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ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 LANDSCAPE, 
 HISTORICAL, AND ANTIQUARIAN, 
 
 THE POETICAL WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 CHARLES TILT, FLEET STREET; 
 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, STRAND; J. CUMMING, DUBLIN; JOHN MENZIES, 
 
 EDINBURGH ; T. WARDLE PHILADELPHIA ; RITTNER 
 
 AND GOUPIL, PARIS ; ASHER, BERLIN. 
 
 S3 
 
 1 
 

 
 'RINTED BY MANNING AND SMITHSON, 
 12, IVY USE. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In completion of the design originally contemplated, the 
 following series of illustrations to the Poetical Works of 
 Sir Walter Scott have been produced. It has been deemed 
 advisable to depart in a slight degree from the plan pursued 
 in the illustration of the Novels. In the present series 
 have been introduced a few plates intended to convey 
 some idea of the armour, furniture, and embellishments 
 of the olden time ; — and the attempt has been received 
 with favour ; indeed, such a result might have been fairly 
 anticipated, now that so much attention is deservedly 
 bestowed on the manners, customs, and edifices of our 
 forefathers; and it would be doing injustice to a rising 
 and meritorious artist, Mr. Nixon, not to acknowledge 
 that he has displayed great taste and judgment in the 
 execution of this portion of the Work. 
 
 The editor has again, as on a former occasion, to return 
 the thanks of the proprietors to James Skene, Esq., for 
 the liberal manner in which he placed his numerous and 
 valuable sketches at their disposal ; and it is matter of 
 regret, that the necessarily limited number of illustrations 
 
 a2 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 requisite for this series, as compared with the Prose Works, 
 has not enabled them to avail themselves more extensively 
 of his valuable assistance. 
 
 The editor would have preferred not alluding to the 
 conduct of Mr. Turner in the progress of this Work ; but 
 it seems to him, that it would be unjust, both to the 
 publisher as well as to himself, not to lay the following 
 statement before the reader. — When the work was first 
 projected, Mr. Turner was applied to for the aid of his 
 distinguished talents; the application was refused, partly 
 on the plea, that he must make all the drawings (which 
 was objected to by the proprietors), and partly because 
 he was making the designs for Mr. Cadell's edition of 
 the Poetical Works. Upon this, it was determined to 
 copy on a smaller scale two or three of the plates that 
 were appropriate, which Mr. Turner had made for the 
 Provincial Antiquities of Scotland; which had been pur- 
 chased by Mr. Tilt; — and Mr. Turner, as well as Sir 
 Walter Scott, who were partners in that work, received 
 their proportion of this sale. This intention was com- 
 municated to Mr. Turner; the source from whence these 
 subjects were derived was mentioned upon the plate; and 
 when the first engraving was completed, in order to prevent 
 Mr. Turner's reputation suffering any injury, the present 
 writer called upon that gentleman, requesting his remarks, 
 and proposed to pay him for his trouble in making them ; 
 after a few minutes' consideration this was declined. 
 
 Having thus acted with all possible courtesy to Mr. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Turner, and with that consideration so justly due to his emi- 
 nent talents, the plates were published. The steps taken by 
 Mr. Turner on that occasion, are well known: of the pro- 
 priety and delicacy of them, although the editor entertains 
 a strong opinion, he declines adding any expression of it ; 
 and concludes by stating that the plates in question, with 
 one exception, were engraved by an artist whose masterly 
 execution of Mr. Turner's designs, in unquestionably the 
 finest work amongst the number that have appeared from 
 him, is the best test of the proprietors' wish to do him 
 justice. 
 
 The Descriptions which accompany the Plates, have 
 been in many cases taken from the work already alluded 
 to, which was edited by Sir Walter Scott. For the admi- 
 rable descriptions of Lord Marmion's Armour, James V., 
 Ancient Furniture, Tomb of Rokeby, Ellen and Fitzjames, 
 and De Argentine, the editor is indebted to Mr. Moule, 
 whose readiness to oblige, is only equalled by his great 
 knowledge of the subject he has illustrated. 
 
 JOHN MARTIN. 
 
 London, May, 1834. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAINTER. 
 
 Hall, at Abbotsford . . . D. Roberts 
 
 'Thrieve Castle G. Cattermole 
 
 Blackhouse Tower . . . C. R. Stanley 
 
 Grey Mare's Tail . . . . J. S. Cotman 
 
 " Hexelcleugh T. Creswick 
 
 Rhymer's Tower . . . . S. Austin . 
 
 Duchess of Monmouth . . Sir G. Kneller 
 
 Branksome Tower .... Copley Fielding . 
 
 ■ Hall, at Branksome . . . J. H. Nixon . , 
 
 Melrose . G. Barret . . . 
 
 •Margaret ........ A. E. Chalon, R.A. 
 
 /Roslin ........ J. M.W.Turner, R.A 
 
 -Whitby P. Dewint . . . 
 
 Crichtoun Castle .... J. M.W.Turner, R.A. 
 
 Linlithgow A. W. Callcott, J1.A. 
 
 Lord Marmion's Armour. . J. H. Nixon . . 
 
 Braid Hills A. W. Callcott, R.A. 
 
 'Tantallon J. M.W.Turner,R.A. 
 
 The Lady Clare . .... T. Phillips, R.A. . 
 
 v Benvenue G. F. Robson . . 
 
 VOL. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i. 
 
 2 
 
 ii. 
 
 142 
 
 iii. 
 
 3 
 
 iv. 
 
 98 
 
 iv. 
 
 117 
 
 v. 
 
 139 
 
 vi. 
 
 46- 
 
 vi. 
 
 49 
 
 vi. 
 
 51 
 
 vi. 
 
 73 
 
 vi. 
 
 89 
 
 vi. 
 
 207 
 
 vii. 
 
 93 
 
 vii. 
 
 197 
 
 vii. 
 
 202 
 
 vii. 
 
 236 
 
 vii. 
 
 239 
 
 vii. 
 
 261 
 
 vii. 
 
 309 
 
 viii. 
 
 39 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAINTERS. VOL. PAGE 
 
 Ellen Douglas and Fitzjames . J. H. Nixon . . viii. 54 
 
 Brig of Bracklinn J. Bentley . . . viii. 82 
 
 Dumfermline G. Cattermole . . viii. 183 
 
 The Knight of Snowdoun . . . S. A. Hart . . . viii. 295 - 
 
 Eggliston H. Gastineau . . ix. 81 
 
 ^ Glen of the Greta . ■ . . . G. Balmer ... ix. 85 
 
 " Matilda Mrs. Carpenter . ix. 170 
 
 Barnard Castle ....... Copley Fielding . ix. 207 
 
 ' Hall, Rokeby Castle S. A. Hart ... ix. 211 
 
 Tomb of Rokeby J. H. Nixon . . ix. 290 
 
 Alhambra , W. S. Wilkinson . ix. 398 
 
 Iona G. Cattermole . . x. 21 
 
 Edith W. Mulready, R.A. x. 25 
 
 "Glencoe J. S. Cotman . . x. 136 
 
 Goatfells of Arran W. Evans ... x. 182 
 
 .Cumray J. D. Harding . . x. 190 
 
 v Death-Bier of De Argentine . . J. H. Nixon . . x. 265 
 
 s Metelill W. Boxall ... xi. 169 
 
 v Ancient Furniture A. Pugin ... xi. 238 
 
 Waterloo A. Cooper, R.A. . xi. 274 
 
HALL AT ABBOTSFORD. 
 
 Vol. i. p. 2. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, in the decorations and the pleasure he 
 derived from his house at Abbotsford, seems, in a consi- 
 derable degree, to have resembled the accomplished owner 
 of Strawberry Hill. Like the residence of that fascinating 
 writer, originally the humble abode of the retired vender 
 of toys, which became eventually the interesting memorial 
 of its owner's taste; so Abbotsford arose, in a similar 
 mode : and the humble residence which was on the estate 
 when it first came into the possession of its highly gifted 
 owner, was converted into the remarkable monument it 
 now remains of his genius and taste. 
 
 The plan of the house was arranged by Mr. Atkinson, 
 to which the exterior design was adapted by Mr. Blore, 
 modified in some of its details by the insertion of fragments 
 of sculpture, and remains of ancient architecture, collected 
 by the owner from buildings of interest demolished during 
 the creation of his own residence ; of these, were portions 
 of the Heart of Mid Lothian, which form an interesting 
 though small feature of the house. 
 
 The exterior decorations were taken principally from 
 Melrose, Roslyn, and Dryburgh; for which purpose an 
 ingenious plasterer was constantly kept employed forming 
 
HALL AT ABBOTSFORD. 
 
 models from the ornaments of these buildings, and ap- 
 plying them to the ceilings, cornices, and other parts, 
 where enrichment was required, with a degree of fancy 
 and feeling highly illustrative of the mind of the owner 
 of this extraordinary place. 
 
 The view here given, however, is that of the Hall only. 
 From an account given by a visitor some few years ago, we 
 have borrowed a few particulars of this part of the building. 
 From the porchway, which is spacious and airy, open to 
 the elements in front, and adorned with some enormous 
 petrified stag horns, you enter by folding doors into the 
 Hall. It is about forty feet long, by twenty in heighth and 
 breadth: the walls are painted to resemble oak, admirably 
 executed by Mr. Hay, of Edinburgh, who was much and 
 deservedly employed by Sir Walter Scott, in the decora- 
 tions of Abbotsford: some panelling from Dumfermline 
 and other ancient Scottish buildings have been introduced 
 in the walls. The roof is of the same material, and painted 
 in a similar manner, and consists of a series of groined 
 arches intersecting each other : in the centre is a series of 
 shields richly blazoned, representing the pedigree of the 
 poet. Amongst these armorial bearings are distinguished 
 those of Ainslie, Kerr, Shaw, Swinton, Rutherford, Scott, 
 Haliburton,* and others. Round the door- way at the 
 eastern end, which is seen in the present view, are the 
 armorial bearings also of several of the friends and com- 
 
 * In 1830, Sir Walter Scott printed thirty copies of Memorials of this 
 Family, for private distribution. 
 
HALL AT ABBOTSFORD. 
 
 panions of this eminent man. The hall leads to the study, 
 as seen in the present view ; and this study is connected with 
 the library, rich in that class of books in which Sir Walter 
 Scott took so much delight. At the intersections of each 
 of the arches of the roof, are emblazoned the armorial 
 bearings of the most renowned of the Border chieftains, 
 many of whom have been celebrated in the works of Sir 
 Walter Scott — Grahame, Kerrs of Cessford and Ferni- 
 herst, Home, Turnbull, Rutherford, Armstrong, Bell, 
 Irving, Johnston, Jardine, Halliday, and others : between 
 the ribs is painted the following inscription: — 
 
 Zfyessz be tf>e Coat 8rmoujce0 of it Qimniis ana plen of name 
 qu£a feeep it tf?e &cotti0i> $Baitt)Z8 in pe tiags of attin 
 
 ^Dfjep toere ioortlne in ti?air tgme anti in ty&ii tiefens 
 <&tin ti)aim UefenHgt 
 
 The floor of the hall is black and white marble from the 
 Hebrides, wrought lozenge-wise. The walls are hung 
 with arms and armour: two full suits of splendid steel 
 occupy niches at the eastern end, as seen in the view; the 
 one an English suit of the time of Henry V., and the 
 other an Italian suit of later date. The massive keys of 
 the Tolbooth; the gun and spleuchan, or purse of the 
 renowned Rob Roy ; the thummerkins, instruments of 
 torture in use during the time of the Covenanters, form 
 some of the curious reliques which are here arranged. The 
 variety of cuirasses, black and white, plain and sculptured, 
 
HALL AT ABBOTSFORD. 
 
 is very great; helmets, stirrups, and spurs, are in great 
 profusion : there are swords of every order — from the enor- 
 mous two-handed weapon, with which the Swiss peasants 
 dared to withstand the Austrian chivalry, to the claymore 
 of the rebellion of 1745, and the rapier of Dettingen. 
 Among other trophies, are some Polish lances gathered on 
 the field of Waterloo, and a complete suit of chain-mail 
 from one of Tippoo's body guard of Seringapatam. A 
 series of German executioners' swords, on the blades of 
 which were the arms of Augsburg, and a legend which 
 may be thus rendered: — 
 
 " But when I strike to dust, from sleepless grave 
 Sweet Jesu stoop, a sin stained soul to save.'' 
 
 From the centre is suspended a chandelier of modern 
 construction, but arranged to harmonize with the rest of 
 the ornaments of the hall. Antique chairs and tables are 
 dispersed about the room; and amongst other curiosities 
 is an ancient Roman camp-kettle, purchased by Sir Walter 
 at a sale, at a price which appeared very extravagant to an 
 old woman who happened to be present, " What wull the 
 Shirra gie next, if he gie sa muckle for an auld kail pat ?" 
 
 It may not be irrelevant to mention, that the design for 
 the monument to be erected in Edinburgh, to the memory 
 of their highly-gifted countryman, has been entrusted to 
 Mr. Roberts, the painter of the picture from which our 
 subject has been engraved : we do not doubt that it will be 
 worthy his acknowledged taste in this department. 
 
THRIEVE CASTLE. 
 
 " Adieu! my Castle of the Thrieve." 
 
 I, vol. ii.'p. 142. 
 
 This fortress is situated in the Stewartry of Kirkcud- 
 bright, upon an island several acres in extent, formed by the 
 river Dee. The walls are very thick and strong, and bear 
 the marks of great antiquity. It was a royal castle ; but 
 the keeping of it, agreeable to the feudal practice, was 
 granted by charter, or sometimes by a more temporary and 
 precarious right, to different powerful families, together 
 with lands for their good service in maintaining and defend- 
 ing the place. This office of heritable keeper remained 
 with the Nithesdale family, chief of the Maxwells, till their 
 forfeiture in 1715. The garrison seems to have been vic- 
 tualled upon feudal principles; for each parish in the 
 Stewartry was burthened with the yearly payment of a 
 larder mart cow, i. e. a cow fit for being killed and salted at 
 Martinmas, for winter provisions. The right of levying 
 these cattle was retained by the Nithesdale family, when 
 they sold the estate in 1704, and they did not cease to 
 exercise it till their attainder. 
 
