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Her son James VI of Scotland, who subsequently became James I of England, was baptised in the Royal Chapel at Stirling Castle in 1566, and in 1567, when he was only about thirteen months old, was crowned in the parish church at Stirling, his mother Queen Mary having been forced to abdicate in favour of her son. The great Puritan divine John Knox preached the Coronation sermon on that occasion, and the young king was educated until he was thirteen years of age by George Buchanan, the celebrated scholar and historian, in the castle, where his class-room is still to be seen. He succeeded to the English throne on the death of Queen Elizabeth, and was crowned as King James I of England in the year 1603.
Leaving Kippen, we passed through Gargunnock, with the extraordinary windings of the River Forth to our left, and arrived at Stirling at 5.15 p.m., where at the post-office we found a host of letters waiting our arrival and at the railway-station a welcome change of clothing from home.
(Distance walked twenty-two miles.)
Friday, October 6th.
Stirling is one of the most attractive towns in Scotland, and we could not resist staying there awhile to explore it. It is the "key to the Highlands," and one of the oldest of the Royal burghs. It was a place of some importance in the time of the Romans, as it stood between the two great Firths of the Clyde and the Forth, where the Island of Britain is at its narrowest. The first Roman wall was built between the Forth and the Clyde, and the Second Roman Legion was stationed at Stirling. According to an old inscription on a stone near the Ballengeich road, they kept a watch there day and night, and in A.D. 81 a great battle was fought near by against 30,000 Caledonians, who were defeated. Stirling has a commanding geographical position, and all the roads converge there to cross the River Forth. It was at Stirling Bridge that Wallace defeated the army of 50,000 soldiers sent against him in the year 1297 by Edward I, King of England. The town had also a lively time in the days of Charles Edward Stuart, "Bonnie Prince Charlie," whose father, during his exile in France, had been encouraged by the French to return and lay claim to the English Crown. Landing in Inverness-shire in 1745, Prince Charlie was immediately joined by many of the Highland clans, and passed with his army through Stirling on his way towards London. Not finding the support they expected from the south, they were compelled to return, followed closely along their line of retreat by the English Army, and they were soon back again at Stirling, where they made a desperate but unsuccessful effort to obtain possession of the castle, which was held for the English. The Duke of Cumberland's Army by this time was close upon their heels, and gave them no rest until they caught them and defeated them with great slaughter up at Culloden, near Inverness.
There was much in Stirling and its environs that we wished to see, so we were astir early in the morning, although the weather was inclined to be showery. First of all, we went to see the cemetery, which occupies a beautiful position on a hill overlooking the wonderful windings of the River Forth, and here we found the tomb of the Protestant martyrs "Margaret and Agnes," the latter only eighteen years of age, who were tied to stakes at low water in the Bay of Wigtown on May 11th, 1685, and, refusing an opportunity to recant and return to the Roman Catholic faith, were left to be drowned in the rising tide. Over the spot where they were buried their figures appeared beautifully sculptured in white marble, accompanied by that of an angel standing beside them; the epitaph read:
M. O A.
MARGARET
VIRGIN MARTYR OF THE OCEAN WAVE WITH HER LIKE-MINDED SISTER
AGNES.
Love, many waters cannot quench! GOD saves His chaste impearled One! in Covenant true. "O Scotia's Daughters! earnest scan the Page." And prize this Flower of Grace, blood-bought for you.
PSALMS IX., XIX.
We stayed there for a few solemn moments, for it was a sight that impressed us deeply, and then we went to inspect an old stone with the following curious inscription cut on its surface:
Some . only . breakfast . and . away: Others . to . dinner . stay . And . are . full . fed . the . oldest . man . but . sups: And . goes . to . bed: large . is . his . debt: that . lingers . out . the . day: he . that . goes . soonest: has . the . least . to . pay:
We saw another remarkable structure called "The Rock of Ages," a large monument built of stone, on each of the four sides of which was a Bible sculptured in marble with texts from the Scriptures, and near the top a device like that of a crown. It was a fine-looking and substantial building, but we could not ascertain the reason for its erection.
There were two churches quite near to each other standing at one end of the cemetery, and these, we were informed, were known as the East and West Churches, and had been formed out of the old Church of Stirling, formerly noted for its bells, which were still in existence. One of them, a Dutch bell, was marked "Rotterdam, 1657," and inscribed "Soli Deo Gloria"; the only pre-Reformation bell was one that was said to have come from Cambuskenneth Abbey, measuring 8 ft. 6-1/2 in. round the mouth, 4 ft. 6 in. over the neck, and 2 ft. 1-1/2 in. in depth, and bearing a Latin inscription, in Old English characters, which was said to be the angelic salutation from St. Luke i. 28: "Hail, Mary, full of grace, God is with thee; blessed art thou among women and to be blessed." This bell, dating from the fourteenth century, was perfect in sound, and had been the tone bell in the old abbey. The remainder of the bells of Cambuskenneth had been lost owing to the swamping of the boat that was bringing them across the river.
We now went to view the castle, and as we approached the entrance we were accosted by a sergeant, whom we engaged to act as our guide.
The ramparts of the castle command the noblest prospect imaginable—Grampian, Ochil and Pentland Hills, the River Forth, through all its windings, and "Auld Reekie" in the distance—twelve foughten fields are visible—the bridge where Archbishop Hamilton was hanged, the mound on which the Regent, Earl of Levenax, was beheaded on May 25th, 1425, along with the Duke of Albany, his son-in-law, and his grandson—the chamber where the Scottish King James II was assassinated—a noble valley, where tournaments were held, and the hill, whence Beauty viewed "gentle passages of arms" and rewarded knights' valour with her smiles, lie just below the ramparts. Here James I lived, and James II was born, and it was a favourite residence of James III. From these walls the "Good Man of Ballangeich" made many an excursion, and here James V and James VI were indoctrinated at the feet of that stern preceptor, George Buchanan, and the seventh James and the second of England visited here in company with the future Queen Anne and the last of the Stuarts.
Such was the official description of the place we were now visiting. As our guide conducted us through the archway into the castle, he showed us the old chains that worked the portcullis. We noted how cautious the old occupants of these strongholds were, for while one of the massive doors was being drawn up the other went down, so that the inner entrance was always protected. From the top of the walls the sites of seven battlefields were pointed out to us, including those of Bannockburn and Stirling Bridge. The Battle of Stirling Bridge was won by Wallace by strategy; he had a much smaller army than the English, but he watched them until they had got one-half their army over the narrow bridge, and then attacked each half in turn, since the one could not assist the other, the river being between them. In the following year he was defeated himself, but as he retreated he reduced Stirling and its castle to ruins. The Bridge of Allan, which could be seen in the distance, was described as a miniature Torquay without the sea, and the view from the castle on a clear day extended a distance of nearly fifty miles. We were shown the aperture through which Mary Queen of Scots watched the games in the royal garden below, and of course we had to be shown the exact spot where "our most gracious Majesty Queen Victoria with the Prince of Wales" sat on a much more recent date. The castle stood on a rock, rising precipitously on two of its sides, and was now being used as a barracks. It was a fine sight to see the soldiers as they were being drilled. The old Chapel Royal was used as the armoury, and our guide told us of many objects of interest which were stored there; but we had no time to see them, so, rewarding him suitably for his services, we hastened back to the town to refresh the "inner man."
It appeared that in former times none of the members of the Town Council accepted any gift or emolument while in office; and, before writing was as common as it is now, the old treasurer kept his accounts in a pair of boots which he hung one on each side of the chimney. Into one of them he put all the money he received and into the other the vouchers for the money he paid away, and balanced his accounts at the end of the year by emptying his boots, and counting the money left in one and that paid away by the receipts in the other. What a delightfully simple system of "double entry," and just fancy the "borough treasurer" with a balance always in hand! Whether the non-payment for services rendered by the Council accounted for this did not appear; but there must have been some select convivials even in those days, as the famous Stirling Jug remained as evidence of something of the kind. It was a fine old vessel made of brass and taken great care of by the Stirling people, who became possessed of it four or five hundred years before our visit.
We then walked some distance to see Wallace's Monument, the most conspicuous object for many miles round, and which had only just been erected to perpetuate the memory of that great warrior, having been opened by the Duke of Atholl in 1869. We paid twopence each for admission, and in addition to climbing the hill to reach the entrance to the monument we had to ascend a further 220 feet by means of a flight of 246 steps before we could reach the top. There were several rooms in the basement, in one of which we found an enthusiastic party of young Scots who were vociferously singing:
Scots, wha hae wie Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has often led, Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victorie.
* * * * *
Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow! Let us do or die!
These were the first and last verses of the poem written by the immortal Burns to represent Robert Bruce's address to his army before the Battle of Bannockburn. We did not reveal our nationality to the uproarious Scots, but, after listening to the song, which we had never heard sung before, and the cheers which followed it, in which we ourselves joined, we went quietly past them, for fear they might treat us as the "usurpers" named in the last verse and "lay us low."
On reaching the top of the monument we had a magnificent view, which well repaid us for our exertions in climbing up the craig and ascending the tower, and we lingered awhile to view the almost fairy-like scene that lay below us, with the distant mountains in the background. On descending, we entered our names in the visitors' book and took our departure.
Just as we were leaving, our attention was attracted by a notice which informed us that Cambuskenneth Abbey was only one mile away, so we walked along the banks of the Forth to that ancient ruin. The abbey was supposed to have taken its name from one Kenneth, who fought a successful battle with the Picts on the site where it was built. A Parliament was held within its walls in 1314 by King Robert Bruce, but the abbey was destroyed, with the exception of the tower, in 1559. The chief object of interest was the tomb of James III, King of Scots, and his Queen, the Princess Margaret of Denmark, who were buried near the High Altar. The tomb, which appeared quite modern, recorded that King James died June 11th, 1488, and that "This Restoration of the Tomb of her Ancestors was executed by command of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, A.D. 1865."
