However, in this crowded age men are so
constituted that they like to turn a contemplative exercise into a kind
of Bank Holiday. There is no use in arguing with such persons; the worst
of their pleasure is that it tends to change a Scotch loch into something
like the pond of the Welsh Harp, at Hendon. It is always good news to
read in the papers how the Dundee Walton Society had a bad day, and how
the first prize was won by Mr. Macneesh, with five trout weighing three
pounds and three quarters. Loch Leven, then, is crowded and cockneyfied
by competitions; it has also no great name for beauty of landscape. Every
one to his own taste in natural beauty, but in this respect I think Loch
Leven is better than its reputation. It is certainly more pictorial, so
to speak, than some remote moor lochs up near Cape Wrath; Forsinard in
particular, where the scenery looks like one gigantic series of brown
"baps," flat Scotch scones, all of low elevation, all precisely similar
to each other.
Loch Leven is not such a cockney place as the majority of men who have
not visited it imagine. It really is larger than the Welsh Harp at
Hendon, and the scenery, though not like that of Ben Cruachan or Ben
Mohr, excels the landscape of Middlesex. At the northern end is a small
town, grey, with some red roofs and one or two characteristic Fifeshire
church-towers, squat and strong.
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