 This castle consists of a large square tower, built with a 
 small slate-like stone, surrounded at a small distance by 
 an envelope, with four round towers; it had also a strong 
 gate ; the curtains of the envelope were primed with guns. 
 
THRIEVE CASTLE. 
 
 There was, it is said, a more ancient fortress, belonging to 
 the old lords or petty kings of Galloway. Tradition says 
 it obtained the appellation of Thrieve's Castle, that is, 
 the castle of the Rive, from one of the lords of Galloway 
 of that family, who resided here ; and from his depredations 
 and extortions was called the Rive ; others derive it from 
 the word Reeve, as being a contraction of the Reeve's 
 Castle. 
 
 Upon the ruin of the house of Douglas, and the annex- 
 ation of the lordship of Galloway to the crown of Scotland 
 in 1455, this castle remained in the king's hands, who 
 appointed captains for the keeping thereof, as occasion 
 required. Among other persons who held the office of 
 keeper, was Patrick, Earl of Bothwell, one of the chief 
 insurgents who deprived James III. of his life and crown. 
 
 During the troubles under Charles I. it was held for 
 the king by the Earl of Nithesdale, who garrisoned and 
 victualled it at his own expense. Thrieve was the last 
 of the fortresses which held out for the house of Douglas, 
 after their grand rebellion in 1553. In this castle William, 
 Earl of Douglas, in the middle of the fifteenth century, 
 hung the sheriff of Galloway. 
 
BLACKHOUSE TOWER. 
 
 Scene of the Douglas Tragedy." 
 
 Minstrelsy, vol. iii. p. 3, 
 
 The farm of Blackhouse, in Selkirkshire, is said to have 
 been the scene of this melancholy event. There are the 
 remains of a very ancient tower, adjacent to the farm- 
 house, in a wild and solitary glen, upon a torrent named 
 Douglas-burn, which joins the Yarrow, after passing a 
 craggy rock called the Douglas-craig. This wild scene, 
 now a part of the Traquair estate, formed one of the most 
 ancient possessions of the renowned family of Douglas; for 
 Sir John Douglas, eldest son of William, the first Lord 
 Douglas, is said to have sat, as baronial Lord of Douglas- 
 burn, during his father's life-time, in a parliament of 
 Malcolm Canmore, held at Forfar. 
 
 The tower appears to have been square, with a circular 
 turret at one angle, for carrying up the staircase, and for 
 flanking the entrance. It is said to have derived its name 
 of Blackhouse from the complexion of the Lords of Douglas, 
 whose swarthy hue was a family attribute. But when the 
 high mountains, by which it is enclosed, were covered with 
 heather, which was the case till of late years, Blackhouse 
 must also have merited its appellation from the appearance 
 of the scenery. 
 
 Hume, of Godscroft, the historian of the house of 
 Douglas, says, " The Lord of Liddesdale being at his 
 pastime, hunting in Attrick Forrest, is beset by William 
 Earle of Douglas, and such as hee had ordained for that 
 purpose, and there assailed, wounded, and slain, beside 
 Galsewood, in the year 1353; upon a jealousie that the 
 
BLACKHOUSE TOWER. 
 
 earle had conceived of him with his lady, as the report 
 goeth, for so sayes the old song: 
 
 " The Countesse of Douglas, out of her Boure she came, 
 And loudly there that she did call ; 
 It is for the Lord of Liddesdale, 
 That I let these teares downe fall." 
 
 This Lord Douglas is styled by the historian, " the 
 flowre of ehivalrie," who deeply regrets that he had not 
 been free from so foul a blot. Chalmers,* however, attri- 
 butes the murder of the knight of Liddesdale to a different 
 motive than jealousy; he says, " The chief of the Doug- 
 lasses ordered William, the knight of Liddesdale, to be 
 slain in 1353, as he was enjoying the sports of the chase in 
 Galswood. William's Cross marks the spot where feudal 
 policy perpetrated his odious purpose. The body of the 
 knight, who had been often overpowered, but never con- 
 quered, was carried to Linden Kirk for a night, and thence 
 was conveyed to Melros Abbey, for his lasting repOse. 
 That one Douglas should slay another Douglas, is such an 
 act, that Godscroft, the apologist for all the deeds of all the 
 Douglasses, knows not how to extenuate, or explain, with- 
 out the aid of amatory fiction; while the odious passions of 
 envy, interest, and ambition, were the true motives in the 
 flinty heart of the principal assassin, who was too powerful 
 for punishment at such a moment, when England desired 
 tranquillity, and Scotland was ruled by a regency. No 
 Countess of Douglas then existed." 
 
 * Caledonia, vol. ii. 
 
GREY MARE'S TAIL. 
 
 four hundred yards. There is a small island in it, where 
 the eagles rear their young in great security. 
 
 " There eagles scream from shore to shore ; 
 Down all the rocks the torrents roar ; 
 O'er the black waves incessant driven, 
 Dark mists infest the summer heaven ; 
 Through the rude barriers of the lake, 
 Away its hurrying waters break, 
 Faster and whiter, dash and curl, 
 Till down yon dark abyss they hurl. 
 Rises the fog-smoke white as snow, 
 Thunders the viewless stream below." 
 
 The Grey Mare's Tail begins to grow, is a phrase applied 
 pretty generally, by the inhabitants of the north, to the 
 appearance of the waters on the heights after a heavy rain. 
 
^v 
 
 ^ 
 
 K 
 
HEXELCLEUGH. 
 
 True Thomas lay in Huntlie bank ; 
 A ferlie he spied wi' his ee, 
 And there he saw a ladye bright, 
 Come riding down by the Eildon tree." 
 
 Minstrelsy, vol. iv. p. 117. 
 
 Huntly Bank, and the adjacent scenery, form now a 
 portion of the domain of Abbotsford. The interesting 
 portrait of Sir Walter Scott, painted by Edwin Landseer, 
 R.A., in 1833, will be fresh in the memory of our readers. 
 The scenery, which the artist has there introduced, is taken 
 from this spot. 
 
 Earlstoun, the present name of the parish in which the 
 Rhymer resided, is plainly a modern corruption of the 
 celebrated appellation of Ersildoun, most probably derived 
 from the Cambro British Arcwl-dun, signifying the Prospect 
 Hill. Its corrupted name of Earlstoun is attributed, by 
 popular tradition, to the supposition that the Earls of 
 March had of old resided here. But though these earls do 
 not seem ever to have had a residence at this place, they 
 were undoubtedly the principal proprietors of Ersildoun. 
 These opulent barons appear to have granted various por- 
 tions of their domain of Ersildoun to several tenants in fee. 
 The most remarkable of all those tenants was Thomas the 
 
 
HEXELCLEUGH. 
 
 Rhymer, the earliest poet of Scotland, who flourished here 
 during the latter half of the thirteenth century. Popular 
 tradition states that he lived in a tower at the west end of 
 the village, the ruins of which may be still seen by willing 
 eyes. A stone, which is built into the front wall of the 
 church, bears this inscription : — 
 
 " Auld Rhymer's race 
 Lies in this place," 
 
 

RHYMER'S TOWER. 
 
 " I was at Erceldoune, 
 With Tomas spak Y there ; 
 Ther herd Y rede in roune, 
 Who Tristrem gat and bare." 
 
 Sir Tristrem, Fytte i, vol. v. p. 139. 
 
 Erceldoune, as before mentioned, is a village in the 
 county of Berwick, situated upon the river Leader, about 
 two miles above its junction with the Tweed. It appears 
 that this small village was once a place of some importance, 
 and at least occasionally honoured with the royal residence. 
 In a tower at the western extremity of this village, the 
 ruins of which are still shewn,- after the lapse of seven 
 centuries, dwelt Thomas of Erceldoune, the earliest Scot- 
 tish poet, whose real name is supposed to have been 
 Thomas Learmonth: he flourished in the reign of Alex- 
 ander III. According to popular tradition, Thomas the 
 Rhymer derived his prophetical powers from his intercourse 
 with the Queen of Fairy. 
 
 " The fairy ring-dance now round Eildon-tree 
 Moves to wild strains of elfin minstrelsy : 
 On glancing step appears the fairy queen ; 
 The printed grass beneath, springs soft and green ; 
 While hand in hand she leads the frolic round, 
 The dinning tabor shakes the charmed ground ; 
 
RHYMER'S TOWER; 
 
 Or graceful mounted on her palfrey gray, 
 
 In robes that glisten like the sun in May ; 
 
 With hawk and hound she leads the moonlight ranks 
 
 Of knights and dames to Huntley's ferny banks, 
 
 Where Rymour, long of yore, the nymph embraced, — 
 
 The first of men unearthly lips to taste." 
 
 By this rash proceeding, however, he consigned himself 
 entirely to her power, and was conducted by a very 
 perilous route to Fairy-land, where she instructed him in 
 all the mysteries of learning, past, present, and to come; 
 fraught with which, at the end of seven years, he returned 
 to Erceldoune, and astonished everybody with his saga- 
 city. At the end of seven years he again disappeared, and 
 is supposed to have returned to Fairy-land. Tradition 
 further relates, that a shepherd was once conducted into 
 the interior recesses of Eildon-hill, by a venerable per- 
 sonage, whom he discovered to be the famous Rhymer, 
 and who shewed him an immense number of steeds in their 
 caparisons, and at the bridle of each a knight sleeping, in 
 sable armour, with a sword and bugle-horn at his side. 
 These, he was told, were the host of King Arthur, waiting 
 till the appointed return of that monarch from Fairy-land. 
 
 The death of Alexander the Third, King of Scotland, 
 is said to have been foretold by Thomas the Rhymer. The 
 monarch being delayed in crossing the Forth at Queen's 
 Ferry until day-light was gone, and the night being dark, 
 was advised by his attendants to spend it at Inverkei thing; 
 but, rejecting their counsel, he pushed on with all the 
 
RHYMER'S TOWER. 
 
 speed he could, to Kinghorn; when he was near the west 
 end of that town, his horse tumbling in the sand, he fell, 
 and his neck being dislocated by the fall, he expired. The 
 Rhymer was then residing at the Castle of Dunbar, with 
 the Earl of March.* 
 
 On the day of Alexander's death, the Earl of March 
 asked whether any extraordinary event would happen next 
 day? "To-morrow," answered Thomas, "will be heard 
 the most vehement wind that ever was known in Scotland." 
 .When the news of the king's death arrived; " That," said 
 Thomas, " was the wind of which I spake." f 
 
 * Ford. Scot. Chron. lib. 10. c. 43. f Haile's Annals. 
 
DUCHESS OF MONMOUTH. 
 
 " For she had known adversity, 
 Though born in such a high degree ; 
 In pride of power, in beauty's bloom, 
 Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb." 
 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto i. vol. vi. p. 46. 
 
 Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, was the 
 widow of the unfortunate James, Duke of Monmouth, who 
 was ^beheaded in 1685; she was the second daughter of 
 Walter, first Earl of Buccleuch, so created in 1619, and 
 afterwards extended, by a subsequent patent, to heirs 
 female: his son, the second earl, died in 1651; and his 
 sister Mary, who was married at the early age of eleven, to 
 Walter Scott, son of Sir Gideon Scott, of Harden, died 
 in two years afterwards; Anne, her sister, was married to 
 the Duke of Monmouth* on the 20th of April, 1663. The 
 duchess was a distinguished protectress of poetical merit, 
 and evinced her, discriminating taste by early selecting 
 Dry den as the object of her patronage: she is alluded to by 
 this eminent poet in his poem of Absalom and Achitophel, 
 
 * In allusion to this marriage perhaps, the motto of this eminent 
 family is Amo; the war cry of the Scotts, however, is Alemoor, the usual 
 place of rendezvous of the whole clan. 
 
"A////r ^J".e///:t. 
 
 id // 
 
 f 
 
 - :" ] 
 
DUCHESS OF MONMOUTH, 
 where, in allusion to the Duke of Monmouth's career, he 
 
 " He made the charming Annabel his bride." 
 
 She cultivated the friendship of the Duke of York, and 
 established an intimacy between him and her husband. Sir 
 Walter Scott, in a note on this poem in his edition of 
 Dryden's Works, says, " Her turn of mind and her aversion 
 to her husband's political intrigues, lead one to imagine, 
 that Dryden sketched out her character under that of 
 Marmoutiere in the 'Duke of Guise,' whose expostula- 
 tions with her lover apply exactly to the situation of the 
 noble pair." 
 
 " When every hour I see you court the crowd ; 
 When with the shouts of the rebellious rabble, 
 I see you borne on shoulders to cabals ; 
 Where, with the traitorous council of sixteen 
 You sit, and plot the royal Henry's death." 
 
 The avowed infidelity of the duke is said to have been 
 resented by her in an unfeeling manner when he was 
 on the point of paying the penalty of his rebellion. 
 Burnet* says, "that her resentment for his course of life 
 with the Lady Wentworth, wrought so much on her, that 
 she seemed not to have any tenderness left that became her 
 sex and his present circumstances; for though he desired 
 
 * History of his Own Times, vol. iii. p. 50. 
 