We now walked back to Stirling, and were again among the windings of the River Forth, which are a striking feature whether viewed from Wallace's Monument, the Castle walls, or the cemetery. To follow them in some places, the traveller, it was said, would have to go four times farther than by the straighter road.
Recovering possession of our bags from the hotel, we resumed our march along the road to Falkirk, eleven miles distant, and, on the way, came to the village of St. Ninians, with its long, narrow street of dismal-looking houses, many of them empty and in ruins, and some marked "To Let"; and, from their dingy appearance, we imagined they were likely to remain so. The people who lived in these houses were formerly of evil reputation, as, before railways were constructed so far north, all the cattle from the Western Isles and the North were driven along the roads to Falkirk to be sold, and had to pass through St. Ninians, which was so dreaded by the drovers that they called this long, narrow street "The Pass of St. Ninians." For, if a sheep happened to go through a doorway or stray along one of the passages, ever open to receive them, it was never seen again and nobody knew of its whereabouts except the thieves themselves. We walked along this miry pass and observed what we thought might be an old church, which we went to examine, but found it to be only a tower and a few ruins. The yard was very full of gravestones. A large building at the bottom of the yard was, we were told, what now did duty for the original church, which in the time of Prince Charlie was used as a powder magazine, and was blown up in 1745 by a party of his Highlanders to prevent its falling into the hands of the advancing English Army, before which they were retreating.
Shortly afterwards we overtook a gentleman whom we at first thought was a farmer, but found afterwards to be a surgeon who resided at Bannockburn, the next village. He was a cheerful and intelligent companion, and told us that the large flagstaff we could see in the fields to the left was where Robert Bruce planted his standard at the famous Battle of Bannockburn, which, he said, was fought at midsummer in the year 1314. Bruce had been preparing the ground for some time so as to make it difficult for the English to advance even though they were much more numerous and better armed than the Scots. As soon as the armies came in sight of each other on the evening of June 24th, King Robert Bruce, dressed in armour and with a golden crown on his helmet, to distinguish him from the rest of his army, mounted on a small pony, and, with a battle-axe in his hand, went up and down the ranks of his army to put them in order. Seeing the English horsemen draw near, he advanced a little in front of his own men to have a nearer view of the enemy. An English knight, Sir Henry de Bohun, seeing the Scottish king so poorly mounted, thought he would rise to fame by killing Bruce and so putting an end to the war at once. So he challenged him to fight by galloping at him suddenly and furiously, thinking with his long spear and tall, powerful horse to extinguish Bruce immediately. Waiting until Bohun came up, and then suddenly turning his pony aside to avoid the point of his lance, Bruce rose in his stirrups and struck Sir Henry, as he passed at full speed, such a terrific blow on the head with his battle-axe that it cut through his helmet and his head at the same time, so that he died before reaching the ground. The only remark that Bruce is said to have made was, "I have broken my good battle-axe."
This fearful encounter and the death of their champion was looked upon as a bad omen by the English, and Sir Walter Scott thus describes it:
The heart had hardly time to think, The eyelid scarce had time to wink,
* * * * *
High in his stirrups stood the King, And gave his battle-axe the swing; Right on De Boune, the whiles he pass'd, Fell that stern dint—the first—the last!— Such strength upon the blow was put, The helmet crash'd like hazel-nut; The axe shaft, with its brazen clasp, Was shiver'd to the gauntlet grasp. Springs from the blow the startled horse, Drops to the plain the lifeless corse.
The battle began on the following morning, Midsummer Day, and the mighty host of heavily armed men on large horses moved forward along what they thought was hard road, only to fall into the concealed pits carefully prepared beforehand by Bruce and to sink in the bogs over which they had to pass. It can easily be imagined that those behind pressing forward would ride over those who had sunk already, only to sink themselves in turn. Thousands perished in that way, and many a thrown rider, heavily laden with armour, fell an easy prey to the hardy Scots. The result was disastrous to the English, and it was said that 30,000 of them were killed, while the Scots were able afterwards to raid the borders of England almost to the gates of York.
The surgeon said that in the Royal College of Surgeons in London a rib of Bruce, the great Scottish king, was included in the curios of the college, together with a bit of the cancerous growth which killed Napoleon. It was said that Bruce's rib was injured in a jousting match in England many years before he died, and that the fracture was made good by a first-class surgeon of the time. In 1329 Bruce died of leprosy in his fifty fifth year and the twenty-third of his reign, and was buried in the Abbey Church of Dunfermline. In clearing the foundation for the third church on the same site, in 1818, the bones of the hero were discovered, Sir Walter Scott being present. The breastbone of the skeleton had been sawn through some 500 years before, as was customary, in order to allow of the removal of the heart, which was then embalmed, and given to Bruce's friend, Sir James Douglas, to be carried to Palestine and buried in Jerusalem.
The surgeon also told us—in order, we supposed, to cheer our drooping spirits—of another battle fought in the neighbourhood of Bannockburn in 1488, but this time it was the Scottish King James III who came to grief. He had a fine grey courser given him "that could war all the horse of Scotland if the king could sit up well." But he was a coward and could not ride, and when some men came up shouting and throwing arrows, they frightened the king. Feeling the spurs, the horse went at "flight speed" through Bannockburn, and a woman carrying water, when she saw the horse coming, dropped her bucket down on the road and ran for safety. The horse, frightened by the bucket, jumped over the brook that turned the mill, and threw the king off at the mill door. The miller and his wife, who saw the accident, not knowing that the rider was the king, put him in a nook in the mill and covered him with a cloth. When he came round, he asked for a priest and told them he was the king. But he had fallen into the hands of his enemies. The miller's wife clapped her hands, and ran out crying for a priest for the king. A man called out, "I am a priest; where is the king?" When he saw the king he told him he might recover if he had a good leeching, but the king desired him to give him the Sacrament. The supposed priest said, "That I shall do quickly," and suiting the action to the word, he stabbed him several times in the heart. The corpse he took away on his back, no one knew whither, and the king's soldiers, now leaderless, fled to Stirling and Linlithgow.
We thanked our friend for his company and bade him farewell, as we reached Bannockburn village. We observed there, as in most villages near Stirling, many houses in ruins or built with the ruins of others. We thought what a blessing it was that the two nations were now united, and that the days of these cruel wars were gone for ever! At a junction of roads a finger-post pointed "To the Bannockburn Collieries," and we saw several coal-pits in the distance with the ruins of an old building near them, but we did not take the trouble to inspect them.
The shades of night were coming on when, after walking a few miles, we saw an old man standing at the garden gate of a very small cottage by the wayside, who told us he was an old sailor and that Liverpool had been his port, from which he had taken his first voyage in 1814. He could remember Birkenhead and that side of the River Mersey when there was only one house, and that a farm from which he used to fetch buttermilk, and when there was only one dock in Liverpool—the Prince's. We thought what a contrast the old man would find if he were to visit that neighbourhood now! He told us of a place near by named Norwood, where were the remains of an old castle of Prince Charlie's time, with some arches and underground passages, but it was now too dark to see them. We proceeded towards Camelon, with the great ironworks of Carron illuminating the sky to our left, and finally arrived at Falkirk. Here, in reply to our question, a sergeant of police recommended us to stay the night at the "Swan Inn," kept by a widow, a native of Inverness, where we were made very comfortable. After our supper of bread and milk, we began to take off our boots to prepare for bed, but we were requested to keep them on as our bedroom was outside! We followed our leader along the yard at the back of the inn and up a flight of stone steps, at the top of which we were ushered into a comfortable bedroom containing three beds, any or all of which, we were informed, were at our service. Having made our selection and fastened the door, we were soon asleep, notwithstanding the dreadful stories we had heard that day, and the great battlefields we had visited—haunted, no doubt, by the ghosts of legions of our English ancestors who had fallen therein!
(Distance walked seventeen miles.)
Saturday, October 7th.
Falkirk, which stands on a gentle slope on the great Carse of Forth, is surrounded by the Grampian Hills, the Ochills, and the Campsie Range. Here King Edward I entirely routed the Scottish Army in the year 1298. Wallace's great friend was slain in the battle and buried in the churchyard, where an inscription recorded that "Sir John de Grahame, equally remarkable for wisdom and courage, and the faithful friend of Wallace, being slain in the battle by the English, lies buried in this place."
We left the inn at six o'clock in the morning, the only people visible being workmen turning out for their day's work. The last great fair of the season was to be held that day, and we had the previous day seen the roads filled with cattle making for Falkirk Fair, perhaps one of the largest fairs in the kingdom. We had been told by the drovers that the position was well adapted for the purpose, as the ground was very sandy and therefore not so liable to be trampled into mud by the animals' feet.
We passed through the village of Laurieston, where Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and blasting gelatine, lived, and saw a plough at work turning up potatoes, a crowd of women and boys following it and gathering up the potatoes in aprons and then emptying them into a long row of baskets which extended from one end of the field to the other. A horse and cart followed, and the man in charge emptied the contents of the baskets into the cart. We questioned the driver of the plough, who assured us that no potatoes were left in the land, but that all were turned up and gathered, and that it was a much better way than turning them out by hand with a fork, as was usual in England.
About two miles farther on we passed the romantic village of Polmont, and on through a fine stretch of country until we reached another fair-sized village called Linlithgow Bridge. We were then about a mile and a half from the old town of Linlithgow; here the River Avon separates the counties of Stirlingshire and Linlithgowshire. The old bridge from which the place takes its name is said to have been built by Edward I of England. In 1526 the Battle of Linlithgow Bridge was fought at this spot; it was one of those faction fights between two contending armies for predominance which were so prevalent in Scotland at the time, the real object, however, being to rescue King James V from the domination of the Earl of Angus. The opposing fronts under Angus and Lennox extended on both sides of the Avon. The Earl of Lennox was slain by Sir James Hamilton after quarter had been granted to the former. His sword was afterwards found, and may still be seen in the small museum at Linlithgow. In this village Stephen Mitchell, tobacco and snuff manufacturer, carried on business and had an old snuff mill here; he was the first founder in Great Britain of a Free Library. Burns the Scottish poet stayed a night here on August 25th, 1787.
