Its shore is craggy and precipitous, but there was a point where it
seemed possible to land, nor was it too much to fancy that there might be
a rustic habitation among the shrubbery of this rugged spot. It is
foolish to look into these matters too strictly. Scott evidently used as
much freedom with his natural scenery as he did with his historic
incidents; and he could have made nothing of either one or the other if
he had been more scrupulous in his arrangement and adornment of them. In
his description of the Trosachs, he has produced something very
beautiful, and as true as possible, though certainly its beauty has a
little of the scene-painter's gloss on it. Nature is better, no doubt,
but Nature cannot be exactly reproduced on canvas or in print; and the
artist's only resource is to substitute something that may stand instead
of and suggest the truth.
The path still kept onward, after passing Ellen's Isle, and I followed
it, finding it wilder, more shadowy with overhanging foliage of trees,
old and young,--more like a mountain-path in Berkshire or New Hampshire,
yet still with an Old World restraint and cultivation about it,--the
farther I went.
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