Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume II Part 4

Immediately underneath, upon the south, you command the yards of the High School, and the towers and courts of the new Jail--a large place, castellated to the extent of folly, standing by itself on the edge of a steep cliff, and often joyfully hailed by tourists as the Castle. In the one, you may perhaps see female prisoners taking exercise like a string of nuns; in the other, schoolboys running at play, and their shadows keeping step with them. From the bottom of the valley, a gigantic chimney rises almost to the level of the eye, a taller and a shapelier edifice than Nelson's Monument. Look a little farther, and there is Holyrood Palace, with its Gothic frontal and ruined abbey, and the red sentry pacing smartly to and fro before the door like a mechanical figure in a panorama. By way of an outpost, you can single out the little peak-roofed lodge, over which Rizzio's murderers made their escape, and where Queen Mary herself, according to gossip, bathed in white wine to retain her loveliness.

Behind and overhead lie the Queen's Park, from Musehat's Cairn to Dumbied.y.k.es, St. Margaret's Loch, and the long wall of Salisbury's Crags; and thence, by knoll and rocky bulwark and precipitous slope, the eye rises to the top of Arthur's Seat, a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design. This upon your left. Upon the right, the roofs and spires of the Old Town climb one above another to where the citadel prints its broad bulk and jagged crown of bastions on the western sky.... Perhaps it is now one in the afternoon; and at the same instant of time, a ball rises to the summit of Nelson's flagstaff close at hand, and, far away, a puff of smoke, followed by a report, bursts from the half-moon battery at the Castle. This is the time-gun by which people set their watches, as far as the sea coast or in hill farms upon the Pent-lands. To complete the view, the eye enfilades Prince's Street, black with traffic, and has a broad look over the valley between the Old Town and the New; here, full of railway trains and stept over by the high North Bridge upon its many columns, and there, green with trees and gardens.

On the north, the Calton Hill is neither so abrupt in itself, nor has it so exceptional an outlook; and yet even here it commands a striking prospect. A gully separates it from the New Town. This is Greenside, where witches were burned and tournaments held in former days. Down that almost precipitous bank Bothwell launched his horse, and so first, as they say, attracted the bright eyes of Mary. It is now tesselated with sheets and blankets out to dry, and the sound of people beating carpets is rarely absent. Beyond all this, the suburbs run out to Leith; Leith camps on the seaside with her forests of masts; Leith roads are full of ships at anchor; the sun picks out the white pharos upon Inchkeith Island; the Firth extends on either hand from the Ferry to the May; the towns of Fifeshire sit, each in its bank of blowing smoke, along the opposite coast; and the hills enclose the view, except to the farthest east, where the haze of the horizon rests upon the open sea. There lies the road to Norway; a dear road for Sir Patrick Spens and his Scots Lords; and yonder smoke on the hither side of Largo Law is Aberdour, from whence they sailed to seek a queen for Scotland.

These are the main features of the scene roughly sketched. How they are all tilted by the inclination of the ground, how each stands out in delicate relief against the rest, what manifold detail, and play of sun and shadow, animate and accentuate the picture, is a matter for a person on the spot, and, turning swiftly on his heels, to grasp and bind together in one comprehensive look. It is the character of such a prospect, to be full of change and of things moving. The multiplicity embarra.s.ses the eye; and the mind, among so much, suffers itself to grow absorbed with single points. You remark a tree in a hedgerow, or follow a cart along a country road. You turn to the city, and see children, dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you note ridge after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of roofs. At one of the innumerable windows you watch a figure moving; on one of the mult.i.tude of roofs you watch clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes a run and scatters the smoke; bells are heard, far and near, faint and loud, to tell the hour; or perhaps a sea bird goes dipping evenly over the housetops, like a gull across the waves. And here you are in the meantime, on this pastoral hillside, among nibbling sheep and looked upon by monumental buildings.

HOLYROOD [Footnote: From "Edinburgh Sketches and Memories."]

