How fond he is
of the scenery of this place!"
"Any man would be fond of that. I'm ashamed to say that it almost
makes me envy him. I certainly never have wished to be Mr. Robert
Kennedy in London, but I should like to be the Laird of Loughlinter."
"'Laird of Linn and Laird of Linter,--Here in summer, gone in
winter.' There is some ballad about the old lairds; but that belongs
to a time when Mr. Kennedy had not been heard of, when some branch of
the Mackenzies lived down at that wretched old tower which you see as
you first come upon the lake. When old Mr. Kennedy bought it there
were hardly a hundred acres on the property under cultivation."
"And it belonged to the Mackenzies."
"Yes;--to the Mackenzie of Linn, as he was called. It was Mr.
Kennedy, the old man, who was first called Loughlinter. That is
Linn Castle, and they lived there for hundreds of years. But these
Highlanders, with all that is said of their family pride, have
forgotten the Mackenzies already, and are quite proud of their rich
landlord."
"That is unpoetical," said Phineas.
"Yes;--but then poetry is so usually false. I doubt whether Scotland
would not have been as prosaic a country as any under the sun but for
Walter Scott;--and I have no doubt that Henry V owes the romance of
his character altogether to Shakspeare.
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