We arrived at the royal and ancient burgh of Linlithgow at about nine o'clock. The town, as Burns says, "carries the appearance of rude, decayed, idle grandeur"; it is, however, very pleasantly situated, with rich, fertile surroundings. There is a fine old royal palace here within which, on December 7th, 1542, the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots was born, whose beauty and magnificence have imbued her history with so deep and melancholy an interest. Sir Walter Scott in "Marmion" sings the praises of this palace as follows:—
Of all the palaces so fair, Built for the royal dwelling. In Scotland, far beyond compare Linlithgow is excelling.
We fully endorsed the great Sir Walter's opinion, for it certainly was a magnificent structure and occupied a grand situation, with a large lake in front covering perhaps a hundred acres. We were now, however, getting ravenously hungry, so we adjourned to the hotel for breakfast, which was quickly served and almost as quickly eaten. The palace was not open until ten o'clock, so we had to be content with a view of the exterior, nor could we visit the fine old church, for we wanted to reach Edinburgh, where we had decided to stay the week-end in order to see some of the sights of the historic capital.
A halo of deepest interest surrounded the history of Linlithgow, whose every stone spoke volumes of the storied past. The traditions of the place go far back into the dim shadowy regions where historic fact merges into myth and legend. Solid ground is only reached about the twelfth century. The English had possession of the palace in 1313, and the way it was taken from them was probably unique in the history of such places. The garrison was supplied with hay for the horses by a local farmer named Binnock, who determined to strike a blow for the freedom of his country. A new supply of hay had been ordered, and he contrived to conceal eight men, well armed, under it. The team was driven by a sturdy waggoner, who had a sharp axe concealed in his clothing, while Binnock himself walked alongside. The porter, on seeing their approach, lowered the drawbridge and raised the portcullis to admit of the passage of the hay within the castle walls. Just as they reached the centre of the gateway the driver drew his axe and cut off the tackle that attached the oxen to the waggon, at the same time striking the warder dead and shouting a preconcerted signal—"Call all! Call all!" "The armed men jumped from amongst the hay, and a strong party of Scots, who by arrangement were in ambush outside, rushed in and attacked the astonished garrison, who were unprepared for the onslaught—the load of hay being so placed that the gate could not be closed nor the bridge raised—and so the Scots made themselves masters of the palace."
The last event of any historical interest or importance connected with this palace was the visit paid to it by Prince Charles Stewart in 1745; it was destroyed in the following year.
The beautiful old Gothic church of St. Michael is situated close to the palace. Perhaps no tradition connected with this church is more interesting than the vision which is said to have appeared to James IV while praying within St. Catherine's Aisle immediately before the Battle of Flodden. According to Lindsay of Pitscottie, on whose authority the tale rests, the King, being "in a very sad and dolorous mood, was making his devotions to God to send him good chance and fortune in his voyage" when a man "clad in ane blue gown" appeared to him, and with little ceremony declared to the King that he had been sent to desire him "nocht to pass whither he purposed," for if he did, things "would not fare well with him or any who went with him." How little this warning was heeded by the King is known to all readers of Scottish history. The "ghost," if it may be called so, was in all likelihood an attempt to frighten the King, and it is certain that the tale would never have gained the weird interest it possesses if Flodden Field had not proved so disastrous. It has been helped to immortality by Sir Walter Scott, who in "Marmion" has invested Pitscottie's antique prose with the charm of imperishable poetry.
One characteristic of the towns or villages in Scotland through which we passed was their fine drinking-fountains, and we had admired a very fine one at Falkirk that morning; but Linlithgow's fountain surpassed it—it was indeed the finest we had seen, and a common saying occurred to us:
Glasgow for bells, Linlithgow for wells.
Linlithgow has long been celebrated for its wells, some of them of ancient date and closely associated with the history of the town. We came to an old pump-well with the date 1720, and the words "Saint Michael is kinde to straingers." As we considered ourselves to be included in that category, we had a drink of the water.
At the end of the village or town we passed the union workhouse, where the paupers were busy digging up potatoes in the garden, and a short distance farther on we passed a number of boys with an elderly man in charge of them, who informed us they came from the "institute," meaning the workhouse we had just seen, and that he took them out for a walk once every week. Presently we met a shepherd who was employed by an English farmer in the neighbourhood, and he told us that the man we had met in charge of the boys was an old pensioner who had served fifty-two years in the army, but as soon as he got his pension money he spent it, as he couldn't keep it, the colour of his nose showing the direction in which it went. It struck us the shepherd seemed inclined that way himself, as he said if he had met us nearer a public-house he would have "treated us to a good glass." We thought what a pity it was that men had not a better eye to their own future interests than to spend all their money "for that which is not bread, and their labour for that which satisfieth not," and how many there were who would ultimately become burdens to society who might have secured a comfortable competency for old age by wisely investing their surplus earnings instead of allowing them to flow down that awful channel of waste!
We walked through a fine agricultural district—for we were now in Midlothian—adorned with great family mansions surrounded by well-kept grounds, and arrived in sight of Edinburgh at 1.30, and by two o'clock we were opposite a large building which we were told was Donaldson's Hospital, founded in 1842, and on which about L100,000 had been spent.
Our first business on reaching Edinburgh was to find suitable lodgings until Monday morning, and we decided to stay at Fogg's Temperance Hotel in the city. We had then to decide whether we should visit Edinburgh Castle or Holyrood Palace that day—both being open to visitors at the same hour in the afternoon, but as they were some distance apart we could not explore both; we decided in favour of the palace, where we were conducted through the picture gallery and the many apartments connected with Mary Queen of Scots and her husband Lord Darnley.
The picture-gallery contained the reputed portraits of all the Kings of Scotland from Fergus I, 330 B.C., down to the end of the Stuart dynasty; and my brother, who claimed to have a "painter's eye," as he had learned something of that art when at school, discovered a great similarity between the portraits of the early kings and those that followed them centuries later. Although I explained that it was only an illustration of history repeating itself, and reminded him of the adage, "Like father, like son," he was not altogether satisfied. We found afterwards, indeed, that the majority of the portraits had been painted by a Flemish artist, one John de Witt, who in the year 1684 made a contract, which was still in existence, whereby he bound himself to paint no portraits within two years, he supplying the canvas and colours, and the Government paying him L120 per year and supplying him with the "originalls" from which he was to copy. We wondered what had become of these "originalls," especially that of Fergus, 330 B.C., but as no information was forthcoming we agreed to consider them as lost in the mists of antiquity.
There was much old tapestry on the walls of the various rooms we inspected in the palace, and although it was now faded we could see that it must have looked very beautiful in its original state. The tapestry in one room was almost wholly devoted to scenes in which heavenly-looking little boys figured as playing in lovely gardens amidst beautiful scenery. One of these scenes showed a lake in the background with a castle standing at one end of it. In the lake were two small islands covered with trees which were reflected in the still waters, while in the front was a large orange tree, growing in a lovely garden, up which some of the little boys had climbed, one of whom was throwing oranges to a companion on the ground below; while two others were enjoying a game of leapfrog, one jumping over the other's back. Three other boys were engaged in the fascinating game of blowing bubbles—one making the lather, another blowing the bubbles, while a third was trying to catch them. There were also three more boys—one of them apparently pretending to be a witch, as he was riding on a broomstick, while another was giving a companion a donkey-ride upon his back. All had the appearance of little cupids or angels and looked so lifelike and happy that we almost wished we were young again and could join them in their play!
The rooms more closely connected with the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots were of course the most interesting to visitors; and in her audience-room, where she had such distressing interviews with John Knox, the famous Presbyterian divine and reformer, we saw the bed that was used by King Charles I when he resided at Holyrood, and afterwards occupied on one occasion, in September 1745, by his descendant Prince Charlie, and again after the battle of Culloden by the Duke of Cumberland.
We passed on to Queen Mary's bedroom, in which we were greatly interested, and in spite of its decayed appearance we could see it had been a magnificent apartment. Its walls were adorned with emblems and initials of former Scottish royalties, and an old tapestry representing the mythological story of the fall of Photon, who, according to the Greeks, lost his life in rashly attempting to drive the chariot of his father the God of the Sun. Here we saw Queen Mary's bed, which must have looked superb in its hangings of crimson damask, trimmed with green silk fringes and tassels, when these were new, but now in their decay they seemed to remind us of their former magnificence and of their unfortunate owner, to whom the oft-quoted words
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown
so aptly applied. We wondered how many times her weary head had passed its restless nights there, and in the many castles in which she had been placed during her long imprisonment of nineteen years. Half hidden by the tapestry there was a small door opening upon a secret stair, and it was by this that Darnley and his infamous associates ascended when they went to murder the Queen's unfortunate Italian secretary, Rizzio, in the Queen's supping-room, which we now visited. There we had to listen to the recital of this horrible crime: how the Queen had been forcibly restrained by Darnley, her table overthrown and the viands scattered, while the blood-thirsty conspirators crowded into the room; how Rizzio rushed behind the Queen for protection, until one of the assassins snatched Darnley's dagger from its sheath, and stabbed Rizzio, leaving the dagger sticking in his body, while the others dragged him furiously from the room, stabbing him as he went, shrieking for mercy, until he fell dead at the head of the staircase, pierced by fifty-six wounds; and how one of the assassins threatened to cut the Queen "into collops" if she dared to speak to the populace through the window. The bloodstain on the floor was of course shown us, which the mockers assert is duly "restored" every winter before the visiting season commences.