 D 
 
DUCHESS OF MONMOUTH. 
 
 to speak privately with her, she would have witnesses to 
 hear all that passed — and they parted very coldly." This 
 statement of the bishop's has been contradicted, from a 
 manuscript in the possession of the noble family of Buc- 
 cleuch; printed in the appendix to Rose's Remarks on 
 Mr. Fox's History. In the interview which took place in 
 the Tower, she is stated to have said, " that if in any thing 
 she had failed of the duty, zeal, and obedience that became 
 her as a wife, she humbly begged the favour to disclaim it, 
 and she would fall down on her knees and beg his pardon 
 for it." To which moving discourse he answered, "That 
 she had always shewn herself a very kind, loving, and 
 dutiful wife toward him, and he had nothing imaginable to 
 charge her with, either against her virtue and duty to him, 
 her steady loyalty and affection to the late king, or kind- 
 ness and affection towards his children." 
 
 She survived the melancholy catastrophe of her husband's 
 death many years ; and built the princely palace of Dalkeith 
 about the commencement of the last century. She had 
 two sons by the Duke of Monmouth ; one of whom carried 
 on the line of Buccleuch, and the other was created Earl 
 of Deloraine. The Duchess remarried, in 1688, Charles, 
 third Baron Cornwallis. She died in 1732, at her house in 
 Pall Mall, and her remains were deposited in the church of 
 Dalkeith. 
 

BRANKSOME TOWER. 
 
 The feast was over in Branksome Tower." 
 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto i. vol. vi. p. 49. 
 
 This ancient seat of the noble family of Buccleuch, is thus 
 described by Sir Walter Scott, in the notes to this poem. 
 
 In the reign of James I., Sir William Scott of Buccleuch, 
 chief of the clan bearing that name, exchanged with Sir 
 Thomas Inglis of Manor, the estate of Murdiestone, in 
 Lancashire, for one half of the Barony of Branksome lying 
 upon the Teviot, about three miles above Hawick. Brank- 
 some Castle continued long to be the principal seat of this 
 noble family. It has since been the residence of the com- 
 missioners, or chamberlains of the family. From the various 
 alterations which the building has undergone, it is not only 
 greatly restricted in its dimensions, but retains little of the 
 castellated form, if we except one square tower of massy 
 thickness, the only part of the original building which now 
 remains. 
 
 The extent of the ancient edifice can still be traced by 
 some vestiges of its foundation, and its strength is obvious 
 from the situation, on a steep bank surrounded by the 
 Teviot, and flanked by a deep ravine, formed by a precipi- 
 tous brook. It was anciently surrounded by wood, as 
 appears from the survey of Roxburghshire. 
 
BRANKSOME TOWER. 
 
 Branksome was also celebrated of yore for the charms of 
 a bonny lass, whose beauty has become proverbial in Scot- 
 land. She dwelt not, however, in the castle of Sir Walter 
 Scott's Witch Lady, but in the alehouse of the adjacent 
 hamlet, which was kept by her mother. A young- officer of 
 some rank, of the name of Maitland, happened to be quar- 
 tered in the vicinity, saw, loved, and married the bonny lass 
 of Branksome. So strange was such an alliance deemed in 
 those days, that the old mother, under whose auspices it 
 was performed (her nick-name was Jean the Ranter) did not 
 escape the imputation of witchcraft. Upon this incident, 
 which happened probably about the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century, was made a ballad, which is still in exist- 
 ence. 
 

 
 
 
THE HALL AT BRANKSOME. 
 
 " Nine-and- twenty knights of fame, 
 Hung their shields in Branksome Hall." 
 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto i. vol. vi. p. 51. 
 
 In the illustration of this subject,— the festive hall of the 
 Lord of Branxholm in Teviotdale as it existed in the 
 middle of the sixteenth century, — the painter has faithfully 
 embodied the very lively colouring and accurate detail ex- 
 hibited in this beautiful poem of Sir Walter Scott, who, 
 " enamoured of the lofty visions of chivalry," possessed all 
 the qualifications essential to his object, and gave the effect 
 of reality to every scene he delineated. His minute descrip- 
 tion of this antique residence of a Border chieftain, is in 
 itself a most perfect picture, and not less exact than his 
 masterly sketch of the customs and manners of the Scottish 
 Borderers in the same poem. 
 
 No manor house in former times was complete without 
 its Hall, for which one general plan was adopted in the in- 
 ternal arrangement; but although corresponding with each 
 other in similarity of design, these rooms varied consider- 
 ably in their minuter parts, as well as in the degree of en- 
 richment bestowed upon their construction. 
 
THE HALL AT BRANKSOME. 
 
 The early style of domestic architecture, embracing so 
 many beautiful forms, is now regarded as a fashionable 
 innovation with reference to the Greek colonnades and por- 
 ticos, which, unsuitable as they were to the English climate, 
 superseded the magnificent and picturesque buildings of our 
 ancestors. This ancient style can now, however, only be 
 adopted on the exterior ; modern ideas of convenience and 
 refinement require an almost total change in the plan and 
 disposition of all the principal rooms. 
 
 The position of the hall, in the baronial mansions of 
 early date, was in the very heart or centre of the building, 
 dividing the lord's apartments from the domestic offices, 
 under the immediate control of the steward, butler, &c; 
 and the high table, as it was usually called, was uniformly 
 placed at the upper end of the hall, on the haut pas, or dais, 
 a part of the floor elevated by three steps at least. This 
 table was always reserved for the lord and his family, with 
 all their visitors of rank. 
 
 Upon the sides of the festive hall were separate tables 
 and benches for the cadets of the family, the household, and 
 dependents, at which 
 
 " Steward and squire, with needful haste, 
 Marshalled the rank of every guest." 
 
 These tables, composed of thick oaken boards laid upon 
 trestles, long continued in use in all the houses upon the 
 Borders, where feudal manners prevailed till the latest 
 period. 
 
THE HALL AT BRANKSOME. 
 
 In the very centre of this room, the largest in the man- 
 sion, was the fire-hearth, placed immediately beneath a 
 louvre, or open turret in the roof, by which the smoke 
 escaped. Around the walls, on every side, were deeply 
 sunk panels of oak, plain and substantial, corresponding 
 with the massive simplicity of a Border residence, and 
 without, as the old writers on these subjects express it, 
 too great curious toor&0 of entail,* anti bmic mouItiitte*f So that 
 it might readily be inferred, from the rudeness of the 
 workmanship, that the carver and joiner employed were 
 one and the same person. 
 
 At the lower end of the dining hall, where the screen to 
 the pantry and cellar doors stood, was also a gallery for the 
 minstrel, a never failing attendant on every festival of the 
 year. 
 
 " There would he sing achievements high, 
 And circumstance of chivalry/' 
 
 The birth-day odes, now abolished, presented the last 
 trace of the actual employment of a pensioned poet; but in 
 former times, when " the minstrel's art was honoured by all 
 that was distinguished in rank or in genius," like the im- 
 provvisatore of modern Italy — 
 
 * This term entail, derived from the Italian intaglio, was much used 
 by our ancient artists for fine and delicate carvings. The artists of those 
 days used to leave that department of their labour to be paid for accord- 
 ing to the time it took in execution, and the degree of delicacy which 
 their employers chose to pay for. 
 
 f Stow's Annals, p. 481. 
 
THE HALL AT BRANKSOME. 
 
 " He poured to lord and lady gay, 
 The unpremeditated lay." 
 
 The coat of arms, and favourite devices of the chieftain, 
 gracefully disposed, and exhibiting the workmanship of a 
 skilful herald, were almost the only ornaments of the hall ; 
 excepting, perhaps, might sometimes be found, 
 
 2Dn t|?e mils olti portraiture 
 
 2Df fjorsemen, ijatofciS, anti f>omtti0* 
 
 Chaucer's Dreme. 
 
 The larger kind of hounds, such as are reposing in the 
 foreground of the picture before us, were called Alaunts;* 
 animals, to which the author of Qbt JHagter of tije ®ame has 
 devoted a whole chapter, in a definition of their character 
 and different kinds. Chaucer, in his " Knight's Tale," 
 describing the great King of Thrace, drew his picture from 
 an old English Baron, and says, 
 
 afcout $t0 c$ar tfjere fcienten tofjite abating, 
 &etttp ana mo, ag grete ag any gtere, 
 'GLo l&untett at tfje leott, or rfje Bete, 
 3na foloiuea %im toitl) mo&tl fast £ fcouna, 
 CoIIareti imtf) gofa, atta terretg ftfea rouna. 
 
 * It has been doubted, by antiquaries of sound judgment, whether the 
 Alaunt was really the mastiff or the greyhound, (gazehound was its 
 ancient name), which was bred originally from the wolf-dog, and was 
 " wild in his aspect, erect in his ears, and shaggy in his coat;" — an old 
 version of Chaucer seems to incline to the latter opinion. 
 
THE HALL AT BRANKSOME. 
 
 As the chase was the honourable occupation of an age in 
 which military prowess was deemed the principal, and 
 indeed only object of gentlemanly emulation, every baronial 
 mansion had its great hall hung round with numerous 
 hunting implements, large brazen hunting horns, and boar 
 spears ; these, together with targets, and the branching 
 antlers of the hart, stag, or buck, formed the appropriate 
 garniture of the walls.* Of the Scott family, in particular, 
 it is said in an old poem, 
 
 " Their crest, supporters, and hunting horn, 
 Show their beginning from hunting came:" 
 
 The existence of clans under separate chiefs, was not one 
 of the least remarkable circumstances in the political con- 
 dition of the Scottish nation, and indicates clearly the origin 
 of many of their peculiar sentiments and customs. The 
 
 " Ten brace and more of greyhounds, snowy fair, 
 And tall as stags, ran loose, and cours'd around his chair, 
 A match for hares in flight, in grappling for the bear ; 
 With golden muzzles all their mouths were bound, j 
 And collars of the same their necks surround." 
 
 * That a buck's head was considered an appropriate ornament to a 
 house, and an acceptable present, appears in the following extract from 
 a letter, printed in " Lodge's Illustrations of History:" In 1594, Roger 
 Manners, writing to the Earl of Shrewsbury, says, " Mr: Bucknall 
 thanketh your lordship for the stagges hedd (which he is contented shal 
 be placed on his hedd, whensoever he doth marry), in the mean tyme 
 he wool place it, not in the stable, but upon the entry of his house, 
 instede of a porter, and so he sayth it shal be a monument." — Vol. iii. 
 p. 69. 
 
THE HALL AT BEANKSOME. 
 
 natural division of this romantic country into straths or 
 narrow secluded valleys, separated from one another by 
 high mountains, and the inhabitants being seldom on good 
 terms with their neighbours, gave rise as a matter of 
 necessity to various communities, amongst which persons 
 of superior property or talent, and successful in combat, 
 naturally became, like the ancient barons of Buccleuch, 
 respective chiefs of a particular clan. 
 
 Every district, as well as Teviot-dale and Ettrick-dale, 
 formerly assumed the appearance of an independent state, 
 and the clans, defended by their native barriers and military 
 disposition, did not always quietly submit to the authority 
 of government, even under their early sovereigns, 
 
 " While Ettrick boasts the line of Scott," 
 
 is a line of the poet marking the insulated state of society 
 which formerly prevailed. At this time, with a very limited 
 admission of strangers in the valleys, intermarriages and 
 consanguinity were the natural cousequences ; most of the 
 members of each clan, being of the same kin, bore the 
 same name with their feudal chief, and to all he stood in 
 the several relations of landlord, leader, and judge. 
 
 The assembled guests at the manor-house in the sixteenth 
 century, when 
 
 " Nine and twenty knights of fame 
 Hung their shields in Branksome Hall," 
 
 were all of one family, descended from younger brothers, or 
 
THE HALL AT BRANKSOME. 
 
 united by distant relationship to Scott of Buccleuch, the 
 lord of Branxholm, chief of the clan bearing the same name, 
 his vassals and kinsmen. 
 
 "The Scotts they rade, the Scotts they ran, 
 Sae starkly and sa steadilie, 
 And aye the ower word o' the thrang, 
 Was ' Rise for Branksome readilie.' " 
 
 In a history of Scottish surnames by William Buchanan of 
 Auchmar, is mentioned a striking instance of this family 
 assemblage. The author relates, that the Buchanans, 
 stewards of the ancient Earls of Lennox, had a considerable 
 estate in the district situated on the banks of Loch Lomond. 
 The family became so numerous in its cadets, and the 
 chief's seat was at the same time so centrically placed with 
 regard to the respective residences of the various branches 
 of it, that the Laird of Buchanan could, upon any summer's 
 day, summon no less than fifty of his own name to his 
 house, all of whom might conveniently return to their 
 homes the same night ; the most distant seat of any of the 
 clan not being above ten miles from Buchanan-Place in 
 Stirlingshire, a mansion which has been considerably en- 
 larged, and is now the principal residence of his Grace the 
 Duke of Montrose, K.Gf. 
 
 The paternal coat of arms of the family of Scott, of 
 which the poet himself was not an unworthy member, and 
 those of its more distant branches, are all heraldically 
 blazoned according to the ancient Scottish practice of differ- 
 
THE HALL AT BRANKSOME. 
 
 encing the arms of descendants of the same family by 
 peculiar marks of cadency, (on which subject Nisbet has 
 written a little treatise), or by variations of the original 
 shield ; a method that is generally found to have reference 
 to the particular line of ancestry claimed by the cadet, or 
 junior branch of a noble stem. 
 
