Page:Types of Scenery and Their Influence on Literature.djvu/55

 can fail to recognize how faithfully the innermost spirit of the West Highlands is rendered.

Never before or since have the endless changes of sky and atmosphere been more powerfully portrayed. In the tempestuous climate of the west of Scotland these changes succeed each other with a rapidity and energy such as the dweller on the southern lowlands can hardly realize. They are faithfully, if somewhat monotonously, reflected in 'Ossian.' All through the poems the air seems ever astir around us. Sometimes it is only a gently-breathing zephyr which

Chases round and round The hoary beard of thistle old, Dark-moving over grassy mounds.

We mark the graves of dead heroes by

Their long grass waving in the wind,

and we move along 'in the robe of the misty glen' past

Branches and brown tufts of grass Which tremble and whistle in the breeze.