Leaving the Palace, we saw Queen Mary's Bath, a quaintly shaped little building built for her by King James IV, in which she was said to have bathed herself in white wine—an operation said to have been the secret of her beauty. During some alterations which were made to it in 1798, a richly inlaid but wasted dagger was found stuck in the sarking of the roof, supposedly by the murderers of Rizzio on their escape from the palace.
We then visited the now roofless ruins of the Abbey or Chapel Royal adjoining the Palace. A fine doorway on which some good carving still remained recalled something of its former beauty and grandeur. There were quite a number of tombs, and what surprised us most was the large size of the gravestones, which stood 6 to 7 feet high, and were about 3 feet wide. Those we had been accustomed to in England were much smaller, but everything in Scotland seemed big, including the people themselves, and this was no less true of the buildings in Edinburgh. There was a monument in one corner of the Chapel Royal on which was an inscription in Latin, of which we read the English translation to be:—
HERE IS BURIED A WORTHY MAN AND AN INGENIOUS MASON,
ALEXANDER MILNE, 20 Feb. A.D. 1643
Stay Passenger, here famous Milne doth rest, Worthy to be in AEgypt's Marble drest; What Myron or Apelles could have done In brass or paintry, he could do in stone; But thretty yeares hee [blameless] lived; old age He did betray, and in's Prime left this stage.
Restored by Robert Mylne
Architect. MDCCLXXVI.
The builder of the Palace was Robert Milne, the descendant of a family of distinguished masons. He was the "master mason," and a record of him in large letters on a pillar ran—
FVN . BE . RO . MILNE . M.M. . I . JYL . 1671.
After leaving Holyrood we walked up Calton Hill, where we had a splendid view of the fine old city of Edinburgh seated on rocks that are older than history, and surrounded by hills with the gleaming Firth of Forth in the distance. The panorama as seen from this point was magnificent, and one of the finest in Great Britain. On the hill there were good roads and walks and some monuments. One of these, erected to the memory of Nelson, was very ugly, and another—beautiful in its incompleteness—consisted of a number of immense fluted columns in imitation of the Parthenon of Athens, which we were told was a memorial to the Scottish heroes who fell in the Wars of Napoleon, but which was not completed, as sufficient funds had not been forthcoming to finish what had evidently been intended to be an extensive and costly erection. We supposed that these lofty pillars remained as a warning to those who begin to build without first sitting down and counting the cost. They were beautifully proportioned, resembling a fragment of some great ruin, and probably had as fine an effect as they stood, as the finished structure would have had.
Edinburgh Castle stood out in the distance on an imposing rock. As we did not arrive during visiting hours we missed many objects of interest, including the Scottish crown and regalia, which are stored therein. On the ramparts of the castle we saw an ancient gun named "Mons Meg," whose history was both long and interesting. It had been made by hand with long bars of hammered iron held together by coils of iron hoops, and had a bore of 20 in.; the cannon-balls resting alongside it were made of wood. It was constructed in 1455 by native artisans at the instance of James II, and was used in the siege of Dumbarton in 1489 and in the Civil Wars. In Cromwell's list of captured guns in 1650 it was described as "the great iron murderer Meg." When fired on the occasion of the Duke of York's visit to Edinburgh in 1682 the gun burst. After this bad behaviour "Meg" was sent to the Tower of London, not, however, to be executed, but to remain there until the year 1829, when, owing to the intercession of Sir Walter Scott with King George IV, the great gun was returned to Edinburgh, and was received with great rejoicings and drawn up with great ceremony to the castle, where it still remains as a relic of the past.
On our way we had observed a placard announcing a soiree in connection with the I.O.G.T. (the Independent Order of Good Templars), and this being somewhat of a novelty to us we decided to patronise it. Accordingly at 7 p.m. we found ourselves paying the sum of ninepence each at the entrance to the Calton Rooms. As we filed through along with others, a cup and saucer and a paper bag containing a variety of cakes were handed to us, and the positions assigned to us were on either side of an elderly gentleman whom we afterwards found to be a schoolmaster.
When the tea came round there were no nice young ladies to ask us if we took sugar and milk, and how many pieces of sugar; to our great amusement the tea was poured into our cups from large tin kettles carried by men who from their solemn countenances appeared fitting representatives of "Caledonia stern and wild." We thought this method a good one from the labour-saving point of view, and it was certainly one we had never seen adopted before. The weak point about it was that it left no opportunity for individual taste in the matter of milk and sugar, which had already been added, but as we did not hear any complaints and all appeared satisfied, we concluded that the happy medium had been reached, and that all had enjoyed themselves as we did ourselves.
Our friend the schoolmaster was very communicative, and added to our pleasure considerably by his intelligent conversation, in the course of which he told us that the I.O.G.T. was a temperance organisation introduced from America, and he thought it was engaged in a good work. The members wore a very smart regalia, much finer than would have suited us under the climatic conditions we had to pass through. After tea they gave us an entertainment consisting of recitations and songs, the whole of which were very creditably rendered. But the great event of the evening was the very able address delivered by the Rev. Professor Kirk, who explained the objects of the Good Templar movement and the good work it was doing in Edinburgh and elsewhere. Every one listened attentively, for the Professor was a good speaker and he was frequently applauded by his audience.
We had spent a very pleasant evening, and the schoolmaster accompanied us nearly all the way to our lodgings, which we reached at 11 p.m.
(Distance walked up to 2 p.m. twenty-four miles.)
Sunday, October 8th.
To judge by what we heard and saw, there were connected with Edinburgh three great characters who stand out above all others in historic importance—Mary Queen of Scots, John Knox, and Sir Walter Scott; but we thought and read more about John Knox this day than either of the others, possibly because it was Sunday. We attended service in three different churches, and give the following particulars for the information of our clerical and other friends who "search the Scriptures," in the hope that they may find in the reading of the texts food for thought.
In the morning we went to the High Church. Preacher, the Rev. C. Giffin, M.A. Text. 2 Corinthians viii. 13 and to the end.
In the afternoon to the Tron Church. Preacher, the Rev. James McGregor, D.D. Text: Isaiah lvii., the last three verses, and Ephesians ii. and the first clause of verse 14.
In the evening to the Wesleyan Chapel, Nicolson Square. Preacher, the Rev. Dr. James, President of the Wesleyan Conference. Text: I Corinthians ii. 1, 2.
The excellence of the sermons, and the able way in which they had been prepared and were delivered, gave us the impression that rivalry existed between the ministers of the different churches as to which of them could preach the best sermon. They were all fine orations, carefully thought out and elaborated, especially that by Dr. James.
During the intervals between the services we walked about the city, and again passed the splendid monument to Sir Walter Scott with the following remarkable inscription, written by Lord Jeffery, beneath its foundation stone:
This Graven Plate, deposited in the base of a votive building on the fifteenth day of August in the year of Christ 1840, and never likely to see the light again till all the surrounding structures are crumbled to dust by the decay of time, or by human or elemental violence, may then testify to a distant posterity that his countrymen began on that day to raise an effigy and architectural monument to the memory of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., whose admirable writings were then allowed to have given more delight and suggested better feelings to a large class of readers in every rank of society than those of any other author, with the exception of Shakespeare alone, and which were, therefore, thought likely to be remembered long after this act of gratitude on the part of the first generation of his admirers should be forgotten. He was born at Edinburgh 15th August 1771: and died at Abbotsford, 21st September 1832.
We also passed that ancient and picturesque mansion in the High Street known as the "House of John Knox," in which the distinguished reformer died in 1572. Born in the year 1505, it was he who, in the reign of Mary Queen of Scots, stirred Scotland to mighty religious impulses, boldly denouncing Mary as a Papist and a Jezebel. How he escaped being beheaded or burned or assassinated was, considering the nature of the times in which he lived, a mystery almost amounting to a miracle.
Queen Mary sailed from France and landed at Leith, near Edinburgh, on August 19th, 1561, where she was welcomed by the Scots as Dowager of France, Queen of Scotland, and heiress of England, and was "gorgeouslie and magnificentlie" received, according to Scottish ideas, by the lords and ladies who came to meet and accompany her to Edinburgh; but, according to the diary of one of the Queen's ladies, "when they saw them mounted on such wretched little hackneys so wretchedly caparisoned they were greatly disappointed, and thought of the gorgeous pomp and superb palfreys they had been accustomed to in France, and the Queen began to weep." On their arrival at Edinburgh they retired to rest in the Abbey, "a fine building and not at all partaking of that country, but here came under her window a crew of five or six hundred scoundrels from the city, who gave her a serenade with wretched violins and little rebecks of which there are enough in that country, and began to sing Psalms so miserably mis-tuned and mis-timed that nothing could be worse. Alas! what music, and what a night's rest!" What the lady would have written if bagpipes had been included in the serenade we could not imagine, but as these instruments of torture were not named, we concluded they must have been invented at a later period.
Mary had been away in France for about thirteen years, and during that time she had for her companions four young ladies of the same name as her own and of about the same age, Mary Fleming, Mary Bethune, Mary Livingstone, and Mary Seaton, all of whom formed part of her retinue on her return to Scotland, where they were known as the "Queen's Marys."