 Besides the necessary distinction observed in the heraldic 
 emblazonm ents of the Scotts, fanciful m ottos were used by 
 each branch of a family, analogous to that of the chieftain. 
 Amo, the motto borne by Scott of -Buccleuch, was seemingly 
 adopted to convey a principle of unity, and was strengthened 
 in the motto of another Scott, which exhibited an expression 
 of eternal amity : Nescit Amor finis, ' ' Love knows no end . ' ' 
 The words Amore Patrice, used by one of the cadets of the 
 family, explain at once the motive which held the clan 
 together. Pacem Amo, when borne by a Scott, seems to 
 indicate a love of quiet hardly reconcileable with the known 
 pursuits of a borderer's life. The same sentiment of amity 
 is continued in the motto of another cadet, Amo Probos, 
 " I love the virtuous ;" and carried on, with an affected dis- 
 dain of heriditary descent, in the motto, Fortior Origine 
 Virtus, imptying "a love of virtue before lineage." A sen- 
 timent worthy of the heroic days of Greece. It would 
 be tedious to enumerate the mottos of the numerous 
 branches of the family of Scott, who all fought under the 
 same standard, " in the old Border day," and which were 
 chosen with a view to preserve the distinction necessary to 
 be observed amongst so many members of the same clan. 
 
THE HALL AT BRANKSOME. 
 
 Best riding by Moonlight, the motto of Scott of Howpasley, 
 is said to have been an allusion to the crescents on their 
 shield ; and the words .Tenebris Lux, a scriptural sentence, 
 may have had reference in the mind of the bearer to 
 " the Beacon blaze of war." There are other mottos 
 which indicate the caution mingled with valour to be ob- 
 served, either in the field, or when engaged in a nocturnal 
 raid. Scott of Harden, the direct ancestor of the poet, 
 bore Watch Weel; and another branch, Scott of Thirlestane, 
 the truly chivalrous words, Ready, aye Ready ; while one, 
 without doubting his own prowess, bore an inspiring text of 
 promise, Me for tern reddit Deus, " God renders me brave." 
 The last it will be necessary to mention, implies a merito- 
 rious adherence to justice, In recto Decus, "there is honour 
 in upright conduct." 
 
 "Motto," saysNisbet, that great authority for Scottish 
 heraldry, " is an Italian word signifying the sentence which 
 gentlemen carry in a scroll under, or above, their arms. It 
 is likewise latinized dictum, a saying whence comes the old 
 word Ditton, used in our books of blazonry. Camden, the 
 English herald, uses the word inscriptio ; and some call it 
 epigraph, because mottos often consist of many words, com- 
 posing proverbs, witty and religious sentences, relative to, 
 and explanatory of the arms of the owners, and may be 
 used by any person who has right to carry arms. 
 
 " Sometimes," says Sir George Mackenzie, another 
 writer of great repute on Scottish heraldry, " the motto has 
 reference to the supporters of the arms, as in the instance of 
 
THE HALL AT BRANKSOME. 
 
 Buccleuch, which are two ladies in rich and antique apparel, 
 with their locks falling over their shoulders, The word 
 here is Amo, and was assumed by a predecessor of the noble 
 family when he obtained his first estate, by marrying the 
 rich heiress of Murdistone . ' ' The learn ed knight continues 
 his observations on this subject by stating, that it is com- 
 mon "to bear either the name of the family who meet, or 
 the name of the place at which they are accustomed to 
 meet. The motto, or war-cry," he says, " was proclaimed 
 everywhere by a person who carried a cross of wood burn- 
 ing, or the fiery cross, by which, and the war-cry, all the 
 cadets of the family were advertised to meet at the ordinary 
 place. Of old, all of a family dwelt in a neighbourhood ; 
 and these 'words,' he concludes, are decided marks of 
 antiquity, and not allowed to any but chiefs of clans, who 
 had many followers, vassals, and dependants, and in effect 
 they were useless to all others." 
 
 This very circumstance in the gathering of the clans is 
 introduced by Sir Walter Scott, in the poem of "the Lady 
 of the Lake." The consecrated wooden cross is represented 
 as circulated with incredible celerity, "from crag to crag 
 the signal flew," through the whole territory of the chief- 
 tain ; and the eager fidelity with which it was obeyed, is told 
 with great spirit and felicity. 
 
 The halls of ancient baronial mansions, which are now 
 found enriched with curiously carved furniture, were not, 
 all of them at least, formerly so well provided. It is 
 remarked by Mr. Surtees, that an observable circumstance 
 

 THE HALL AT BRANKSOME. 
 
 in old testamentary dispositions, is the extreme paucity of 
 rich furniture, or of articles of the precious metals, either 
 for use or ornament. While the castles of the greater 
 barons blazed with plate and jewellery, the middling gentry 
 seem to have scarcely possessed furniture for one state 
 room, and a few personal and hereditary trinkets. A red 
 bed, and a single suit of tapestry hangings, descended from 
 generation to generation. The gold chain, the signet, and 
 seal of arms, were for the heir, whilst to the younger 
 children a few silver spoons are esteemed a considerable 
 legacy. 
 
 The great hall of Richard Fermor, merchant of the 
 staple, in 1540, was very scantily furnished. It contained 
 only a piece of tapestry hanging at the high dais, three 
 tables with forms and tressels mortized in the ground, and 
 a hawk's perch. This gentleman raised a noble fortune, 
 and lived at Easton Neston, in Northamptonshire. He was 
 arrested for relieving traitorous persons, for which he after- 
 wards lost his estate. The inventory of his goods is in the 
 British Museum. 
 
MELROSE. 
 
 " If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright, 
 Go visit it by the pale moonlight ; 
 For the gay beams of lightsome day, 
 Gild but to flout the ruins grey. 
 When the broken arches are black in night, 
 And each shafted oriel glimmers white ; 
 When the cold light's uncertain shower 
 Streams on the ruin'd central tower; 
 When buttress and buttress, alternately, 
 Seem framed of ebon and ivory ; 
 When silver edges the imagery, 
 And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die." 
 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto ii. vol. vi. p. 73. 
 
 This is one of the largest and most magnificent buildings 
 in the kingdom of Scotland. Its remains consist principally 
 of some fragments of the cloisters, which are richly orna- 
 mented: in the nave divine service is still performed. It 
 affords specimens of ecclesiastical architecture of the most 
 exquisite beauty ; the roof of the chancel remains, and is 
 supported by clustered pillars, the capitals and bases of 
 which are ornamented with sculptured foliage, most deli- 
 cately executed. It was founded by King David the First, 
 in 1136, who dedicated it to the Virgin Mary, and endowed 
 it with extensive privileges, and very ample revenues : the 
 monks were of the Cistercian order, brought from the 
 
lilUfe:.^l^^ ■ ;i| -' : Mvl 
 
MELROSE. 
 
 celebrated Abbey of Bivaulx, in Yorkshire ; it was the 
 mother church of all establishments of that order in Scot- 
 land. The church is built in the form of St. John's Cross ; 
 the dimensions of what is yet remaining being two hundred 
 and fifty-eight feet in length, one hundred and thirty-seven 
 feet in breadth, and the circumference about nine hundred 
 and forty-three feet. The style of architecture does not 
 accord with the early date usually assigned to it : but it is of a 
 later period, and in all probability belongs to the fourteenth 
 century. It suffered dreadfully in the fierce Border contests 
 between England and Scotland ; and in the civil wars 
 Cromwell bombarded it from the Gatton-side hills. 
 
 Alexander the Second, king of Scotland, is said to lie 
 buried below the high altar, and an inscription once pointed 
 out his tomb. On the south side of the altar is a marble, 
 which is conjectured to have been erected to Waldevus, 
 the second abbot, who was canonized. Many of the noble 
 line of Douglas also lie here ; among whom is James, the 
 son of William, Earl of Douglas, who was slain at the 
 battle of Otterbum. In the Chapter-house are deposited 
 the remains of many other men eminent in the early history 
 of Scotland. 
 
 On the south east of this church are a great many carvings 
 of musicians, admirably executed, with much variety in their 
 countenances, accompanied with their various instruments ; 
 also of nuns with their veils, some of them richly dressed. 
 
 The abbots of St. Mary had such extensive jurisdiction, 
 and the privilege of girth and sanctuary interfered so much 
 
 F 
 
/ 7 i //f' 
 
 6C / &/%, // 
 
 iiiJc.u. V-iVui-d 18.V lv Oi.ui« Tilt. Fleet Street. 
 
MARGARET. 
 
 Lmj of the Last Minstrel, vol. vi. p. 89. 
 
 ' And she, when love, scarce told, scarce hid, 
 Lent to her cheek a livelier red ; 
 When the half sigh her swelling breast 
 Against the silken ribbon prest ; 
 When her blue eyes the secret told, 
 Though shaded by her locks of gold : — 
 Where would you find the peerless fair, 
 With Margaret of Branksome might compare ! 
 
 Far more fair Margaret loved and bless'd 
 The hour of silence and of rest. 
 On the high turret sitting lone, 
 She waked at times the lute's soft tone ; 
 Touched a wild note, and all between 
 Thought of her bower of hawthorns green. 
 Her golden hair stream' d free from band, 
 Her fair cheek rested on her hand, 
 Her blue eyes sought the west afar, 
 For lovers love the western star." 
 
ROSLIN. 
 
 It glared on Roslin's castled rock." 
 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto vi. volvi. p. 207- 
 
 Roslin is scarcely more fortunate in its own scenery, than 
 in the romantic and classical vicinage of Hawthornden. 
 The narrow glen, which connects these celebrated spots, 
 is one of those beautiful and sequestered valleys which so 
 often occur in Scotland, and generally, where they are least 
 to be expected from the appearance of the general land- 
 scape. It often happens, that amid an open and com- 
 paratively unpicturesque country, where there is little to 
 interest the traveller, he is conducted by the course of some 
 fairy stream into a dell, abounding with all the romantic 
 varieties of cliff, and copsewood, and waterfall, through 
 which the brook has found itself a more wild and pleasing 
 coarse than along the surface of the more level ground. 
 
 The Vale of Koslin is precisely of this description. 
 You may in many places, approach its very verge without 
 being aware of its existence ; and on the other hand, when 
 you have descended into its recesses, you seem to be in a 
 primitive wilderness. The cliffs which arise on either side 
 of the dell are pleasingly varied, and present themselves to 
 
1 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
R0SLIN. 
 
 the spectator as the shattered ruins of some ancient building, 
 of which some parts still stand firm in all their former 
 strength, while others, broken and shattered, impend over 
 and threaten the spectator. The copsewood with which 
 they are clothed, wherever the roots can find room or sub- 
 sistence among the chasms of the rocks, adds inexpressible 
 beauty to the scene, especially in spring, when the green 
 leaves are in all their first tenderness of colouring ; and in 
 autumn, when they have received the gorgeous but melan- 
 choly tints, which betoken their approaching fall. It is 
 only to be regretted that few of these beautiful trees have 
 been permitted to grow to full size. 
 
 But Roslin, and its adjacent scenery, have other associ- 
 ations dear to the antiquary and the historian, which may 
 fairly entitle it to precedence over every other Scottish 
 scene of the same kind. Nearly opposite the castle, is 
 Hawthornden, once the residence of Drummond the poet, 
 and historian of Scotland ; and here he entertained for some 
 time Ben Jonson as his guest, who is reported to have 
 walked from London to enjoy his society, and to view the 
 beautiful scenery which surrounded his dwelling. The 
 mouldering ruins of the castle, with its tremendous triple 
 tier of vaults, were long the abode of the proud family of 
 St. Clair, whose titles at one period of their history would 
 have wearied a herald, yet who were, perhaps, 
 
 " not so wealthy as any English yeoman." 
 
 It is uncertain at what period this castle was first erected ; 
 
BOSLIN. 
 
 nor is the name of the founder much better known ; but 
 William St. Clair, the architect of the beautiful chapel, 
 resided here in great state. In 1544, it was nearly de- 
 molished by the English troops sent by King Henry the 
 Eighth, under the command of the Earl of Hertford : it 
 was surrended to General Monk during the civil wars, 
 and a local insurrection which broke out in 1681, subjected 
 it to further injury. Roslin gives the title of Earl to its 
 present possessor, the son of the celebrated Lord Lough- 
 borough, in whose person the earldom was first created. 
 
 Roslin is a spot celebrated in Scotch song ; the beautiful 
 melody of Roslin Castle is well known : 
 
 " While Roslin castle heard the swain 
 And echoed back the cheerful strain." — 
 
 And another of our poets, thus describes beauties 
 which surround it ; 
 
 " Ewes and lambs on braes ran Meeting, 
 Linties sang on ilka tree ; 
 Frae the Wast, the sun near setting, 
 Flamed on Roslin's towers sae hie : 
 Roslin's towers and braes so bonny, 
 
 Craigs and waters, woods and glen ; 
 Roslin's banks, unpeered by ony, 
 ., Save the Muse's Hawthornden." 
 
 Macniel. 
 

 
 
WHITBY, 
 
 -High Whitby's cloister' d pile." 
 
 Marmion, canto ii. vol. vii. p. 93. 
 
 The Abbey of Whitby, in the archdeaconry of Cleaveland, 
 on the coast of Yorkshire, was founded A.D. 657, and was 
 raised by Oswy, king of Northumberland, in gratitude 
 to heaven for a victory he obtained over Penda, king of 
 Mercia. It contained both monks and nuns, of the Bene- 
 dictine order ; but, contrary to the usual regulation of such 
 foundations, the abbess was superior to the abbot. This 
 monastery, which was destroyed by the Danes on one of 
 their incursions into this island, was rebuilt by Sir William 
 de Percy, in the reign of the Conqueror 1074, for Bene- 
 dictine monks, and by him dedicated to St. Peter and St. 
 Hildo ; but it did not assume the dignity of an abbey until 
 the time of William Percy, a descendant of the founder, 
 and third prior of Whitby. At the dissolution of the 
 monasteries, in 1541, it was surrendered to the king by 
 Henry de Vail, the last abbot. There were then no nuns, 
 nor had there been, for a long time previous to its dis- 
 solution. 
 