BY DAVID Ma.s.sON

Mary, Queen of Scots, on her return to Scotland after her thirteen years of residence and education in France, had to form her first real acquaintance with her native sh.o.r.es and the capital of her realm. She had left Calais for the homeward voyage on Thursday, the 14th of August, with a retinue of about one hundred and twenty persons, French and Scottish, embarked in two French state galleys, attended by several transports. They were a goodly company, with rich and splendid baggage.

The Queen's two most important uncles, indeed--the great Francis de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, and his brother, Charles de Lorraine, the Cardinal--were not on board. They, with the d.u.c.h.ess of Guise, and other senior lords and ladies of the French court, had bidden Mary farewell at Calais, after having accompanied her thither from Paris, and after the Cardinal had in vain tried to persuade her not to take her costly collection of pearls and other jewels with her, but to leave them in his keeping till it should be seen how she might fare among her Scottish subjects.

But on board the Queen's own galley were three others of Guise or Lorraine uncles--the Duc d'Aumale, the Grand Prior, and the Marquis d'Elbeuf--with M. Danville, son of the Constable of France, and a number of French gentlemen of lower rank, among whom one notes especially young Pierre de Bourdeilles, better known afterward in literary history as Sieur de Brantome, and a sprightly and poetic youth from Dauphine, named Chastelard, one of the attendants of M. Danville. With these were mixed the Scottish contingent of the Queen's train, her four famous "Marys"

included--Mary Fleming, Mary Livingstone, Mary Seton, and Mary Beaton.

They had been her playfellows and little maids of honor long ago, in her Scottish childhood; they had accompanied her when she went abroad, and had lived with her ever since in France; and they were now returning with her, Scoto-French women like herself, and all of about her own age, to share her new fortunes....

Then, as now, the buildings that went by the general name of Holyrood were distinguishable into two portions. There was the Abbey, now represented only by the beautiful and s.p.a.cious fragment of ruin called the Royal Chapel, but then, despite the spoliations to which it had been subjected by recent English invasions, still tolerably preserved in its integrity as the famous edifice, in early Norman style, which had been founded in the twelfth century by David I., and had been enlarged in the fifteenth by additions in the later and more florid Gothic. Close by this was Holyrood House, or the Palace proper, built in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, and chiefly by James IV., to form a distinct royal dwelling, and so supersede that occasional accommodation in the Abbey itself which had sufficed for Scottish sovereigns before Edinburgh was their habitual or capital residence.

One block of this original Holyrood House still remains in the two-turreted projection of the present Holyrood which adjoins the ruined relic of the Abbey, and which contains the rooms now specially shown as "Queen Mary's Apartments." But the present Holyrood, as a whole, is a construction of the reign of Charles II., and gives little idea of the Palace in which Mary took up her abode in 1561. The two-turreted projection on the left was not balanced then, as now, by a similar two-turreted projection on the right, with a facade of less height between, but was flanked on the right by a continued chateau-like frontage, of about the same height as the turreted projections, and at a uniform depth of recess from it, but independently garnished with towers and pinnacles. The main entrance into the Palace from the great outer courtyard was through this chateau-like flank, just about the spot where there is the entrance through the present middle facade; and this entrance led, like the present, into an inner court or quadrangle, built round on all the four sides.

That quadrangle of chateau, touching the Abbey to the back from its northeastern corner, and with the two-turreted projection to its front from its northwestern corner, const.i.tuted, indeed, the main bulk of the Palace. There were, however, extensive appurtenances of other buildings at the back or at the side farthest from the Abbey, forming minor inner courts, while part of that side of the great outer courtyard which faced the entrance was occupied by offices belonging to the Palace, and separating the courtyard from the adjacent purlieus of the town. For the grounds of both Palace and Abbey were encompa.s.sed by a wall, having gates at various points of its circuit, the princ.i.p.al and most strongly guarded of which was the Gothic porch admitting from the foot of the Canongate into the front courtyard. The grounds so enclosed were ample enough to contain gardens and s.p.a.ces of plantation, besides the buildings and their courts. Altogether, what with the buildings themselves, what with the courts and gardens, and what with the natural grandeur of the site--a level of deep and wooded park, between the Calton heights and crags, on the one hand, and the towering shoulders of Arthur's Seat and precipitous escarpment of Salisbury Crags on the other--Holyrood in 1561 must have seemed, even to an eye the most satiated with palatial splendors abroad, a sufficiently impressive dwelling-place to be the metropolitan home of Scottish royalty.