She was a staunch adherent of the Romish Church, a fact which accounted for many of her trials and mortifications. Mainly owing to the powerful preaching of John Knox, many of the people of Scotland, both of high and low degree, had become fierce opponents of that form of religion, which they considered idolatrous. The first Sunday after her arrival was St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24th, and preparations had been made to celebrate mass in the Chapel Royal, at which the Queen was to be present. But no sooner was this known, than a mob rushed towards the edifice, exclaiming: "Shall the idol be again erected in the land?" and shouting, "The idolatrous priests shall die the death!" On September 2nd the Queen made her public entry into Edinburgh, and on the same day John Knox had an audience with Mary, who, hearing of a furious sermon he had preached against the Mass on the previous Sunday in St. Giles's Church, thought that a personal interview would mitigate his sternness. The Queen took him to task for his book entitled The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regimen of Women, and his intolerance towards every one who differed from him in opinion, and further requested him to obey the precepts of the Scriptures, a copy of which she perceived in his possession, and urged him to use more meekness in his sermons. Knox in reply, it was said, "knocked so hastily upon her heart," that he made her weep with tears of anguish and indignation, and she said, "My subjects, it would appear, must obey you, and not me; I must be subject to them, and not they to me!" Knox left Holyrood that day convinced that Mary's soul was lost for ever, and that she despised and mocked all exhortation against the Mass.
When Mary attended her first Parliament, accompanied by her ladies, the Duke of Chatelherault carrying the Crown, the Earl of Argyll the Sceptre, and the Earl of Moray the Sword, she appeared so graceful and beautiful that the people who saw her were quite captivated, and many exclaimed, "God save that sweet face!"
During this short Parliament Knox preached in St. Giles's Church, and argued that they ought to demand from the Queen "that which by God's Word they may justly require, and if she would not agree with them in God, they were not bound to agree with her in the devil!" and concluded with some observations respecting the Queen's rumoured marriage with Don Carlos of Spain, declaring, "Whenever ye consent that an infidel, and all Papists are infidels, shall be our head to our soverane, ye do so far as in ye lieth to banisch Christ Jesus from his realme; ye bring God's vengeance upon this country, a plague upon yourselves, and perchance ye shall do no small discomfirt to your soverane."
Mary heard of this furious attack upon her, which Knox admitted had offended both Papists and Protestants, and he was again summoned to Holyrood. As soon as Mary saw Knox she was greatly excited, and exclaimed: "Never was prince handled as I am." "I have borne with you," she said to Knox, "in all your vigorous manner of speaking, both against myself and my uncles; yea, I have sought your favour by all possible means—I offered unto you presence and audience whenever it pleased you to admonish me, and yet I cannot be quit of you. I vow to God I shall be once avenged."
Knox answered, "True it is, Madam, your Grace and I have been at divers controversies into the which I never perceived your Grace to be offended at me; but when it shall please God to deliver you from that bondage of darkness and error in the which ye have been nourished for the lack of true doctrine, your majesty will find the liberty of my tongue nothing offensive. Without the preaching-place, Madam, I am not master of myself, for I must obey Him who commands me to speak plain, and flatter no flesh upon the face of the earth."
The Queen asked him again, "What have ye to do with my marriage, or what are ye in this commonwealth?" "A subject born within the same, Madam," was the stern reply; "and albeit I be neither Earl, Lord, nor Baron within it, yet has God made me, how abject soever I may be in your eyes, a profitable member within the same."
He was entering into some personal explanations, when the Queen ordered him to leave the Cabinet, and remain in the ante-chamber till her pleasure should be intimated. Here Knox found himself in the company of the Queen's Marys and other ladies, to whom he gave a religious admonition. "Oh, fair ladies," he said, "how pleasing is this life of yours if it would ever abide, and then in the end that you pass to Heaven with all this gay gear! But fie upon the knave Death, that will come whether we will or not, and when he has laid on his arrest, the foul worms will be busy with this flesh, be it never so fair and tender; and the silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble, that it can neither carry with it gold, garnishing, targetting, pearl nor precious stones."
Several noblemen had accompanied Knox when he went to see the Queen, but only Erskine of Dun was admitted to the Cabinet, and Lord Ochiltree attended Knox in the ante-room while Queen Mary held a consultation with Lord John Stuart and Erskine lasting nearly an hour, at the end of which Erskine appeared and accompanied Knox home. Knox must have been in great danger of losing his life owing to his fearless and determined daring in rebuking those in high places, and indeed his life was afterwards repeatedly aimed at; but Providence foiled all attempts to assassinate him, and in the end he died a peaceful death. On November 9th, 1572, a fortnight before he died, he preached his farewell sermon, the entire congregation following his tottering footsteps to his home. When the time came for him to die he asked for I Corinthians xv., and after that had been read he remarked: "Is not that a comfortable chapter?" There was also read to him Isaiah liii. Asked if he could hear, he replied: "I hear, I thank God, and understand far better." He afterwards said to his wife, "Read, where I cast my first anchor." Mrs. Knox knew what he meant, and read to him his favourite seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel. His friend Bannatyne, seeing that he was just about to depart, and was becoming speechless, drew near to him saying, "Hast thou hope?" and asked him if he heard to give them a sign that he died in peace. Knox pointed upwards with two of his fingers, and thus he died without a struggle. Truly one of the most remarkable men that ever lived in Scotland, and whose end was peace.
A vast concourse of people attended his funeral, the nobility walking in front of the procession, headed by Morton, who had been appointed Regent of Scotland on the very day on which Knox died, and whose panegyric at the grave was: "Here lieth a man who in his life never feared the face of man."
St. Giles's was the first parochial church in Edinburgh, and its history dates from the early part of the twelfth century. John Knox was appointed its minister at the Reformation. When Edinburgh was created a bishopric, the Church of St. Giles became the Cathedral of the diocese. A remarkable incident happened at this church on Sunday, July 23rd, 1639, when King Charles I ordered the English service-book to be used. It was the custom of the people in those days to bring their own seats to church, in the shape of folding-stools, and just as Dean Hanney was about to read the collect for the day, a woman in the congregation named Jenny Geddes, who must have had a strong objection to this innovation, astonished the dean by suddenly throwing her stool at his head. What Jenny's punishment was for this violent offence we did not hear, but her stool was still preserved together with John Knox's pulpit and other relics.
Although three hundred years save one had elapsed since John Knox departed this life, his memory was still greatly revered in Edinburgh, and his spirit still seemed to pervade the whole place and to dwell in the hearts and minds of the people with whom we came in contact. A good illustration of this was the story related by an American visitor. He was being driven round the city, when the coachman pointed out the residence of John Knox. "And who was John Knox?" he asked. The coachman seemed quite shocked that he did not know John Knox, and, looking down on him with an eye of pity, replied, in a tone of great solemnity, "Deed, mawn, an' d'ye no read y'r Beeble!"
As we walked about the crowded streets of Edinburgh that Sunday evening we did not see a single drunken person, a fact which we attributed to the closing of public houses in Scotland on Sundays. We wished that a similar enactment might be passed in England, for there many people might habitually be seen much the worse for liquor on Sunday evenings, to the great annoyance of those returning from their various places of worship.
FOURTH WEEK'S JOURNEY
Monday, October 9th
There were some streets in Edinburgh called wynds, and it was in one of these, the College Wynd, that Sir Walter Scott was born in the year 1771. It seemed a strange coincidence that the great Dr. Samuel Johnson should have visited the city in the same year, and have been conducted by Boswell and Principal Robertson to inspect the college along that same wynd when the future Sir Walter Scott was only about two years old. We had not yet ventured to explore one of these ancient wynds, as they appeared to us like private passages between two rows of tall houses. As we could not see the other end, we looked upon them as traps for the unwary, but we mustered up our courage and decided to explore one of them before leaving the town. We therefore rose early and selected one of an antiquated appearance, but we must confess to a feeling of some apprehension in entering it, as the houses on each side were of six to eight storeys high, and so lofty that they appeared almost to touch each other at the top. To make matters worse for us, there were a number of poles projecting from the windows high above our track, for use on washing days, when clothes were hung upon them to dry. We had not gone very far, when my brother drew my attention to two women whose heads appeared through opposite windows in the upper storeys, and who were talking to each other across the wynd. On our approach we heard one of them call to the other in a mischievous tone of voice, "See! there's twa mair comin'!" We were rather nervous already, so we beat an ignominious retreat, not knowing what might be coming on our devoted heads if we proceeded farther. In the event of hostilities the two ladies were so high up in the buildings, which were probably let in flats, that we should never have been able to find them, and, like the stray sheep in the Pass of St. Ninians, we might never have been found ourselves. We were probably taken for a pair of sporting young medical students instead of grave searchers after wisdom and truth. We therefore returned to our hotel for the early breakfast that was waiting for us, and left Edinburgh at 8.10 a.m. on our way towards Peebles.
We journeyed along an upward gradient with a view of Craigmillar Castle to our left, obtaining on our way a magnificent view of the fine city we had left behind us, with its castle, and the more lofty elevation known as Arthur's Seat, from which portions of twelve counties might be seen. It was a curiously shaped hill with ribs and bones crossing in various directions, which geologists tell us are undoubted remains of an old volcano. It certainly was a very active one, if one can judge by the quantity of debris it threw out. There was an old saying, especially interesting to ladies, that if you washed your face at sunrise on May 1st, with dew collected off the top of Arthur's Seat, you would be beautiful for ever. We were either too late or too soon, as it was now October 9th, and as we had a lot to see on that day, with not overmuch time to see it in, we left the dew to the ladies, feeling certain, however, that they would be more likely to find it there in October than on May Day. When we had walked about five miles, we turned off the main road to visit the pretty village of Rosslyn, or Roslin, with its three great attractions: the chapel, the castle, and the dell. We found it surrounded by woods and watered by a very pretty reach of the River Esk, and as full of history as almost any place in Scotland.
The unique chapel was the great object of interest. The guide informed us that it was founded in 1446 by William St. Clair, who also built the castle, in which he resided in princely splendour. He must have been a person of very great importance, for he had titles enough even to weary a Spaniard, being Prince of Orkney, Duke of Oldenburg, Earl of Caithness and Stratherne, Lord St. Clair, Lord Liddlesdale, Lord Admiral of the Scottish Seas, Lord Chief Justice of Scotland, Lord Warden of the three Marches, Baron of Roslin, Knight of the Cockle, and High Chancellor, Chamberlain, and Lieutenant of Scotland!