 " Thus fell," says the historian of Whitby, " the monks 
 
WHITBY ABBEY. 
 
 and their possessions, a prey to the lust, avarice, and tyranny 
 of Henry VIII. Yet what seems most to be lamented is, 
 the destruction that was then made among those venerable 
 piles and noble structures that were the glory and ornament 
 of our nation, and would still have continued so, if they 
 had been left untouched by sacrilegious hands. Among 
 others, Whitby Abbey, after being plundered of the wood, 
 the timber, and lead on its roof, as also of its bells, and 
 every thing else belonging thereto that could be sold, was 
 left standing with its stone walls, a mere skeleton of what 
 it had formerly been, to crumble away by degrees into 
 dust, or to form aheap of rubbish, which might barely shew 
 passengers in future ages that there Whitby Abbey formerly 
 stood. Some part of the lead was used for the roof of the 
 church of St. Mary. The Abbey bells were put on board ship 
 to be convej^ed to London ; but tradition states, that within 
 a mile of the harbour the vessel sank, and that the bells are 
 now remaining there. The stained glass windows were 
 undisturbed, but time and petty plundering by visitors 
 have entirely dispersed them/' 
 
 The length of the church is two hundred and twenty-two 
 feet, in breadth fift}'-six feet ; the nave thirty feet, the 
 aisles thirteen feet each ; the walls are sixty feet high ; and 
 the height of the tower was a hundred and twenty feet. 
 From its elevated situation this tower became a most useful 
 sea-mark on this very dangerous coast ; and formed, at the 
 same time, a very interesting and conspicuous feature in 
 the romantic scenery of this district. On the 25th of 
 
WHITBY. 
 
 August, 1830, this venerable and striking object yielded 
 to the ravages of time, and the attacks to which it had 
 been exposed for so many ages. For some years previous, 
 it had exhibited symptoms of decay; and it is deeply to be 
 regretted that no efforts were made to preserve an object, 
 which, independent of the veneration due to it as a monu- 
 ment of our ancestors' splendid spirit in building, was of 
 high importance to the mariner. The cliff, upon which 
 this remarkable object stood, was nearly two hundred feet 
 above low-water mark. Camden, and other ancient writers, 
 mention it as an established fact, that the wild geese, which 
 are here very common, were unable to fly over the abbey 
 and its environs, and that in attempting it they suddenly 
 fell to the ground. This he proceeds to reason upon, and 
 supposes to arise from some antipathy, or hidden quality, in 
 the earth. It is, however, certain that St. Hilda and 
 her monastery have lost their attractive powers; all sorts of 
 birds now flying over with impunity. 
 
 G 
 
CRICHTOUN CASTLE. 
 
 " At length up that wild dale they wind, 
 Where Crichtoun Castle crowns the bank." 
 
 Marmion, canto iv. vol. vii. p. 197. 
 
 The Castle of Crichton is situated on the banks of the 
 Tyne, there an inconsiderable stream, ten miles south 
 of Edinburgh. It was built at different periods, and forms 
 one large square pile of irregular height, inclosing an inner 
 court. It is situated upon a sharp angle of the almost 
 precipitous bank, which is the boundary of the dale. The 
 lofty, massive, and solid architecture impresses the spec- 
 tator with an emotion rather of awe than beauty ; yet the 
 interior is far from presenting architectural details unworthy 
 of observation. It consists of a stately quadrangle, sur- 
 rounded by buildings of various ages and distinct characters,, 
 in which may be traced something of the change of pos- 
 sessors which this castle has undergone. 
 
 In the north-west angle of the quadrangle, is a small 
 keep, or Donjon-tower, which seems to have been the 
 habitation of the Crichtons, in their earlier days. The 
 style of building on the north-western angle, indicates its 
 erection before the rest of the castle ; its antiquity, there- 
 fore, will probably draw back to the fourteenth century. 
 
CRICHTON CASTLE. 
 
 It is not so easy to assign a precise date to other parts 
 of the castle — 
 
 " The towers in different ages rose," — 
 but the eastern side is the most modern, as well as the 
 most beautiful, and offers an example of splendid architec- 
 ture, very unusual in Scottish castles. The inner front 
 rises above a piazza running the whole length of the front, 
 the pillars of which have their capitals richly decorated 
 with anchors entwined with cables. This favourite orna- 
 ment inclines us to refer the building to one of the Earls 
 of Bothwell, who were high-admirals of Scotland ; and we 
 are disposed to assign the work to the splendour of Earl 
 Patrick, whose taste for magnificence was very great. 
 Above the portico, the stones of the whole front are cut 
 into diamond facets, the angular projections of which pro- 
 duce a variety of light and shade, and give a varied, rich, 
 and beautiful effect to the building. The interior corre- 
 sponds to the external elegance of the structure. The first 
 floor seems to have been occupied by a magnificent gallery, 
 or banqueting room, well lighted, and running the whole 
 length of the front ; to which access was formerly given by 
 a stately staircase, now entirely demolished. The soffets 
 of this staircase have been ornamented with cordage and 
 rosettes, carved in freestone. The plainer and less inter- 
 esting parts of the castle contain such a variety of halls 
 and chambers, as shew the power of the baron, and the 
 number of his followers. The kitchen, which is in the 
 north-eastern angle of the castle, corresponds in gloomy 
 
CRICHTON CASTLE. 
 
 magnitude to the rest of the building. In a large stone 
 chimney in one of the apartments, a flat arch is formed 
 of freestone very ingeniously dovetailed into each other. 
 
 We must not omit to mention the dungeon — a horrible 
 vault, only accessible by a square hole in the roof, through 
 which captives were lowered into this den of darkness and 
 oblivion. 
 
 " And shuddering, still we may explore, 
 Where oft whilom were captives pent, 
 The darkness of thy Massy More." 
 
 The family of Crichton was ancient and honorable, 
 but remained long among the rank of lesser barons, and 
 owed its great rise to the genius and talent of an individual 
 statesman, distinguished for policy and intrigue beyond 
 what is usual in a dark age. The name being territorial, 
 and derived from the neighbouring village, seems to have 
 been assumed about the period when surnames became 
 common in Scotland. A William de Crichton occurs in 
 the Lennox Chartulary,* about 1240. The history of this 
 distinguished family is most interesting ; and has been very 
 amply dilated upon by Sir Walter Scott, in his account 
 of this fortress, in the Provincial Antiquities of Scotland. 
 
 * This Chartulary forms one of the republications of that spirited 
 association, the Maitland Club of Glasgow. 
 
LINLITHGOW. 
 
 " Of all the palaces so fair, 
 
 Built for the royal dwelling, 
 In Scotland, far beyond compare 
 Linlithgow is excelling." 
 
 Marmion, canto iv. vol. vii. p. 202. 
 
 The town of Linlithgow, distinguished by the combined 
 strength and beauty of its situation, must have been early 
 selected as a royal residence. The castle is only mentioned 
 as being a peel, a pile ; that is, an embattled tower sur- 
 rounded by an outwork. In 1300, it was rebuilt or 
 repaired by Edward L, and used as one of the citadels by 
 which he hoped to maintain his usurped dominion in Scot- 
 land. It is described by Barbour as " meikle and stark, 
 and stuffed weel." Piers Luband, a Gascoigne knight, 
 was appointed the keeper until the autumn of 1313, when 
 the Scots recovered possession of the castle. The means 
 by which they did this has been detailed by Sir Walter 
 Scott.* The ancient castle was destroyed by fire in 1414; 
 but the palace arose from its ashes with greater splendour 
 than before; for the family of Stuart, unhappy in so many 
 respects, were all of them fortunate in their taste for the 
 
 * Provincial Antiquities of Scotland. Vol. ii, 
 
LINLITHGOW. 
 
 fine arts, and particularly for that of architecture. James 
 the Fourth, as splendid as gallant, seems to have founded 
 the most magnificent part of Linlithgow palace, together 
 with the noble entrance betwixt two flanking towers, bear- 
 ing on rich entablatures the royal arms of Scotland, with 
 the collar of the Order of the Thistle, Garter, and Saint 
 Michael. 
 
 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 more reasons 
 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: 
 Queen Mary was born here. 
 
 James VI. loved the royal residence at Linlithgow, and 
 completed the original plan of the palace, closing the great 
 square by a stately range of apartments of great architec- 
 tural beauty. He also erected a magnificent fountain in 
 the palace-yard, now in ruins, as are all the buildings 
 around. Another grotesque Gothic fountain adorns the 
 street of the town, which, with the number of fine springs, 
 leads to the popular rhyme, 
 
 " Linlithgow for wells, 
 Stirling for bells." 
 
 When the sceptre parted from Scotland, Oblivion sat down 
 
LINLITHGOW. 
 
 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. On 
 the night of the 17th, he returned to Linlithgow, with all 
 the marks of a defeat, and his disordered troops were 
 quartered in the palace, and the great fires which they made 
 on the hearths were such as to endanger the safety of the 
 building ; in fact, soon after their departure, the palace 
 caught fire, and the ruins alone remain to shew its former 
 splendour. The situation 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 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 staircases are 
 upon a magnificent scale. One banquet room is ninety- 
 four feet long, thirty feet wide, and thirty-three feet high, 
 with a gallery for music. The king's wardrobe, or dress- 
 ing room, looking to the west, projects over the walls so 
 as to have a delightful prospect on three sides, and is one of 
 the most enviable boudoirs ever seen. 
 
 There were two main entrances to the palace: that from 
 the south ascends rather steeply from the town, and passes 
 through a striking Gothic archway, flanked by two round 
 towers. The portal has been richly adorned by sculpture. 
 
 The other grand entrance is from the eastward; the 
 
LINLITHGOW. 
 
 gateway is at some height from the foundation of the wall, 
 and opposite to it are the remains of a perron, or ramp 
 of mason work, which those who desired to enter must 
 have ascended by steps. 
 
 The narrow escape which this ancient pile had of being 
 converted into a receptacle for prisoners during the late 
 war, has been narrated by Sir Walter Scott, in a note to 
 the new edition of Waverley, who adds, — " in taking leave of 
 this subject we may use the words of old Sir David of the 
 Mount : 
 
 Farewell, Lithgow, whose palace of plesaunce, 
 Might be a pattern in Portugal or France." 
 


 ! 
 
 e h - l e : 
 
LORD MARMIONS ARMOUR, 
 
 AND THE HERALDRY OF THE HEROES OF FLODDEN. 
 
 " And as the ancient art could stain 
 Achievements in the storied pane ; 
 Irregularly traced and planned, 
 But yet so glowing and so grand/' 
 
 Marmion, canto v. vol. vii. p. 236. 
 
 Although the hero of Sir Walter Scott's poem is a 
 fictitious personage, the circumstances of the story of 
 " Marmion" are purely historical, and refer to the events 
 which occurred at the beginning of the martial reign of 
 Henry VIII. ; a time when all taste for social enjoyments 
 had been depressed by the long continuance of the civil 
 wars, in which so many gay and gallant nobles had perished. 
 
 Armour was then very generally worn, either fluted or 
 plain, and specimens of both kinds are found in great 
 abundance in the splendid collections that have been 
 formed in various parts of the kingdom. A very fine and 
 rich suit of armour, which, undoubtedly, belonged to King 
 Henry himself, is preserved in the Tower of London, and 
 may be truly deemed the greatest curiosity in that ample 
 depository. 
 
 Fashions of armour arose in Italy and Germany, and were 
 
LORD MARMION'S ARMOUR. 
 
 slow in finding their way into England, so as to become 
 general, but the beautiful fluted armour, invented in Ger- 
 many, was at this time common. The suit of King Henry 
 VIII., in the Horse Armoury, is plain, but is entirely 
 covered with very curious engravings, exhibiting a striking 
 picture of the superstitious feelings of the times, which con- 
 ceived a man's body to be doubly protected when not only 
 sheathed in tempered steel, but overspread with legends of 
 favourite saints ! On the king's breast-plate is the heroic 
 figure of St. George, the patron of England, and of the 
 Order of the Garter ; on the back plate of the same suit is 
 engraved St. Barbara, who is known by the tower, which 
 has become her symbol. 
 
 The mottos upon every piece of the armour are exceed- 
 ingly quaint and appropriate. Man utitur aculeo Eer, imply- 
 ing that a thrust of the king's spear is rather more than the 
 sting of a bee, is as frequently repeated upon this singu- 
 larly curious suit as the royal motto, €>ieu et mon Droit, 
 assumed originally by King Edward IV. as a means of 
 perpetuating his signal victory over the Lancastrian party, 
 in the decisive battle of Mortimer's Cross. 
 
 Almost all the breast-plates of this period have a globose 
 form, with a slight edge in the centre, which is called the 
 tapul ; this was an old fashion revived, but is the distin- 
 guishing criterion of the date of the armour. A complete 
 suit of plate then worn, consisted of pauldrons, or shoulder 
 pieces, brassarts and vambraces, as well as cuisses and sol- 
 lerets; and a knight, when armed cap-a-pie, must have 
 
LORD MARMION'S ARMOUR. 
 
 required a smith to assist him in his attire; the camp occa- 
 sionally rang with the noise of 
 
 " The armourers accomplishing the knights, 
 With busy hammers closing rivets up." 
 
 The distinguishing crest on the top of the helmet usually 
 consisted of stiff leather, wood, or some substance that could 
 be easily fashioned into shape, but was at the same time 
 light to the wearer. The first of the Scottish kings, who 
 is found represented on his great seal with a crest, is Alex- 
 ander III. in 1249, coeval with Henry III. of England ; 
 this, however, is only composed of feathers originally borne 
 as a means of distinction — a circumstance alluded to by Sir 
 Walter Scott, as 
 
 " The plumed crests of chieftains brave." 
 
 King James I. of Scotland, who was educated in the court 
 of Henry V. of England, is represented with a lion on his 
 bascinet, for a crest : it was this object that rendered the 
 commander known in the heat of battle. Here, in the 
 poem, its use is clearly defined — 
 
 " Amid the scene of tumult high, 
 They saw Lord Marmion's falcon fly." 
 
