I am return’d from Scotland charm’d with my expedition: it is of the Highlands I speak: the Lowlands are worth seeing once, but the Mountains are extatic, & ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year. None but those monstrous creatures of God know how to join so much beauty with so much horror…Italy could hardly produce a nobler scene, or a finer season, and this is so sweetly contrasted with that perfection of nastiness, & total want of accommodation, that Scotland only can supply.
— Thomas Gray, letter to William Mason, 8 November 1765