The lords of Rosslyn were buried in their complete armour beneath the chapel floor up to the year 1650, but afterwards in coffins. Sir Walter Scott refers to them in his "Lay of the Last Minstrel" thus:—
There are twenty of Rosslyn's Barons bold Lie buried within that proud Chapelle.
There were more carvings in Rosslyn Chapel than in any place of equal size that we saw in all our wanderings, finely executed, and with every small detail beautifully finished and exquisitely carved. Foliage, flowers, and ferns abounded, and religious allegories, such as the Seven Acts of Mercy, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Dance of Death, and many scenes from the Scriptures; it was thought that the original idea had been to represent a Bible in stone. The great object of interest was the magnificently carved pillar known as the "'Prentice Pillar," and in the chapel were two carved heads, each of them showing a deep scar on the right temple. To these, as well as the pillar, a melancholy memory was attached, from which it appeared that the master mason received orders that this pillar should be of exquisite workmanship and design. Fearing his inability to carry out his instructions, he went abroad to Rome to see what designs he could find for its execution. While he was away his apprentice had a dream in which he saw a most beautiful column, and, setting to work at once to carry out the design of his dream, finished the pillar, a perfect marvel of workmanship. When his master returned and found the pillar completed, he was so envious and enraged at the success of his apprentice that he struck him on the head with his mallet with such force that he killed him on the spot, a crime for which he was afterwards executed.
We passed on to the castle across a very narrow bridge over a ravine, but we did not find much there except a modern-looking house built with some of the old stones, under which were four dungeons. Rosslyn was associated with scenes rendered famous by Bruce and Wallace, Queen Mary and Rizzio, Robert III and Queen Annabella Drummond, by Comyn and Fraser, and by the St. Clairs, as well as by legendary stories of the Laird of Gilmorton Grange, who set fire to the house in which were his beautiful daughter and her lover, the guilty abbot, so that both of them were burnt to death, and of the Lady of Woodhouselee, a white-robed, restless spectre, who appeared with her infant in her arms. Then there was the triple battle between the Scots and the English, in which the Scots were victorious:
Three triumphs in a day! Three hosts subdued by one! Three armies scattered like the spray, Beneath one vernal sun.
Here, too, was the inn, now the caretaker's house, visited by Dr. Johnson and Boswell in 1773, the poet Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy in 1803, while some of the many other celebrities who called from time to time had left their signatures on the window-panes. Burns and his friend Nasmyth the artist breakfasted there on one occasion, and Burns was so pleased with the catering that he rewarded the landlady by scratching on a pewter plate the two following verses:
My blessings on you, sonsie wife, I ne'er was here before; You've gien us walth for horn and knife— Nae heart could wish for more.
Heaven keep you free from care and strife. Till far ayont four score; And while I toddle on through life, I'll ne'er gang bye your door.
Rosslyn at one time was a quiet place and only thought of in Edinburgh when an explosion was heard at the Rosslyn gunpowder works. But many more visitors appeared after Sir Walter Scott raised it to eminence by his famous "Lay" and his ballad of "Rosabelle":
Seem'd all on fire that chapel proud. Where Rosslyn's chiefs uncoffin'd lie.
Hawthornden was quite near where stood Ben Jonson's sycamore, and Drummond's Halls, and Cyprus Grove, but we had no time to see the caves where Sir Alexander Ramsay had such hairbreadth escapes. About the end of the year 1618 Ben Jonson, then Poet Laureate of England, walked from London to Edinburgh to visit his friend Taylor, the Thames waterman, commonly known as the Water Poet, who at that time was at Leith. In the January following he called to see the poet Drummond of Hawthornden, who was more frequently called by the name of the place where he lived than by his own. He found him sitting in front of his house, and as he approached Drummond welcomed him with the poetical salutation:
"Welcome! welcome! Royal Ben,"
to which Jonson responded,
"Thank ye, thank ye, Hawthornden."
The poet Drummond was born in 1585, and died in 1649, his end being hastened by grief at the execution of Charles I. A relative erected a monument to his memory in 1784, to which the poet Young added the following lines:
O sacred solitude, divine retreat, Choice of the prudent, envy of the great! By the pure stream, or in the waving shade I court fair Wisdom, that celestial maid; Here from the ways of men, laid safe ashore, I smile to hear the distant tempest roar; Here, blest with health, with business unperplex'd, This life I relish, and secure the next.
Rosslyn Glen was a lovely place, almost like a fairy scene, and we wondered if Burns had it in his mind when he wrote:
Their groves of sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon, Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume; Far dearer to me yon lone glen of green bracken, Wi' the burn stealing under the long yellow broom.
We walked very quietly and quickly past the gunpowder works, lest conversation might cause an explosion that would put an end to our walking expedition and ourselves at the same time, and regained the highway at a point about seven miles from Edinburgh. Presently we came to the Glencorse Barracks, some portions of which adjoined our road, and, judging from the dress and speech of the solitary sentinel who was pacing to and fro in front of the entrance, we concluded that a regiment of Highlanders must be stationed there. He informed us that in the time of the French Wars some of the prisoners were employed in making Scotch banknotes at a mill close by, and that portions of the barracks were still used for prisoners, deserters, and the like. Passing on to Pennicuick, we crossed a stream that flowed from the direction of the Pentland Hills, and were informed that no less than seven paper mills were worked by that stream within a distance of five miles. Here we saw a monument which commemorated the interment of 309 French prisoners who died during the years 1811 to 1814, a list of their names being still in existence. This apparently large death-rate could not have been due to the unhealthiness of the Glencorse Barracks, where they were confined, for it was by repute one of the healthiest in the kingdom, the road being 600 feet or more above sea-level, and the district generally, including Pennicuick, considered a desirable health-resort for persons suffering from pulmonary complaints. We stayed a short time here for refreshments, and outside the town we came in contact with two young men who were travelling a mile or two on our way, with whom we joined company. We were giving them an outline of our journey and they were relating to us their version of the massacre of Glencoe, when suddenly a pretty little squirrel crossed our path and ran into a wood opposite. This caused the massacre story to be ended abruptly and roused the bloodthirsty instinct of the two Scots, who at once began to throw stones at it with murderous intent. We watched the battle as the squirrel jumped from branch to branch and passed from one tree to another until it reached one of rather large dimensions. At this stage our friends' ammunition, which they had gathered hastily from the road, became exhausted, and we saw the squirrel looking at them from behind the trunk of the tree as they went to gather another supply. Before they were again ready for action the squirrel disappeared. We were pleased that it escaped, for our companions were good shots. They explained to us that squirrels were difficult animals to kill with a stone, unless they were hit under the throat. Stone-throwing was quite a common practice for country boys in Scotland, and many of them became so expert that they could hit small objects at a considerable distance. We were fairly good hands at it ourselves. It was rather a cruel sport, but loose stones were always plentiful on the roads—for the surfaces were not rolled, as in later years—and small animals, such as dogs and cats and all kinds of birds, were tempting targets. Dogs were the greatest sufferers, as they were more aggressive on the roads, and as my brother had once been bitten by one it was woe to the dog that came within his reach. Such was the accuracy acquired in the art of stone-throwing at these animals, that even stooping down in the road and pretending to lift a stone often caused the most savage dog to retreat quickly. We parted from the two Scots without asking them to finish their story of Glencoe, as the details were already fixed in our memories. They told us our road skirted a moor which extended for forty-seven miles or nearly as far as Glasgow, but we did not see much of the moor as we travelled in a different direction.
We passed through Edleston, where the church was dedicated to St. Mungo, reminding us of Mungo Park, the famous African traveller, and, strangely enough, it appeared we were not far away from where he was born. In the churchyard here was a tombstone to the memory of four ministers named Robertson, who followed each other in a direct line extending to 160 years. There was also to be seen the ancient "Jougs," or iron rings in which the necks of criminals were enclosed and fastened to a wall or post or tree. About three miles before reaching Peebles we came to the Mansion of Cringletie, the residence of the Wolfe-Murray family. The name of Wolfe had been adopted because one of the Murrays greatly distinguished himself at the Battle of Quebec, and on the lawn in front of the house was a cannon on which the following words had been engraved:
His Majesty's Ship Royal George of 108 guns, sunk at Spithead 29th August 1782. This gun, a 32 pounder, part of the armament of the Royal George, was fished up from the wreck of that ship by Mr. Deans, the zealous and enterprising Diver, on the 15th November 1836, and was presented by the Master-General and Board of Ordnance to General Durham of Largo, the elder Brother of Sir Philip Charles Henderson Durham, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath, Knight Commander of the Most Ancient Military Order of Merit of France, Admiral of the White Squadron of Her Majesty's Fleet, and Commander-in-Chief of the Port of Portsmouth, 1836.
Sir Philip was serving as a lieutenant in the Royal George, and was actually on duty as officer of the watch upon deck when the awful catastrophe took place. He was providentially and miraculously saved, but nearly 900 persons perished, amongst them the brave Admiral Kempenfelt, whose flag went down with the ship.
The wreck of the Royal George was the most awful disaster that had hitherto happened to the Royal Navy. William Cowper the poet, as soon as the sad news was brought to him, wrote a solemn poem entitled "The Loss of the Royal George," from which it seems that Admiral Kempenfelt was in his cabin when the great ship suddenly foundered.
His sword was in its sheath, His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down With twice four hundred men.
* * * * *
Toll for the brave! Brave Kempenfelt is gone: His last sea-fight is fought, His work of glory done.
* * * * *
Toll for the brave! The brave that are no more. All sunk beneath the wave. Fast by their native shore!