 In the shield of his hero it has been objected to Sir Walter 
 Scott, that he has committed an error in heraldry. The 
 falcon of Marmion is said to have 
 
 " Soared sable in an azure field." Canto i. 
 
LORD MARMION'S ARMOUR. 
 
 According to a popular poet in the reign of Charles I. 
 
 " Metal on metal is false heraldry ; 
 And yet the known Godfrey of Bouloign's coat 
 Shines in exception to the herald's vote." — Cleveland. 
 
 Many ancient coats of arms, besides that of Jerusalem, ex- 
 hibit a deviation from the canons of the heralds, and hence 
 Sir Walter Scott's supposed mistake may be justified by 
 undoubted precedents, and the nicer critics in heraldry can 
 be refuted from their own precious volumes. 
 
 The battle-axe, a most formidable weapon, was used by 
 persons of distinction at this period; and it is recorded that 
 the king's battle-axe, together with his helmet, gauntlets, 
 and crest, were amongst the offerings at the high altar in 
 the ceremony of the funeral of Henry VII. at Westminster. 
 
 In the early part of his reign, when Henry VIII. was 
 in the bloom of youth and health, he was so extremely 
 desirous of promoting martial exercises amongst the 
 younger courtiers, that his majesty caused a place to be 
 prepared in Greenwich Park, for the queen and ladies of 
 the court to see a fight with battle-axes. In this encounter 
 the king personally engaged and fought with a German 
 named Giot, who was remarkable for bodily strength, and 
 was so formidable an opponent, that he struck Sir Edward 
 Howard to the ground.* 
 
 The malles, or mazuelles of steel, also appear to have 
 been very tremendous instruments in the hands of strong- 
 active men, such as wielded them in Flodden Field ; these 
 
 * Hollingshed. 
 
LORD MARMION'S ARMOUR. 
 
 are particularly mentioned in a cotemporary poem on that 
 
 battle — 
 
 Wmo ^>cotc$ earte of an ancient race, 
 QDne Cratoforn calleti, t^e orijer ^ontroge, 
 ilea tfoelfce t^oussanti <§>cotc?jmett strong;, 
 3nti manfully met toitlfc tfjeir foeg, 
 TOt|j leanen meffg, ana lancet l<mp> 
 
 Muratori, the celebrated Italian antiquary, relates, that in 
 a close conflict of cavalry, it became exceedingly difficult to 
 overthrow, or even wound powerful men in armour, sitting 
 on horseback. Their persons being enveloped in hauberks, 
 helmets, and other iron coverings, completely eluded the 
 power of swords, darts, arrows, and such like weapons. For 
 this reason, it was necessary to strike men so defended 
 with iron maces, or else to turn the attack on the horses, 
 when by making the charger fall, they might seize the 
 rider, or if he tumbled on the ground, the weight of his 
 armour rendered him unable to contend longer with any 
 effect. " Alle Cinghie," or to the girths, was the captain's 
 cry when he wished his men to stab them, and the horses 
 were immediately pierced with lances, swords, or any other 
 sharp weapons.* 
 
 The partizan was introduced in the reign of Henry VIII. 
 Its blade is much broader than that of the ancient pike, and 
 differed from it by having that part next the staff formed 
 in the manner of a crescent. This weapon is still carried 
 by the king's yeomen of the guard ; a body of men originally 
 raised by Henry VII., and usually considered as the very 
 
 * Antiq. Med. M\i. Dissert. 26. 
 
LORD MARMION'S ARMOUR. 
 
 first formation of a regular standing military force in Eng- 
 land. Amongst Hollar's engravings are several designs by- 
 Hans Holbein, for sword and dagger hilts, made for King 
 Henry VIII. , which are very elegantly enriched with 
 arabesque work, &c. ; the dagger for the king is particu- 
 larly splendid; but the sword and dagger in the annexed 
 engraving are faithful representations of the actual weapons 
 belonging to King James IV. of Scotland, now preserved 
 in the Herald's College, London. The king met his fate, 
 at the same time that 
 
 " The crest of the noble, the plume of the knight 
 Were trampled and lost in the dark Flodden fight." 
 
 This Battle is universally described by historians as rashly 
 undertaken, unfortunately conducted, and fatally terminated. 
 The English monarch received intelligence of the battle of 
 Flodden Field, when encamped before the city of Tournay 
 in Flanders, and it appears that the deceased King James's 
 armour was presented as a trophy to Henry's queen, Kathe- 
 rine of Arragon. When at Woburn Abbey, and on her way 
 to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, the queen wrote 
 to Henry VIII. the letter which is now preserved in the 
 British Museum. Its style and language is simple and 
 pathetic : — " My Lord Howard hath sent me, a letter open, 
 to your Grace, by the which ye shall see at length, the 
 grete victory that our Lord hath sent your subjects, in your 
 
 absence." " For hastiness of Rouge Croix I could not 
 
 send your Grace the piece of the King of Scot's cote which 
 
LORD MARMION'S ARMOUR. 
 
 John Glyn now bringeth. In this, your Grace shall see 
 how I can kepe my promise, sending you for your banners 
 a king's cote. I thought to send himself to you, but our 
 English men's hearts would not suffer it. It should have 
 been better for him to have been in peace than have this 
 rewarde." 
 
 The body of King James IV. found on the day following 
 the battle, after being recognised by Lord Dacre and 
 others, was conveyed to Berwick. It was taken thence to 
 Newcastle-on-Tyne, and from the latter place was brought 
 to London. The body of the king was afterwards actually 
 presented to Queen Katherine, at Richmond, and by her 
 order, was royally interred in the monastery at West 
 Shene. It is also stated, that when the priory was dissolved 
 in the reign of Edward VI., the coffin of the king was 
 taken up. Stowe, in his Annals, says, " I have beene 
 shewed the same body, as was affirmed, lapped in lead, 
 thrown into a waste room, amongst old timber, stone, and 
 other rubble." Other historians of London say that some 
 workmen wantonly cut the head off the body, and that it 
 was brought by a young glazier to Queen Elizabeth, who 
 was struck with its sweetness arising from the cerement. 
 The man kept it for some time at his house in Wood-street, 
 Cheapside, London, and at length delivered it to the sexton 
 of St. Ann's Church, in the same street, who deposited it 
 amongst the bones in the charnel-house. 
 
 The large armorial hall-window in the back ground of 
 this picture, is a representation of one of the most beautiful 
 
LORD MARMION'S ARMOUR. 
 
 features in the architectural decorations of the Tudor period. 
 It is filled with heraldic emblazonments commemorative of 
 the principal events recorded in the poem of Marmion ; and 
 bears, in diagonal lines, the word, jflotmen, frequently re- 
 peated. Sentences so disposed are the usual accompani- 
 ments to the full quartered escutcheons which are found 
 displayed within broad banded wreaths of rich foliage, orna- 
 mented at intervals in congenial style. Correct heraldical 
 designs are yet to be attained by the modern school of glass 
 painters; the " storied windows richly dight" of the poet, 
 seem quite beyond their comprehension. Such gorgeous 
 glazing is only now to be met with in the superb mansions 
 of our old nobility, where the eye of the prying antiquary 
 alone discovers its beauty. He never ceases to admire the 
 splendid effect produced by the ruby and emerald tints of 
 the early painters 
 
 " And as the ancient art could stain 
 Achievements on the storied pane," 
 
 carefully notes the quaint devices and heraldic badges of 
 remote ancestry which he finds depicted. The arms in the 
 head of the first bay, or division, of the window before us, 
 are those of King Henry VIII., who bore on his shield, 
 Azure, three fleurs de lis or, for France, as descended from 
 the heiress of that kingdom, and quartered with gules, 
 three lions passant guardant or, for England, within the 
 garter, and regally crowned. Immediately beneath this 
 escutcheon, is the arms of Thomas Howard, Earl of 
 
LORD MARMION'S ARMOUR. 
 
 Surrey, K. G., commander of the vanguard of the army at 
 Flodden Field, and son and heir of John Duke of Norfolk, 
 Gules, on a bend between six cross croslets fitchy argent, an 
 escutcheon; or charged with a demi-lion within a double 
 tressure counterflory, with an arrow through the mouth, of 
 the first, for Howard ; quartered with gules, three lions 
 passant guardant or, over all a label of five points argent, 
 for Brotherton. Chequee or and azure, for Warren, and 
 gules, a lion rampant argent, for Mowbray. The shield 
 on the bend, in the paternal arms of this nobleman, is an 
 augmentation of the original coat of Howard expressly 
 granted to him in remembrance of the victory gained over 
 the Scots at Flodden. 
 
 In the lowest compartment of the painted window are 
 the arms of Sir John Stanley, which are blazoned argent, 
 on a bend azure, three stags' heads cabossed or. The 
 heads of deer are borne by the Stanley family as hereditary 
 foresters of Wirral in Cheshire, and were adopted by them 
 instead of their paternal coat of Audley, which was originally 
 their name. In the head of the second bay of the armorial 
 window are the arms of King James IV. Or, a lion 
 rampant within a double tressure counterflory gules, encir- 
 cled by a riband charged with the motto of the Order of 
 the Thistle, and surmounted by the crown of Scotland. 
 
 A single line of Sir Walter Scott has expressed this 
 armorial bearing on the herald's tabard : 
 
 " The ruddy lion rampt in gold." 
 
 i 
 
LORD MARMION'S ARMOUR. 
 
 It is perhaps not generally known that William Dunbar, a 
 cotemporary author, in his poem of the Thistle and the 
 Rose, had previously described King James's person under 
 the semblance of a Lion, his heraldic cognizance : 
 
 " Lusty of shape, licht of deliverance, 
 Reid of color as the ruby glance 
 In field of gold, he stude full rampantly, 
 With flower de luces circlet pleasantly." 
 
 Beneath the king's shield, in the window, is that of Alex- 
 ander Earl of Huntley, who had the command of the van 
 of the Scottish army at the battle of Flodden Field. 
 Azure, three boar's heads couped or, for Gordon, his paternal 
 name, surmounted by a coronet of his dignity. 
 
 The remaining emblazonment to be described, is the 
 shield of William Earl of Montrose, the firm and steady 
 friend of the unfortunate king, and who was slain in this 
 fatal battle. Or, on a chief sable three escallops of the 
 field, for Graham, his family name, quartered with argent, 
 three roses gules, for the Earldom of Montrose. 
 
 Armorial subjects were the usual ornaments of the large 
 bay windows, but there are several instances in which full- 
 length figures are represented, as in the series of the 
 Knights of the Garter at Stamford, the Fitz Alans at 
 Arundel, and the Beauchamps at Warwick. The most 
 ancient in the kingdom are probably the genealogical series 
 of the Clares and Despensers at Tewkesbury in Gloucester?: 
 shire, enshrined under rich canopies of variegated colours. 
 

BRAID HILLS. 
 
 ; The train has left the hills of Braid." 
 
 Marmion, canto v. vol. vii. p. 239. 
 
 The Hills of Braid are rocky eminences, of considerable 
 height, arising to the south of Edinburgh, and within about 
 a mile and a half of the suburbs. They are divided by a 
 small brook, called the Braid Burn. The prospect from 
 these hills, though not certainly the richest and most 
 romantic in the vicinity of Edinburgh, is possessed of 
 extreme beauty, and excels others in the magnificence with 
 which the Frith of Forth, its islands, and its northern 
 shores, lie displayed as the back-ground of the Scottish 
 metropolis. 
 
 The property has, as it is frequently the case when 
 situated near the metropolis, passed through several hands. 
 But a much more remarkable change has been wrought 
 upon its external appearance within these thirty 
 years, than any which could have arisen from a mere 
 change of landlords. Before that period the Hills of 
 Braid and Blackford were in the state of a wild sheep 
 pasture, partly consisting of the softest and most verdant 
 turf, covered with whins and broom, through which the 
 grey faces of the rock shewed themselves at intervals. 
 
BRAID HILLS. 
 
 Through this scene strayed the little rivulet in its narrow 
 glen, into which, when his eye was satiated with the mag- 
 nificent view from the hill, the stranger might descend, as 
 into a silent and solitary scene, which might have been 
 many miles distant from the abode of man. A natural 
 alcove, or hollow in the rock, was a favourite retreat of the 
 High-school boys, who, when tired with seeking birds' - 
 nests or gathering wild berries, used to huddle themselves 
 together in the cove, as it was called, and recount legends 
 of the hermits who had dwelt there in Popish times, or 
 of the more recent adventures of covenanted martyrs 
 supposed to have sought refuge in this sequestered spot 
 from the sword of persecution. That the little hollow 
 should have been the dwelling of an anchorite is impos- 
 sible; but there is more foundation for the other stories, 
 since we read that Mr. John Dick, a zealous covenanter, 
 who left a very warm testimony against the corruptions and 
 oppressions of the time, was apprehended when lurking 
 about Braid's Craigs. 
 
 This wild scene, the refuge of persecuted fanatics in 
 former days, and the retreat of truant school-boys in later 
 times, now exhibits a wonderful proof of the force of 
 Scottish agriculture ': every part of Blackford-hill, excepting 
 the naked crags themselves, being now subjected to the 
 plough, and bearing excellent crops. " An old man," says 
 Sir Walter Scott, " may feel some regret at the change of 
 scene, and the destruction of the sylvan retreat of his 
 childhood, and repeat to himself the verse of Logan : 
 
BRAID HILLS. 
 
 " The cruel plough has razed the green, 
 Where, when a child, I play'd ; 
 The axe has felled the hawthorn screen, 
 The school-boy's summer shade." 
 
