ennoble one of the sweetest landscapes, and by the shore of one of the
loveliest estuaries in the world;--placed between the crests of the
Grampians and the flowing of the Moray Firth, as if it were a jewel
clasping the folds of the mountains to the blue zone of the sea,--is
only distinguishable from a distance by one architectural feature, and
exalts all the surrounding landscape by no other associations than
those which can be connected with its modern castellated gaol.

While these conditions of Scottish scenery affected me very painfully,
it being the first time in my life that I had been in any country
possessing no valuable monuments or examples of art, they also forced
me into the consideration of one or two difficult questions respecting
the effect of art on the human mind; and they forced these questions
upon me eminently for this reason, that while I was wandering
disconsolately among the moors of the Grampians, where there was no art
to be found, news of peculiar interest was every day arriving from a
country where there was a great deal of art, and art of a delicate
kind, to be found. Among the models set before you in this institution,
and in the others established throughout the kingdom for the teaching
of design, there are, I suppose, none in their kind more admirable than
the decorated works of India. They are, indeed, in all materials
capable of colour, wool, marble, or metal, almost inimitable in their
delicate application of divided hue, and fine arrangement of fantastic
line. Nor is this power of theirs exerted by the people rarely, or
without enjoyment; the love of subtle design seems universal in the
race, and is developed in every implement that they shape, and every
building that they raise; it attaches itself with the same intensity,
and with the same success, to the service of superstition, of pleasure
or of cruelty; and enriches alike, with one profusion on enchanted
iridescence, the dome of the pagoda, the fringe of the girdle and the