LINLITHGOW [Footnote: From "Provincial Antiquities of Scotland."]

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

The convenience afforded for the sport of falconry, which was so great a favorite during the feudal ages, was probably one cause of an attachment of the ancient Scottish monarchs to Linlithgow and its fine lake. The sport of hunting was also followed with success in the neighborhood, from which circ.u.mstance it probably arises that the ancient arms of the city represent a black greyhound b.i.t.c.h tied to a tree....

A Celt, according to Chalmers, might plausibly derive the name of Linlithgow from Lin-liah-cu, the Lake of the Greyhound. Chalmers himself seems to prefer the Gothic derivation of Lin-lyth-gow, or the Lake of the Great Vale. The Castle of Linlithgow is only mentioned as being a peel (a pile, that is, an embattled tower surrounded by an outwork). In 1300 it was rebuilt or repaired by Edward I., and used as one of the citadels by which he hoped to maintain his usurped dominion in Scotland.

It is described by Barbour as "meihle and stark and stuffed weel." Piers Luband, a Gascoigne knight, was appointed the keeper, and appears to have remained there until the autumn of 1313, when the Scots recovered the Castle....

Bruce, faithful to his usual policy, caused the peel of Linlithgow to be dismantled, and worthily rewarded William Binnock, who had behaved with such gallantry on the occasion. From this bold yeoman the Binnies of West Lothian are proud to trace their descent; and most, if not all of them, bear in their arms something connected with the wagon, which was the instrument of his stratagem.

When times of comparative peace returned, Linlithgow again became the occasional residence of the sovereign. In 1411 the town was burned by accident, and in 1414 was again subjected to the same calamity, together with the Church and Palace of the king, as is expressly mentioned by Bower. The present Church, which is a fine specimen of Gothic architecture, having a steeple surmounted by an imperial crown, was probably erected soon after the calamity.

The Palace arose from its ashes with greater splendor than before; for the family of Stuart, unhappy in some respects, were all of them fortunate in their taste for the fine arts, and particularly for that of architecture. The Lordship of Linlithgow was settled as a dowry upon Mary of Gueldres in 1449, and again upon Margaret of Denmark in 1468.

James IV., a splendid gallant, seems to have founded the most magnificent part of Linlithgow Palace; together with the n.o.ble entrance betwixt two flanking towers bearing, on rich entablatures, the royal arms of Scotland, with the collars of the Orders of the Thistle, Garter, and Saint Michael. James IV. also erected in the Church a throne for himself, and twelve stalls for Knights Companions of the Thistle.... His death and the rout of his army clouded for many a day the glory of Scotland, and marred the mirth of her palaces.

James V. was much attached to Linlithgow, and added to the Palace both the Chapel and Parliament Hall, the last of which is peculiarly striking. So that when he brought his bride, Mary of Guise, there, amid the festivities which accompanied their wedding, she might have had more reason than mere complaisance for highly commending the edifice, and saying that she never saw a more princely palace. It was long her residence, and that of her royal husband, at Linlithgow. Mary was born there in an apartment still shown; and the ill-fated father, dying within a few days of that event, left the ominous diadem which he wore to the still more unfortunate infant....

In the subsequent reign of Queen Mary, Linlithgow was the scene of several remarkable events; the most interesting of which was the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Regent Murray by Hamilton of Bothwell-haugh. James VI. loved the royal residence of Linlithgow, and completed the original plan of the Palace, closing the great square by a stately range of apartments of great architectural beauty. He also made a magnificent fountain in the Palace yard, now ruinous, as are all the buildings around. Another grotesque Gothic fountain adorns the street of the town....