 But no serious ^eight can be given to such remonstrances. 
 It was on this spot that an interesting conversation took 
 place between Dugald Stuart and the poet Burns, which has 
 been detailed in the works edited by Dr. Currie, # who was 
 greatly struck with the beauty of a scene, an early favourite 
 of the author of Marmion, who thus eulogises it in another 
 part of the poem: 
 
 " Blackford ! on whose uncultured breast, 
 Among the broom, and thorn, and whin, 
 
 A truant-boy, I sought the nest, 
 
 Or listed as I lay at rest, 
 While rose, on breezes thin, 
 
 The murmur of the city crowd, 
 
 And from his steeple jangling loud, 
 St. Giles's mingling din. 
 
 Now from the summit to the plain, 
 
 Waves all the hill with yellow grain ; 
 
 Nought do I see unchanged remain, 
 
 Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook/' 
 
 Vol. i. p. 143. 
 
TANTALLON. 
 
 " Then rest you on Tantallon hold." 
 
 Marmion, canto v, vol. vii. p. 261. 
 
 The ruins of Tantallon, or Temptallon, according to the 
 more ancient orthography, occupy a promontory which 
 projects from the rocky coast of East- Lothian, and hang- 
 ing over the German Ocean just at the entrance of the 
 Frith of Forth, forms a grand feature in the general picture 
 as a vessel enters the estuary. The castle is situated about 
 two miles from the little town of North Berwick, and com- 
 mands a view of the wild and romantic rock, called the 
 Bass, which, till the time of the revolution, was also the 
 site of a fortress, strong in its insular situation and the 
 inaccessible cliffs of the islet; long the hereditary castle 
 of the ancient family of Lauder ; then a crown fortress, 
 and chiefly used as a state prison. 
 
 The ruins of Tantallon, though with little magnificence 
 of architecture, have, from their extent, the strength of their 
 original construction, and their striking situation, overhang- 
 ing the billows of a wide and often troubled ocean, an 
 imposing effect on the imagination. From the land side 
 they are scarcely visible, until the curious visitor, surmount- 
 ing a height which conceals them, finds himself close under 
 
 ^ 
 
TANTALLON. 
 
 the external walls. This circumstance, which would render 
 the castle an easy conquest since modern improvements in 
 the art of war, took nothing in ancient times from its 
 supposed impregnability. In form, the fortress is an irre- 
 gular hexagon, occupying the whole promontory with 
 strong walls and high towers, and turrets designed to flank 
 them; and in the interior is, as usual, a keep, or Gothic 
 citadel, with many other buildings of great size and extent, 
 and vaults beneath them for receiving provisions, and often 
 doubtless, for securing prisoners. The mind, when we 
 enter the dilapidated court of this ancient and frowning 
 ruin, is involuntarily carried back to the era of the mighty 
 house of Douglas, so long the lords of Tantallon, amidst 
 whose numerous fortresses and houses of defence, this was 
 the principal on the eastern Border. 
 
 Tantallon, however, was not an early possession of this 
 distinguished family; it is believed to have belonged in 
 more ancient times to the Earls of Fife, the descendants 
 of Macduff. It was forfeited to the crown, in the year 
 1425, and must have been soon afterwards bestowed by 
 royal grant on the family of Douglas, which was then in 
 the full pitch of its grandeur. 
 
 Tantallon, however, amid the general confiscation of the 
 domains of the ancient Earls of Douglas, passed with the 
 castle and lordship itself, from the elder branch; but not 
 from the family. 
 
 The strength of this fortress enabled it to withstand 
 several sieges in earlier days ; so much so that its strength 
 
TANTALLON. 
 
 caused it to pass into a proverb, and indeed into a sort 
 of song, of which the words preserved are — 
 
 " Ding down Tantallon, 
 Make a brig to the Bass." 
 
 These two lines, recording the two attempts as equally 
 impossible, were sung to the military air which formed the 
 old Scotch reveillee. 
 
 Tantallon, like other fortresses of Scotland, was garrisoned 
 by the covenanters against the king in 1639, in despite, 
 it may be presumed, of the inclination of its owner, the 
 Marquis of Douglas. 
 
 Finally it was defended against Cromwell, and taken 
 after a short siege, the disadvantage of the rising ground 
 in its front being found fatal to the defenders. About 
 the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Marquis, 
 afterwards Duke of Douglas, sold the estate of North 
 Berwick, with the Castle of Tantallon, to Sir Hugh Dal- 
 rymple, President of the Court of Session, who had been 
 one of his guardians. The castle, which till then had con- 
 tinued in a habitable condition, was dismantled entirely, 
 and left to decay; while the lapse of a century in a 
 situation so exposed, as well as the depredations of those 
 who carried off stones from the ruins for rural purposes, 
 have reduced the remains to their present condition. 
 
 It is again mentioned in the same poem, in the following 
 beautiful description — 
 
 Close before them shewed 
 
 His towers, Tantallon vast 
 
TANTALLON. 
 
 Broad, massive, high, and stretching far, 
 
 And held impregnable in war. 
 
 On a projecting rock they rose, 
 
 And round three sides the ocean flows, 
 
 The fourth did battled walls enclose, 
 
 And double mound and fosse. 
 By narrow drawbridge, outworks strong, 
 Through studded gates, an entrance long, 
 
 To the main court they cross. 
 It was a wide and stately square ; 
 Around were lodgings fit and fair, 
 
 And towers of various form, 
 Which on the court projected far 
 And broke its lines quadrangular. 
 Here was square keep, there turret high, 
 Or pinnacle that sought the sky, 
 Whence oft the warder could descry 
 The gathering ocean storm. " 
 
 
THE LADY CLARE. 
 
 Marmion, canto vi. vol. vii. p. 309. 
 
 " And, for they were so lonely, Clare 
 Would to these battlements repair, 
 And muse upon her sorrows there, 
 
 And list the sea-bird's cry ; 
 Or slow, like noontide ghost, would glide 
 Along the dark-grey bulwark's side, 
 And ever on the heaving tide 
 
 Look down with weary eye. 
 Oft did the cliff, and swelling main, 
 Rival the thoughts of Whitby's fane, — 
 A home she ne'er might see again ; 
 
 For she had laid adown, 
 So Douglas bade, the hood and veil, 
 And frontlet of the cloister pale, 
 
 And Benedictine gown : 
 It were unseemly sight, he said, 
 A novice out of convent shade. — 
 Now her bright locks with sunny glow, 
 Again adorned her brow of snow ; 
 Her mantle rich, whose borders, round, 
 A deep and fretted broidery bound, 
 In golden foldings sought the ground; 
 Of holy ornament, alone 
 Remained a cross with ruby stone ; 
 And often did she look 
 On that, which in her hand she bore, 
 With velvet bound and broidered o'er, 
 Her Breviary book." 
 
T„ ,,,-,.■„ Pufrfohed /;/• Oucrles ri£t,fi6] Fleet Street.lddf. 
 
; ^ii 
 
BENVENUE. 
 
 High on the South, huge Benvenue 
 Down on the lake in masses threw 
 Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl'd, 
 The fragments of an earlier world." 
 
 Lady of the Lake, canto i. vol. viii. p. 39. 
 
 Benvenue, signifying the little mountain, so called from 
 its relative size, compared with Ben-Ledi and Ben-Lomond. 
 It is perhaps one of the most picturesque mountains in 
 Great Britain; situated two thousand eight hundred feet 
 above the level of the sea. On the side, besides the 
 immense masses of rock, which appear in this and all other 
 mountains to have been, by some convulsion of nature, torn 
 from the summit, the whole slope is covered, for two-thirds 
 upwards, with alders, birches, and mountain ashes, of 
 ancient growth^ and sprinkled over the surface with a grace 
 and beauty unattainable by the hand of art. At the first 
 opening of Loch Katrine especially, and for a considerable 
 way along the lake, the shoulder of Ben- Venue, stretching 
 northward in abrupt masses towards the shore, presents a 
 sloping ridge, elegantly feathered with birches, in a style 
 which the pencil may, in some degree, exhibit, but which 
 verbal description cannot easily represent. Ben- Venue is 
 rendered venerable in the superstition of the Highlanders, 
 
BENVENUE. 
 
 by the celebrated Coir-nan- Uriskin, the cave or recess of 
 goblins, situated near the base of the mountain on its 
 northern shoulder, and over-hanging the lake in solemn 
 grandeur. The reputed occupants of this cave, the Urisks, 
 were a sort of lubbarty supernaturals, who, like the brownies 
 of England, could be gained over by kind attention to per- 
 form the drudgery of the farm ; and it was betieved that 
 many families in the Highlands had one of the order 
 attached to it. 
 
 After landing on the skirts of Ben- Venue, is this cele- 
 brated cave, 
 
 " It was a wild and strange retreat, 
 As e'er was trod by outlaw's feet. 
 The dell, upon the mountain's crest, 
 Yawned like a gash on warrior's breast ; 
 Its trench had staid full many a rock, 
 Hurled by primaeval earthquake shock, 
 From Ben- Venue's grey summit wild, 
 And here in random ruin piled ; 
 They frowned incumbent o'er the spot, 
 And formed the rugged Sylvan grot." 
 
 " To attempt to portray," says Mr. Graham,* " the gloomy 
 grandeur of Coir-nan-Uriskin, after this most beautiful and 
 faithfully just picture, would be presumptuous. Let it 
 suffice to say, that it is a deep circular amphitheatre, at least 
 six hundred yards of extent in its upper diameter, gradually 
 narrowing towards the base, hemmed in all round by steep 
 
 * Sketches of Perthshire. 
 
BENVENUE. 
 
 and towering rocks, and rendered impenetrable to the rays 
 of the sun by a close covert of luxurious trees. On the 
 south and north it is bounded by the precipitous shoulder of 
 Ben- Venue to the height of at least five hundred feet : and 
 it is worth while to remark, that towards the east the work 
 appears at some former period to have tumbled down, strew- 
 ing the whole course of its fall with immense fragments, 
 which now only serve to give shelter to foxes, wild cats, 
 and badgers. The poet is sufficiently justified in supposing 
 this to have occasioned the demolition of the cave that gave 
 shelter to the Douglas and the fair Ellen. 
 
 " Douglas and his daughter fair 
 Sought for a space their safety there." 
 
ELLEN DOUGLAS AND FITZ-JAMES. 
 
 11 She sighed, then smiled, and took the word — 
 You see the guardian champion's sword, 
 As light it trembles in his hand, 
 As in my grasp a hazel wand." 
 
 The Lady of the Lake, canto i. vol. viii. p. 54. 
 
 The subject of this picture is the introduction of King 
 James V. of Scotland, under his assumed title of James 
 Fitz-James, the knight of Snowdoun, to the retreat of 
 the Earl of Douglas on one of the beautiful wooded islands 
 of Loch-Katrine, in Perthshire. This secure asylum, 
 which had been provided for the high-minded earl by the 
 care of Sir Roderic Dhu, a highland chieftain of Clan Alpin, 
 was a kind of sylvan mansion, very rudely constructed of 
 felled trees, moss, and thatch; its only decorations were 
 the trophies of war, and of the chase, which were not un- 
 gracefully hung round within this romantic abode. 
 
 The noble and animated heroine of Sir Walter Scott's 
 poem is represented descanting on one of the very large 
 swords, in use at that chivalric period, in which the scene 
 of " the Lady of the Lake" is laid. The espadon or two- 
 handed sword, was highly esteemed by all military men 
 at the commencement of the sixteenth century; but soon 
 after the introduction of the rapier, in the reign of Eliza- 
 
: -;:-- : 
 
 
 
ELLEN AND FITZ-JAMES. 
 
 beth, this ponderous weapon ceased to be used. The high 
 opinion entertained of this description of sword, which 
 exceeded the usual size, may be learned from several 
 authors on fencing, who wrote at the time. One of these 
 writers, from whom the young men of that day acquired 
 their knowledge of the science, says, " Because its weight 
 and bignes requires great strength, therefore those onlie 
 are allotted to the handling thereof which are mightie and 
 bigge to behould, great and strong in bodie, and of stout 
 and valiant courage."* He must, indeed, have been one 
 of the tallest and strongest of that noble brood, which com- 
 mands the admiration of posterity. 
 
 The position in which these apparently unwieldy weapons 
 were held is very particularly described in the old Manuals 
 of Exercise, which serve as text books to the antiquary, and 
 the proportion of the espadon is thus given : " The perfect 
 length of your two-handed sword is, the blade to be the 
 length and hilt of your single sword." Being flourished 
 "with great swiftness" its stroke then toppled down many 
 opponents at a blow; the sword was, it seems, so well 
 poised, by a skilful hand, as even to excite astonishment in 
 the minds of the spectator. 
 
 The art of tempering steel, it is well known, was carried 
 to the greatest perfection in the swords that were made by 
 the Ferrara family, and by the artists of Milan at this 
 
 * See "The True Art of Defence," by Giacomo di Grassi, of Mo- 
 dena. Translated by an English Gentleman, and edited by Churchyard 
 the poet, in 1594. 
 
ELLEN AND FITZ-JAMES. 
 
 time, and when armour formed the costume of the higher 
 ranks of society, human ingenuity was taxed to the utmost 
 to embellish every piece in the costliest and most elaborate 
 manner. 
 
 The simple bar, termed the cross, which formed the 
 guard of the sword, was sometimes highly ornamented, and, 
 as it had been customary with the knights of renown in 
 making a vow, or on other solemn occasions, to kiss the 
 cross of their swords in lieu of a crucifix, the blades near 
 that part were frequently engraved with figures of favourite 
 saints. 
 
 A German sword, an unquestionable relic of " the 
 
 glorious days,"* and which was made, probably, very soon 
 
 after the reformation in religion had taken place, has an 
 
 engraved stanza on its cross-bar, which may be thus 
 
 translated — 
 
 " A new saint, called Ruffian, 
 Who ready is for every man."-}- 
 
 Costume in its most comprehensive import, forms one of 
 the most interesting departments of historical study, and 
 includes not merely attire and personal ornament, but 
 whatever constitutes the characteristic of any particular 
 period. The influence which the wars in Italy had on 
 the manners and habits of those engaged in them, caused 
 
 * Now in the magnificent collection of armour at Goodrich Court, in 
 Herefordshire, formed by the taste and experience of Sir Samuel 
 Meyrick. 
 
 f " Skelton's Illustrations of Ancient Armour." Plate ciii. 
 