It was nearly dark when we entered the town of Peebles, where we called at the post office for letters, and experienced some difficulty at first in obtaining lodgings, seeing that it was the night before the Hiring Fair. We went first to the Temperance Hotel, but all the beds had been taken down to make room for the great company they expected on the morrow; eventually we found good accommodation at the "Cross Keys Inn," formerly the residence of a country laird.
We had seen notices posted about the town informing the public that, by order of the Magistrates, who saw the evil of intoxicating drinks, refreshments were to be provided the following day at the Town Hall. The Good Templars had also issued a notice that they were having a tea-party, for which of course we could not stay.
We found Peebles a most interesting place, and the neighbourhood immediately surrounding it was full of history. The site on which our hotel had been built was that of the hostelage belonging to the Abbey of Arbroath in 1317, the monks granting the hostelage to William Maceon, a burgess of Peebles, on condition that he would give to them, and their attorneys, honest lodging whenever business brought them to that town. He was to let them have the use of the hall, with tables and trestles, also the use of the spence (pantry) and buttery, sleeping chambers, a decent kitchen, and stables, and to provide them with the best candles of Paris, with rushes for the floor and salt for the table. In later times it was the town house of Williamson of Cardrona, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries became one of the principal inns, especially for those who, like ourselves, were travelling from the north, and was conducted by a family named Ritchie. Sir Walter Scott, who at that time resided quite near, frequented the house, which in his day was called the "Yett," and we were shown the room he sat in. Miss Ritchie, the landlady in Scott's day, who died in 1841, was the prototype of "Meg Dobs," the inn being the "Cleikum Inn" of his novel St. Ronan's Well.
There was a St. Mungo's Well in Peebles, and Mungo Park was intimately associated with the town. He was born at Foulshiels, Yarrow, in the same year as Sir Walter Scott, 1771, just one hundred years before our visit, and, after studying for the Church, adopted medicine as his profession. He served a short time with a doctor at Selkirk, before completing his course at the University of Edinburgh, and sailed in 1792 for the East Indies in the service of the East India Company. Later he joined an association for the promotion of discovery in Africa, and in 1795 he explored the basin of the Niger. In 1798 he was in London, and in 1801 began practice as a doctor in Peebles. He told Sir Walter Scott, after passing through one of the severe winters in Peebleshire, that he would rather return to the wilds of Africa than pass another winter there. He returned to London in December 1803 to sail with another expedition, but its departure was delayed for a short time, so he again visited Peebles, and astonished the people there by bringing with him a black man named "Sidi Omback Boubi," who was to be his tutor in Arabic. Meantime, in 1779, he had published a book entitled Travels in the Interior of Africa, which caused a profound sensation at the time on account of the wonderful stories it contained of adventures in what was then an unknown part of the world. This book of "Adventures of Mungo Park" was highly popular and extensively read throughout the country, by ourselves amongst the rest.
It was not until January 29th, 1805, that the expedition left Spithead, and before Mungo Park left Peebles he rode over to Clovenfords, where Sir Walter Scott was then residing, to stay a night with him at Ashestiel. On the following morning Sir Walter accompanied him a short distance on the return journey, and when they were parting where a small ditch divided the moor from the road Park's horse stumbled a little. Sir Walter said, "I am afraid, Mungo, that is a bad omen," to which Park replied, smiling, "Friets (omens) follow those that look for them," and so they parted for ever. In company with his friends Anderson and Scott he explored the rivers Gambia and Niger, but his friends died, and Dr. Park himself was murdered by hostile natives who attacked his canoe in the River Niger.
Quite near our lodgings was the house where this famous African traveller lived and practised blood-letting as a surgeon, and where dreams of the tent in which he was once a prisoner and of dark faces came to him at night, while the door at which his horse was tethered as he went to see Sir Walter Scott, and the window out of which he put his head when knocked up in the night, were all shown as objects of interest to visitors. Mungo had at least one strange patient, and that was the Black Dwarf, David Ritchie, who lies buried close to the gate in the old churchyard. This was a horrid-looking creature, who paraded the country as a privileged beggar. He affected to be a judge of female beauty, and there was a hole in the wall of his cottage through which the fair maidens had to look, a rose being passed through if his fantastic fancies were pleased; but if not, the tiny window was closed in their faces. He was known to Sir Walter Scott, who adopted his name in one of his novels, The Bowed Davie of the Windus. His cottage, which was practically in the same state as at the period of David Ritchie's death, bore a tablet showing that it had been restored by the great Edinburgh publishers W. and R. Chambers, who were natives of Peebles, and worded: "In memory D.R., died 1811. W. and R. Chambers, 1845."
Dr. Pennicuick, who flourished A.D. 1652-1722, had written:
Peebles, the Metropolis of the shire, Six times three praises doth from me require; Three streets, three ports, three bridges, it adorn, And three old steeples by three churches borne, Three mills to serve the town in time of need. On Peebles water, and on River Tweed, Their arms are proper, and point forth their meaning, Three salmon fishes nimbly counter swimming;
but there were other "Threes" connected with Peebles both before and after the doctor's time: "The Three Tales of the Three Priests of Peebles," supposed to have been told about the year 1460 before a blazing fire at the "Virgin Inn."
There were also the Three Hopes buried in the churchyard, whose tombstone records:
Here lie three Hopes enclosed within, Death's prisoners by Adam's sin; Yet rest in hope that they shall be Set by the Second Adam free.
And there were probably other triplets, but when my brother suggested there were also three letter e's in the name of Peebles, I reminded him that it was closing-time, and also bed-time, so we rested that night in an old inn such as Charles Dickens would have been delighted to patronise.
(Distance walked twenty-five miles.)
Tuesday, October 10th.
This was the day of the Great Peebles Fair, and everybody was awake early, including ourselves. We left the "Cross Keys" hotel at six o'clock in the morning, and a very cold one it was, for there had been a sharp frost during the night. The famous old Cross formerly stood near our inn, and the Cross Church close at hand, or rather all that remained of them after the wars. In spite of the somewhat modern appearance of the town, which was probably the result of the business element introduced by the establishment of the woollen factories, Peebles was in reality one of the ancient royal burghs, and formerly an ecclesiastical centre of considerable importance, for in the reign of Alexander III several very old relics were said to have been found, including what was supposed to be a fragment of the true Cross, and with it the calcined bones of St. Nicholas, who suffered in the Roman persecution, A.D. 294. On the strength of these discoveries the king ordered a magnificent church to be erected, which caused Peebles to be a Mecca for pilgrims, who came there from all parts to venerate the relics. The building was known as the Cross Church, where a monastery was founded at the desire of James III in 1473 and attached to the church, in truly Christian spirit, one-third of its revenues being devoted to the redemption of Christian captives who remained in the hands of the Turks after the Crusades.
If we had visited the town in past ages, there would not have been any fair on October 10th, since the Great Fair, called the Beltane Festival, was then held on May Day; but after the finding of the relics it was made the occasion on which to celebrate the "Finding of the Cross," pilgrims and merchants coming from all parts to join the festivities and attend the special celebrations at the Cross Church. On the occasion of a Beltane Fair it was the custom to light a fire on the hill, round which the young people danced and feasted on cakes made of milk and eggs. We thought Beltane was the name of a Sun-god, but it appeared that it was a Gaelic word meaning Bel, or Beal's-fire, and probably originated from the Baal mentioned in Holy Writ.
As our next great object of interest was Abbotsford, the last house inhabited by Sir Walter Scott, our course lay alongside the River Tweed. We were fortunate in seeing the stream at Peebles, which stood at the entrance to one of the most beautiful stretches in the whole of its length of 103 miles, 41 of which lay in Peeblesshire. The twenty miles along which we walked was magnificent river scenery.
We passed many castles and towers and other ancient fortifications along its banks, the first being at Horsburgh, where the castle looked down upon a grass field called the Chapelyards, on which formerly stood the chapel and hospice of the two saints, Leonard and Lawrence. At this hospice pilgrims from England were lodged when on their way to Peebles to attend the feasts of the "Finding of the Cross" and the "Exaltation of the Cross," which were celebrated at Beltane and Roodmass respectively, in the ancient church and monastery of the Holy Cross. It was said that King James I of England on his visits to Peebles was also lodged here, and it is almost certain the Beltane Sports suggested to him his famous poem, "Peebles to the Play," one of its lines being:
Hope Kailzie, and Cardrona, gathered out thickfold, Singing "Hey ho, rumbelow, the young folks were full bold."
both of which places could be seen from Horsburgh Castle looking across the river.
We saw the Tower of Cardrona, just before entering the considerable village, or town, of Innerleithen at six miles from Peebles, and although the time was so early, we met many people on their way to the fair. Just before reaching Innerleithen we came to a sharp deep bend in the river, which we were informed was known as the "Dirt Pot" owing to its black appearance. At the bottom of this dark depth the silver bells of Peebles were supposed to be lying. We also saw Glennormiston House, the residence of William Chambers, who, with his brother, Robert, founded Chambers's Journal of wide-world fame, and authors, singly and conjointly, of many other volumes. The two brothers were both benefactors to their native town of Peebles, and William became Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and the restorer of its ancient Cathedral of St. Giles's. His brother Robert died earlier in that very year in which we were walking. We reached Innerleithen just as the factory operatives were returning from breakfast to their work at the woollen factories, and they seemed quite a respectable class of people. Here we called at the principal inn for our own breakfast, for which we were quite ready, but we did not know then that Rabbie Burns had been to Innerleithen, where, as he wrote, he had from a jug "a dribble o' drink," or we should have done ourselves the honour of calling at the same place. At Innerleithen we came to another "Bell-tree Field," where the bell hung on the branch of a tree to summon worshippers to church, and there were also some mineral springs which became famous after the publication of Sir Walter Scott's novel, St. Ronan's Well.