When the scepter pa.s.sed from Scotland, oblivion sat down in the halls of Linlithgow; but her absolute desolation was reserved for the memorable era of 1745-6. About the middle of January in that year, General Hawley marched at the head of a strong army to raise the siege of Stirling, then prest by the Highland insurgents under the adventurous Charles Edward. The English general had exprest considerable contempt of his enemy, who, he affirmed, would not stand a charge of cavalry. On the night of the 17th he returned to Linlithgow, with all the marks of defeat, having burned his tents, and left his artillery and baggage. His disordered troops were quartered in the Palace, and began to make such great fires on the hearth, as to endanger the safety of the edifice. A lady of the Livingstone family who had apartments there remonstrated with General Hawley, who treated her fears with contempt. "I can run away from fire as fast as you can, General," answered the high-spirited dame, and with this sarcasm took horse for Edinburgh. Very soon after her departure her apprehensions were realized; the Palace of Linlithgow caught fire and was burned to the ground. The ruins alone remain to show its former splendor.

The situation of Linlithgow Palace is eminently beautiful. It stands on a promontory of some elevation, which advances almost into the midst of the lake. The form is that of a square court, composed of buildings of four stories high, with towers at the angles. The fronts within the square, and the windows, are highly ornamented, and the size of the rooms, as well as the width and character of the staircase, are upon a magnificent scale. One banquet room is 94 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 33 feet high, with a gallery for music. The king's wardrobe, or dressing-room, looking to the west, projects over the walls so as to have a delicious prospect on three sides, and is one of the most enviable boudoirs we have ever seen.

There were two main entrances to Linlithgow Palace. That from the south ascends rather steeply from the town, and pa.s.ses through a striking Gothic archway, flanked by two round towers. The portal has been richly adorned by sculpture, in which can be traced the arms of Scotland with the collars of the Thistle, the Garter, and Saint Michael. This was the work of James V., and is of a most beautiful character.

The other entrance is from the eastward. The gateway is at some height from the foundation of the wall, and there are opposite to it the remains of a perron, or ramp of mason work, which those who desired to enter must have ascended by steps. A drawbridge, which could be raised at pleasure, united, when it was lowered, the ramp with the threshold of the gateway, and when raised left a gap between them, which answered the purpose of a moat. On the inside of the eastern gateway is a figure, much mutilated, said to have been that of Pope Julius II., the same Pontiff who sent to James IV. the beautiful sword which makes part of the Regalia.

"To what base offices we may return!" In the course of the last war, those beautiful remains, so full of ancient remembrances, very narrowly escaped being defaced and dishonored, by an attempt to convert them into barracks for French prisoners of war. The late President Blair, as zealous a patriot as he was an excellent lawyer, had the merit of averting this insult upon one of the most striking objects of antiquity which Scotland yet affords. I am happy to add that of late years the Court of Exchequer have, in this and similar cases, shown much zeal to preserve our national antiquities, and stop the dilapidations which were fast consuming them.

In coming to Linlithgow by the Edinburgh road, the first view of the town, with its beautiful steeple, surmounted with a royal crown, and the ruinous towers of the Palace arising out of a canopy of trees, forms a most impressive object.

STIRLING [Footnote: From "English Note-Books." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co.

Copyright, 1870 and 1898.]

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

In the morning we were stirring betimes, and found Stirling to be a pretty large town, of rather ancient aspect, with many gray stone houses, the gables of which are notched on either side, like a flight of stairs. The town stands on the slope of a hill, at the summit of which, crowning a long ascent, up which the paved street reaches all the way to its gate, is Stirling Castle. Of course we went thither, and found free entrance, altho the castle is garrisoned by five or six hundred men, among whom are bare-legged Highlanders (I must say that this costume is very fine and becoming, tho their thighs did look blue and frost-bitten) and also some soldiers of other Scotch regiments, with tartan trousers.

Almost immediately on pa.s.sing the gate, we found an old artillery-man, who undertook to show us round the castle. Only a small portion of it seems to be of great antiquity. The princ.i.p.al edifice within the castle wall is a palace, that was either built or renewed by James VI.; and it is ornamented with strange old statues, one of which is his own.

The old Scottish Parliament House is also here. The most ancient part of the castle is the tower, where one of the Earls of Douglas was stabbed by a king, and afterward thrown out of the window. In reading this story, one imagines a lofty turret, and the dead man tumbling headlong from a great height; but, in reality, the window is not more than fifteen or twenty feet from the garden into which he fell. This part of the castle was burned last autumn; but is now under repair, and the wall of the tower is still stanch and strong. We went up into the chamber where the murder took place, and looked through the historic window.

