside of it), is an old, and rather a forlorn-looking mass of building, attached by high walls to the worst end of the town. It stands on a flat; the ground rising, I believe, on every side, and trees and woods every where about it; particularly at Chattelherault, where they are very fine. About one mile after I had passed the palace, I crossed the Avon Water, a considerable river, with a bed full of rocks: all around the bridge over it is beautifully romantic, particularly at a house on the edge of the water, about a quarter of a mile above. Soon after crossing the Avon, the road ascends a rough steep hill, by the side of Duke Hamilton's woods and park pales, which is the road to Douglas Mill, from which the new road, by Clyde's side, to Lanerk, strikes off, and becomes a most beautiful drive, by the river's side all the way. Stone Biers Force is a very grand fall of the river Clyde, within three miles of