The spell of Scotland

Time was when half a hundred ports ringing round the semi-island of Scotland invited your boat to make harbour; you could "return" at almost any point of entry you chose, or cha...

It is possible to enter the Middle Marches from Berwick; in truth, Kelso lies scarcely farther from Flodden than does Berwick. But Flodden is on English soil to-day, and memory...

It is a very great little country which lies all about Melrose, with never a bend of the river or a turn of the highway or a shoulder of the hill, nay, scarce the shadow of any...

I suppose the Scotsman who has been born in Edinburgh may have a pardonable reluctance in praising the town, may hesitate in appraising it; Stevenson did; Scott did not. And I s...

From Edinburgh as I looked out on the Forth from every vantage point, I was conscious of the hills of Fife ever backing in the prospect. And I kept repeating to myself the old r...

One leaves Edinburgh for the North--the haunted North--as in a royal progress. The train moves out of the Waverley station, and through the Gardens, under the very shadow of Cas...

Many ways lead out of Perth, but best of these is the foot-path way, picked up anywhere in the Highlands. By rail the road leads down to the sea, past Glamis Castle, built in 15...

The iron road from Aberdeen to Inverness must follow somewhat the road which gallant Mary took on her way to punish Huntley. There is a bleak stern look about this country as a...

There is something theatrical about Oban, artificial, and therefore among Scottish towns Oban is a contrast. It is as uncovenanted as--joy! And it is very beautiful, "the gay an...

All the world goes to the Trossachs. Yet there are only two kinds of people who should go, and they are as widely separated as the poles; those who are content and able to take...

I remember that in his "Picturesque Notes," to the second edition Robert Louis Stevenson added a foot-note in rebuke to the Glaswegians who had taken to themselves much pleasure...