Then we mounted the castle wall, where it broods over a precipice of many hundred feet perpendicular, looking down upon a level plain below, and forth upon a landscape, every foot of which is richly studded with historic events. There is a small peep-hole in the wall, which Queen Mary is said to have been in the habit of looking through. It is a most splendid view; in the distance, the blue Highlands, with a variety of mountain outlines that I could have studied unweariably; and in another direction, beginning almost at the foot of the Castle Hill, were the Links of Forth, where, over a plain of miles in extent the river meandered, and circled about, and returned upon itself again and again and again, as if knotted into a silver chain, which it was difficult to imagine to be all one stream. The history of Scotland might be read from this castle wall, as on a book of mighty page; for here, within the compa.s.s of a few miles, we see the field where Wallace won the battle of Stirling, and likewise the battle-field of Bannockburn, and that of Falkirk, and Sheriffmuir, and I know not how many besides.

Around the Castle Hill there is a walk, with seats for old and infirm persons, at points sheltered from the wind. We followed it downward, and I think we pa.s.sed over the site where the games used to be held, and where, this morning, some of the soldiers of the garrison were going through their exercises. I ought to have mentioned, that, pa.s.sing through the inner gateway of the castle, we saw the round tower, and glanced into the dungeon, where the Roderic Dhu of Scott's poem was left to die. It is one of the two round towers, between which the portcullis rose and fell.

ABBOTSFORD [Footnote: From "Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets."]

BY WILLIAM HOWITT

Abbotsford, after twenty years' interval, and having then been seen under the doubly exaggerated influence of youth and the recent influence of Scott's poetry, in some degree disappointed me. I had imagined the house itself larger, its towers more lofty, its whole exterior more imposing. The plantations are a good deal grown, and almost bury the house from the distant view, but they still preserve all their formality of outline, as seen from the Galashiels road. Every field has a thick, black belt of fir-trees, which run about, forming on the long hillside the most fantastic figures. The house is, however, a very interesting house. At first, you come to the front next to the road, which you do by a steep descent down the plantation. You are struck, having a great castle in your imagination, with the smallness of the place. It is neither large nor lofty. Your ideal Gothic castle shrinks into a miniature. The house is quite hidden till you are at it, and then you find yourself at a small, castellated gateway, with its crosses cut into the stone pillars on each side, and the little window over it, as for the warden to look out at you.

Then comes the view of this side of the house with its portico, its bay windows with painted gla.s.s, its tall, battlemented gables, and turrets with their lantern terminations; the armorial escutcheon over the door, and the corbels, and then another escutcheon aloft on the wall of stars and crescents. All these have a good effect; and not less so the light screen of freestone finely worked and carved with its elliptic arches and iron lattice-work, through which the garden is seen with its espalier trees, high brick walls, and greenhouse, with a doorway at the end leading into a second garden of the same sort. The house has a dark look, being built of the native whinstone, or grau-wacke, as the Germans call it, relieved by the quoins and projections of the windows and turrets in freestone. All look cla.s.sic, and not too large for the poet and antiquarian builder. The dog Maida lies in stone on the right hand of the door in the court, with the well known inscription. The house can neither be said to be Gothic nor castellated. It is a combination of the poet's, drawn from many sources, but all united by good taste, and forming an unique style, more approaching the Elizabethan than any other.

Round the court, of which the open-work screen just mentioned is the farther boundary, runs a covered walk, that is, along the two sides not occupied by the house and the screen; and in the wall beneath the arcade thus formed, are numerous niches, containing a medley of old figures brought from various places. There are Indian G.o.ds, old figures out of churches, and heads of Roman emperors. In the corner of the court, on the opposite side of the portico to the dog Maida, is a fountain, with some similar relics reared on the stonework around it.

