Would change carriages when we stopped at the next station,
for comparisons are very different from poetry, and if you try to mix
them with scenery you make a mess that is not fit for a Christian. But
I thought first I would give her a word back:
"I have seen to-day," I said, "the loveliest scenery I ever met with;
but we've got grand canons in America where you could put the whole of
that scenery without crowding, and where it wouldn't be much noticed by
spectators, so busy would they be gazing at the surrounding wonders."
"Fancy!" said she.
"I don't want to say anything," said I, "against what I have seen
to-day, and I don't want to think of anything else while I am looking
at it; but this I will say, that landscape with Scott is very different
from landscape without him."
"That is very true, isn't it?" said she; and then she stopped making
comparisons, and I looked out of the window.
Oban is a very pretty place on the coast, but we never should have gone
there if it had not been the place to start from for Staffa and Iona.
When I was only a girl I saw pictures of Fingal's Cave, and I have read
a good deal about it since, and it is one of the spots in the world
that I have been longing to see, but I feel like crying when I tell
you, madam, that the next morning there was such a storm that the boat
for Staffa didn't even start; and as the people told us that the storm
would most likely last two or three days, and that the sea for a few
days more would be so rough that Staffa would be out of the question,
we had to give it up, and I was obliged to fall back from the reality
to my imagination.