Soon after leaving Innerleithen we could see Traquair House towering above the trees by which it was surrounded. Traquair was said to be the oldest inhabited house in Scotland. Sir Walter Scott knew it well, it being quite near to Ashiestiel, where he wrote "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake." It was one of the prototypes of "Tully Veolan" in his Waverley. There was no abode in Scotland more quaint and curious than Traquair House, for it was turreted, walled, buttressed, windowed, and loopholed, all as in the days of old. Within were preserved many relics of the storied past and also of royalty. Here was the bed on which Queen Mary slept in 1566; here also the oaken cradle of the infant King James VI. The library was rich in valuable and rare books and MSS. and service books of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries in beautiful penmanship upon fine vellum. The magnificent avenue was grass-grown, the gates had not been opened for many years, while the pillars of the gateway were adorned with two huge bears standing erect and bearing the motto: "Judge Nocht." Magnificent woods adorned the grounds, remains of the once-famous forest of Ettrick, said to be the old classical forest of Caledon of the days of King Arthur.
Here was also Flora Hill, with its beautiful woods, where Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, lays the scene of his exquisite poem "Kilmeny" in the Queen's Wake, where—
Bonnie Kilmeny gae'd up the Glen, But it wisna to meet Duneira's men, etc.
Through beautiful scenery we continued alongside the Tweed, and noticed that even the rooks could not do without breakfast, for they were busy in a potato field. We were amused to see them fly away on our approach, some of them with potatoes in their mouths, and, like other thieves, looking quite guilty.
Presently we came to a solitary fisherman standing knee-deep in the river, with whom we had a short conversation. He said he was fishing for salmon, which ascended the river from Berwick about that time of the year and returned in May. We were rather amused at his mentioning the return journey, as from the frantic efforts he was making to catch the fish he was doing his best to prevent them from coming back again. He told us he had been fishing there since daylight that morning, and had caught nothing. By way of sympathy my brother told him a story of two young men who walked sixteen miles over the hills to fish in a stream. They stayed that night at the nearest inn, and started out very early the next morning. When they got back to the hotel at night they wrote the following verse in the visitors' book:
Hickory dickory dock! We began at six o'clock, We fished till night without a bite. Hickory dickory dock!
This was a description, he said, of real fishermen's luck, but whether the absence of the "bite" referred to the fishermen or to the fish was not quite clear. It had been known to apply to both.
Proceeding further we met a gentleman walking along the road, of whom we made inquiries about the country we were passing through. He told us that the castle we could see across the river was named "Muckle Mouthed Meg." A certain man in ancient times, having offended against the laws, was given a choice for a sentence by the King of Scotland—-either he must marry Muckle Mouthed Meg, a woman with a very large mouth, or suffer death. He chose the first, and the pair lived together in the old castle for some years. We told him we were walking from John o' Groat's to Land's End, but when he said he had passed John o' Groat's in the train, we had considerable doubts as to the accuracy of his statements, for there was no railway at all in the County of Caithness in which John o' Groat's was situated. We therefore made further inquiries about the old castle, and were informed that the proper name of it was Elibank Castle, and that it once belonged to Sir Gideon Murray, who one night caught young Willie Scott of Oakwood Tower trying to "lift the kye." The lowing of the cattle roused him up, and with his retainers he drove off the marauders, while his lady watched the fight from the battlement of the Tower. Willie, or, to be more correct, Sir William Scott, Junr., was caught and put in the dungeon. Sir Gideon Murray decided to hang him, but his lady interposed: "Would ye hang the winsome Laird o' Harden," she said, "when ye hae three ill-favoured daughters to marry?" Sir Willie was one of the handsomest men of his time, and when the men brought the rope to hang him he was given the option of marrying Muckle Mou'd Meg or of being hanged with a "hempen halter." It was said that when he first saw Meg he said he preferred to be hanged, but he found she improved on closer acquaintance, and so in three days' time a clergyman said, "Wilt thou take this woman here present to be thy lawful wife?" knowing full well what the answer must be. Short of other materials, the marriage contract was written with a goose quill on the parchment head of a drum. Sir William found that Meg made him a very good wife in spite of her wide mouth, and they lived happily together, the moral being, we supposed, that it is not always the prettiest girl that makes the best wife.
Shortly afterwards we left the River Tweed for a time while we walked across the hills to Galashiels, and on our way to that town we came to a railway station near which were some large vineries. A carriage was standing at the entrance to the gardens, where two gentlemen were buying some fine bunches of grapes which we could easily have disposed of, for we were getting rather hungry, but as they did not give us the chance, we walked on. Galashiels was formerly only a village, the "shiels" meaning shelters for sheep, but it had risen to importance owing to its woollen factories. It was now a burgh, boasting a coat-of-arms on which was represented a plum-tree with a fox on either side, and the motto, "Sour plums of Galashiels." The origin of this was an incident that occurred in 1337, in the time of Edward III, when some Englishmen who were retreating stopped here to eat some wild plums. While they were so engaged they were attacked by a party of Scots with swords, who killed every one of them, throwing their bodies into a trench afterwards known as the "Englishman's Syke." We passed a road leading off to the left to Stow, where King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were said to have defeated the Heathens. We left Galashiels by the Melrose Road, and, after walking about a mile and a half, we turned aside to cross the River Tweed, not by a ferry, as that was against our rule, but by a railway bridge. No doubt this was against the railway company's by-laws and regulations, but it served our purpose, and we soon reached Abbotsford, that fine mansion, once the residence of the great Sir Walter Scott, the king of novelists, on the building of which he had spent a great amount of money, and the place of his death September 21st, 1832.
Abbotsford, including the gardens, park, walks and woods, was all his own creation, and was so named by him because the River Tweed was crossed at that point by the monks on their way to and from Melrose Abbey in the olden times.
We found the house in splendid condition and the garden just as Sir Walter had left it. We were shown through the hall, study, library, and drawing-room, and even his last suit of clothes, with his white beaver hat, was carefully preserved under a glass case. We saw much armour, the largest suit belonging formerly to Sir John Cheney, the biggest man who fought at the battle of Bosworth Field. The collection of arms gathered out of all ages and countries was said to be the finest in the world, including Rob Roy Macgregor's gun, sword, and dirk, the Marquis of Montrose's sword, and the rifle of Andreas Hofer the Tyrolese patriot.
Amongst these great curios was the small pocket-knife used by Sir Walter when he was a boy. We were shown the presents given to him from all parts of the kingdom, and from abroad, including an ebony suite of furniture presented to him by King George IV. There were many portraits and busts of himself, and his wife and children, including a marble bust of himself by Chantrey, the great sculptor, carved in the year 1820. The other portraits included one of Queen Elizabeth, another of Rob Roy; a painting of Queen Mary's head, after it had been cut off at Fotheringay, and a print of Stothard's Canterbury Pilgrims. We also saw an iron box in which Queen Mary kept her money for the poor, and near this was her crucifix. In fact, the place reminded us of some great museum, for there were numberless relics of antiquity stored in every nook and corner, and in the most unlikely places. We were sorry we had not time to stay and take a longer survey, for the mansion and its surroundings form one of the great sights of Scotland, whose people revere the memory of the great man who lived there.
The declining days of Sir Walter were not without sickness and sorrow, for he had spent all the money obtained by the sale of his books on this palatial mansion. After a long illness, and as a last resource, he was taken to Italy; but while there he had another apoplectic attack, and was brought home again, only just in time to die. He expressed a wish that Lockhart, his son-in-law, should read to him, and when asked from what book, he answered, "Need you ask? There is but one." He chose the fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel, and when it was ended, he said, "Well, this is a great comfort: I have followed you distinctly, and I feel as if I were yet to be myself again." In an interval of consciousness he said, "Lockhart! I may have but a minute to speak to you, my dear; be a good man, be virtuous, be religious, be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here."
A friend who was present at the death of Sir Walter wrote: "It was a beautiful day—so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectly still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible—as we kneeled around his bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes." We could imagine the wish that would echo in more than one mind as Sir Walter's soul departed, perhaps through one of the open windows, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his."
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, We start, for soul is wanting there; It is the loneliness in death That parts not quite with parting breath, But beauty with that fearful bloom, The hue which haunts it to the tomb, Expression's last receding ray; A gilded halo hov'ring round decay.
We passed slowly through the garden and grounds, and when we reached the road along which Sir Walter Scott had so often walked, we hurried on to see the old abbey of Melrose, which was founded by King David I. On our way we passed a large hydropathic establishment and an asylum not quite completed, and on reaching Melrose we called at one of the inns for tea, where we read a description by Sir Walter of his "flitting" from Ashiestiel, his former residence, to his grand house at Abbotsford. The flitting took place at Whitsuntide in 1812, so, as he died in 1832, he must have lived at Abbotsford about twenty years. He was a great collector of curios, and wrote a letter describing the comical scene which took place on that occasion. "The neighbours," he wrote, "have been very much delighted with the procession of furniture, in which old swords, bows, targets, and lances made a very conspicuous show. A family of turkeys was accommodated within the helmet of some preux chevalier of ancient Border fame, and the very cows, for aught I know, were bearing banners and muskets. I assure you that this caravan, attended by a dozen ragged, rosy, peasant children carrying fishing-rods and spears, and leading ponies, greyhounds, and spaniels, would, as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for the pencil."
Melrose Abbey was said to afford the finest specimen of Gothic architecture and Gothic sculpture of which Scotland could boast, and the stone of which it had been built, though it had resisted the weather for many ages, retained perfect sharpness, so that even the most minute ornaments seemed as entire as when they had been newly wrought. In some of the cloisters there were representations of flowers, leaves, and vegetables carved in stone with "accuracy and precision so delicate that it almost made visitors distrust their senses when they considered the difficulty of subjecting so hard a substance to such intricate and exquisite modulation." This superb convent was dedicated to St. Mary, and the monks were of the Cistercian Order, of whom the poet wrote: |
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