The other front gives you a much greater idea of the size. It has a more continuous range of facade. Here, at one end, is Scott's square tower, ascended by outside steps, and a round or octagon tower at the other; you can not tell, certainly, which shape it is, as it is covered with ivy. On this the flagstaff stands. At the end next to the square tower, i. e., at the right-hand end as you face it, you pa.s.s into the outer court, which allows you to go around the end of the house from one front to the other, by the old gateway, which once belonged to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. Along the whole of this front runs a gallery, in which the piper used to stalk to and fro while they were at dinner. This man still comes about the place, tho he has been long discharged. He is a great vagabond.

Such is the exterior of Abbotsford. The interior is far more interesting. The porch, copied from that of the old palace of Linlithgow, is finely groined, and there are stags' horns nailed up in it. When the door opens, you find yourself in the entrance-hall, which is, in fact, a complete museum of antiquities and other matters. It is, as described in Lockhart's Life of Scott, wainscoted with old wainscot from the kirk of Dumfermline, and the pulpit of John Knox is cut in two, and placed as chiffoniers between the windows. The whole walls are covered with suits of armor and arms, horns of moose deer, the head of a musk bull, etc. At your left hand, and close to the door, are two cuira.s.ses, some standards, eagles, etc., collected at Waterloo.

At the opposite end of the room are two full suits of armor, one Italian, and one English of the time of Henry V., the latter holding in its hands a stupendous two-handed sword, I suppose six feet long, and said to have been found on Bosworth field. Opposite to the door is the fireplace of freestone, imitated from an arch in the cloister at Melrose, with a peculiarly graceful spandrel. In it stands the iron grate of Archbishop Sharpe, who was murdered by the Covenanters; and before it stands a most ma.s.sive Roman camp-kettle. On the roof, at the center of the pointed arches, runs a row of escutcheons of Scott's family, two or three at one end being empty, the poet not being able to trace the maternal lineage so high as the paternal. These were painted accordingly in clouds, with the motto, "Night veils the deep." Around the door at one end are emblazoned the shields of his most intimate friends, as Erskine, Moritt, Rose, etc., and all around the cornice ran the emblazoned shields of the old chieftains of the border....

Then there is the library, a n.o.ble room, with a fine cedar ceiling, with beautiful compartments, and most lovely carved pendants, where you see bunches of grapes, human figures, leaves, etc. It is copied from Rosslyn or Melrose. There are three busts in this room; the first, one of Sir Walter, by Chantrey; one of Wordsworth; and in the great bay window, on a table, a cast of that of Shakespeare, from Stratford. There is a full-length painting of the poet's son, the present Sir Walter, in his hussar uniform, with, his horse. The work-table in the s.p.a.ce of the bay window, and the fine carved ceiling in this part of the room, as well as the bra.s.s hanging lamp brought from Hereulaneum, are particularly worthy of notice. There is a pair of most splendidly carved box-wood chairs, brought from Italy, and once belonging to some cardinal. The other chairs are of ebony, presented by George IV. There is a tall silver urn, standing on a prophyry table, filled with bones from the Piraeus, and inscribed as the gift of Lord Byron. The books in this room, many of which are secured from hurt by wire-work doors are said to amount to twenty thousand. Many, of course, are very valuable, having been collected with great care by Scott, for the purpose of enabling him to write his different works....

The armory is a most remarkable room; it is the collection of the author of Waverly; and to enumerate all the articles which are here a.s.sembled, would require a volume. Take a few particulars. The old wooden lock of the Tolbooth of Selkirk; Queen Mary's offering-box, a small iron ark or coffer, with a circular lid, found in Holyrood-house. Then Hofer's rifle--a short, stout gun, given him by Sir Humphry Davy, or rather by Hofer's widow to Sir Humphry for Sir Walter. The housekeeper said, that Sir Humphry had done some service for the widow of Hofer, and in her grat.i.tude she offered him this precious relic, which he accepted for Sir Walter, and delighted the poor woman with the certainty that it would be preserved to posterity in such a place as Abbotsford. There is an old white hat, worn by the burgesses of Stowe when installed. Rob Roy's purse and his gun; a very long one, with the initials R. M. C., Robert Macgregor Campbell, around the touch-hole. A rich sword in a silver sheath, presented to Sir Walter by the people of Edinburgh, for the pains he took when George IV. was there....