 ELLEN AND FITZ-JAMES. 
 
 an extensive change in the national character of the rest 
 of civilized Europe. The long vestments, which had for 
 ages been the general attire, gradually became shorter and 
 shorter; other parts of dress underwent various changes, all 
 the patterns for which came from Italy, and the very broad 
 shoes, a la guimbarde, superseded the use of the sharp 
 pointed shoes that had been worn for several centuries. 
 
 In the reign of James V. a light and graceful style, a 
 decidedly chivalric air of attire, bespoke the prevalence of 
 gallantry and romantic feeling, when the ideal beings of 
 metrical fable furnished the models of actual manners in the 
 Scottish court. 
 
 The influence of a constant intercourse with France 
 and Italy manifested itself in various modifications of dress 
 derived from foreigners. The mode of curling the hair in 
 ringlets was introduced by Eleanor of Austria; and while 
 Venice sent its stuffs of gold and silver, Lombardy its 
 jewellery, Genoa its velvets, and Milan its embroidery, 
 Flanders and Germany contributed the singular fashion of 
 pinked and slashed clothes, which originated in the vanity 
 of shewing the extremely fine linen worn beneath them. 
 
 Grotesque and extravagant as the fashion certainly was, 
 the costume of that day was decidedly one of the most 
 elegant ever adopted, and more especially that of the ladies, 
 which must be regarded as a pattern of noble simplicity, 
 gracefulness, and taste. 
 
 This commanding elegance is, doubtless, to be attributed 
 to the numerous Italian artists of celebrity, who, at the 
 
 L 
 
ELLEN AND FITZ-JAMES. 
 
 period of the revival of the fine arts, introduced great 
 improvements into the costume of that time, and imparted 
 a fancy and richness, in comparison with which all modern 
 designs appear insipid, tame, and feeble.* 
 
 The name of Douglas, that of the heroine of the poem 
 here illustrated, is known to be illustrious in the annals of 
 Scotland; the ancestors of this noble family have the highest 
 claim to celebrity, and are recorded as more distinguished 
 by their virtue and merit than by their titles and opulence. 
 The lustre of their actions outshines even the splendour of 
 their birth. A venerable historian prefaces his account of 
 the family with the following couplet, as an incentive to 
 emulation : 
 
 " So many, so good, as of the Douglasses have been 
 Of one surname, were ne'er in Scotland seene." 
 
 James Lord Douglas, a knight of distinguished renown, 
 who has acquired from posterity the title of " The Good," 
 also laid the foundation of the greatness of the House of 
 Douglas. He was famed for martial enthusiasm, and his 
 abhorrence of infidels engaged him in crusades, in which he 
 was no less than thirteen times victorious over the Saracens ; 
 one of his exploits, which was considered little less glorious 
 than a victory, is commemorated in the heraldic insignia 
 incidental to the name of Douglas, and familiar to every 
 
 * A very interesting article on this subject, translated from the 
 German by W. H. Leeds, appeared in " The Graphic Illustrator," a 
 periodical work which merited a better fate than befel it. 
 
ELLEN AND FITZ-JAMES. 
 
 one; they are thus blazoned in rude metre in the popular 
 poem of " Chevy Chase," which was written at least as 
 early as the reign of Henry VI. 
 
 " The blodye harte, in the Dowglas' arms, 
 His standard stode on hye, 
 That every man might full well knowe, 
 By syde stode starres three." 
 
 The ancient arms of the family were azure, three stars 
 in chief argent: these are still to be seen on several old 
 monuments at Piacenza in Italy. James Lord Douglas, 
 a constant adherent of King Robert Bruce, undertook a 
 journey to Jerusalem with that king's heart, which he 
 caused to be interred in the Holy Sepulchre upon Mount 
 Calvary, in consequence of a solemn vow he had made to 
 the monarch. After this responsible service, the knight 
 changed his armorial bearing, and assumed for his coat of 
 arms, a white field charged with a man's heart in its proper 
 colour, and placed the stars in an azure chief on his shield ; 
 but Nisbet the Scottish herald, with some authority tells us 
 that the heart of Bruce in the Douglas's arms was not 
 ensigned with an imperial crown, as now borne, until some 
 ages after the pilgrimage of the good Sir James to the 
 Holy Land.* Another peculiarity in the arms of this 
 noble family is found in the achievement of James Douglas 
 Earl of Angus in the year 1434, which is represented in 
 a singular manner, surrounded with the impalement, or 
 
 * Nisbet's Heraldry. Vol. i. p. 70. 
 
ELLEN AND FITZ-JAMES. 
 
 fence- work of a forest ; it is still borne by the descendants 
 of this race. Amongst the armorial quarterings to which 
 the Douglases are entitled by marriages with heiresses, are 
 the arms of Galloway and Annandale, and when Dukes of 
 Touraine, they quartered the arms of that Duchy. 
 
 The connexion of heraldry with the chivalrous exploits 
 of the heroes of the middle ages, will always ensure for 
 it a portion of that interest which the metrical romances 
 of the same period seldom fail to excite ; others, who do not 
 very readily comprehend its pleasing variety of form and 
 colour, are content to resign its charms, together with the 
 follies of romance, as a pursuit fit only for the delight of 
 a barbarous and unlettered race, amongst whom a strong 
 love of the marvellous prevailed. 
 
 Although the shield of the knight was charged with his 
 armorial bearings, by which, together with his crested helmet 
 and his emblazoned caparison, he might be readily known in 
 the heat of battle, his vavasors, the faithful Highlanders, 
 were only furnished with a round target formed of wood, 
 and covered with black leather. Steel targets were some- 
 times used in the field; but according to an experienced 
 judge of these matters, "their weight are such, that few 
 men will endure to carie them, if they be of good proofe, 
 one houre. I persuade myself the best arming of targetters 
 is to have the corselets of reasonable proofe, and the targets 
 light, so that the bearers may the better and nimbler 
 assaile, and fight the longer in defending." Some fencers 
 preferred the shield, as superior in its efficacy to all other 
 
ELLEN AND FITZ-JAMES. 
 
 weapons of defence, and it is observed that many soldiers 
 held it resting on the thigh, while others by bending the 
 arm brought it close to the body. One author on the 
 subject says, "This weapon is so greatly esteemed of 
 princes, lords, and gentlemen, that besides the use thereof 
 in their affairs, as well by day as by night, they also keep 
 their houses richly decked and beautified therewith ;" thus 
 furnishing an early instance of the display of armour on the 
 walls of rooms. 
 
BRIG OF BRACKLINN. 
 
 Wild as Brackliim's thundering wave." 
 
 Lady of the Lake, canto ii. vol. viii. p, 82. 
 
 In the glen betwixt Brackland and Achinlaich, there is a 
 bridge on the water of Kelty, consisting of two sticks, 
 covered with a few branches of trees and some turf, which 
 is abundantly romantic and dangerous. The sticks are laid 
 across the chasm with their ends resting on the rocks, which 
 project on opposite sides, about fifty feet high, above a 
 deep pool. On the one hand, the white cascade pre- 
 cipitates itself from a height above the bridge, with a 
 tremendous noise, occasioned by the conflict of the rocks, 
 the narrowness of the passage, and the lofty column of 
 water, whose spray often wets the clothes of the admiring 
 spectator. On the other hand, the winding glen, which 
 deepens as it descends; the gloominess of the hanging 
 rocks, of the shading trees, and black pools, strike with 
 terror and with awe. Yet the people of the adjacent farms, 
 from the mere force of habit, pass and repass with very 
 little concern ; although the very act of looking down, 
 when there is a flood in the water, must fill the head of a 
 
s=3 z 
 
BRIG OF BRACKLINN. 
 
 stranger with a swimming giddiness, owing to the altitude 
 of his situation, the deafening roar of the torrent, the 
 gloomy horror of the glen, and the whirling of the pool 
 below, into which the cascade falls, rolling, tossing, thun- 
 dering down. 
 
 Kelty is a name given to rapid waters, in many parts of 
 the world, and in different languages. The name signifies 
 the loss and destruction which these torrents, rising so 
 suddenly, bring on everything opposed to their course. 
 Smooth waters are never called Kelty. There is a Kelty 
 in Strathern, and another in Abyssinia. 
 
DUMFERMLINE. 
 
 "But merrier were they in Dumfermline grey, 
 When all the bells were ringing." 
 
 Lady of the Lake, canto iv. vol. viii. p. 183. 
 
 This is generally considered the most ancient relict of 
 religious magnificence in Scotland, and was founded as a 
 priory by Malcolm Canmore, for monks of the Benedictine 
 order. He left it unfinished ; but it was completed by his 
 son and successor Alexander I., who dedicated it to the 
 Holy Trinity and St. Margaret, the Queen of the original 
 founder Malcolm. The abbey was endowed with very 
 considerable estates. Among other curious grants made 
 to this favoured house, was that of the heads of certain 
 fishes, the tongues excepted, supposed to be a small species 
 of whale caught in a particular district of the Forth near 
 the Abbey church. It was originally a most magnificent 
 structure, but it fell a barbarous sacrifice, during the wars 
 between England and Scotland in the fourteenth century, 
 when it was almost burnt down. 
 
 Some idea may be formed of the extent of its domains, 
 since it was found sufficiently capacious to form a residence 
 for King Edward I. of England, who wintered here in 
 the year 1303. 
 
 The cells which escaped the damages done by the 
 

 rr i ?mm S i ! 
 
 ■lady car tj/js i 
 
 ' !!■ 1838, by Charges Till , t led Stn 
 
DUMFERMLINE. 
 
 English, were destroyed by the reformers in 1560, and 
 the ruins now remaining are very inconsiderable — a window 
 belonging to the Frater Hall still remains, which displays 
 considerable beauty. The church is of great antiquity, 
 undoubtedly forming part of the magnificent structure 
 erected by Malcolm Canmore. It resembles the cathedral 
 of Durham, is very capacious, but is unfortunately left in 
 a state of neglect, too common with similar remains, and a 
 matter of reproach from which England is not entirely 
 free : a better spirit seems, however, reviving ; and as we 
 do not venture on erecting structures that can compare 
 with the efforts of our ancestors, let us hope that a general 
 and decided step will be taken to prevent further decay. 
 The church formed a place of sepulture for the ancient 
 royal family of Scotland ; in it were interred the remains 
 of the founder, his Queen St. Margaret, and other Scottish 
 monarchs. But the wild fury of Knox and his associates 
 destroyed the principal parts of this stately fabric, and 
 the royal monuments suffered in the desolation. 
 
 In the church also is the tomb of Robert Pitcairn, Com- 
 mendator of Dumfermline, Secretary of State in the begin- 
 ning of the reign of James VI. in the regency of Lenox. 
 He was of Morton's faction, and was sent to the court of 
 Elizabeth to solicit the delivery of Mary Stuart into 
 the hands of the king's party. He attended James in his 
 imprisonment, after the Raid of Ruthven, and artfully en- 
 deavoured to make friends with each side. Notwithstand- 
 ing the praises bestowed upon him in his epitaph, tradition 
 
 M 
 
DUMFERMLINE. 
 
 says he did not escape the tongue of detraction ; to which 
 
 the following inscription, over the door of his house in the 
 
 May-gate, is said to allude — 
 
 " Sen word is thrall, and Thocht is free, 
 Keip veil thy tonge I counsell the :" 
 
 he was accused of incontinence. 
 
 In the palace of Dumfermline, was born the unfortunate 
 Charles I. The nuptial bed of his mother, Anne of Den- 
 mark, which she is reported to have brought with her 
 from Denmark, was about the latter end of the last century 
 in the possession of an innkeeper at Dumfermline. For 
 this piece of royal furniture, Mrs. Walker, the landlady, 
 a zealous Jacobite, entertained a very high veneration. 
 Bishop Pocock of Ireland, happened to be at her house, 
 and having seen the bed, offered her fifty guineas for it ; 
 which she refused, telling him that she still retained so 
 great a reverence for the two royal personages whose 
 property it was, and who slept in it when they resided 
 here, and to their posterity, that all the gold and silver was 
 not fit to buy it. Some time before her death, Mrs. 
 Walker made a present of the queen's bed to the Earl 
 of Elgin. It was made of walnut-tree of curious work- 
 manship, and ornamented with several very antique figures 
 neatly carved. 
 
 In the library of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh, is 
 a copy of St. Jerome's Bible in MS. beautifully illuminated, 
 said to have been used in the great church at Dumfermline 
 in the reign of David I. 
 
 
ED BY H.C.SHEf 
 
 - 
 
 | 
 
 ; HARLES TILT. FLEET SI F Li- 
 
THE KNIGHT OF SNOWDOUN. 
 
 " 'T is under name which veils my power ? — 
 Nor falsely veils, — for Stirling's tower 
 Of yore the name of Snowdoun claims." 
 
 Lady of the Lake, vol. viii. p. 295. 
 
 None of the royal palaces of Scotland appear to have been 
 more favoured by the successive princes of the House of 
 Stuart, than the Castle of Stirling, which crowns the hill 
 so admirably, and commands a view of immense extent, in 
 which mountainous magnificence, beauty of woods and 
 plains, rugged rocks, and winding waters, form a scene 
 almost unequalled for variety. By some of the earlier 
 Scottish writers, Stirling Castle has been called Snowdoun ; 
 an appellation supposed to have been derived from a 
 romantic legend which connected Stirling with King 
 Arthur, and received countenance from a mound within 
 the adjacent park, known by the name of the Round Table 
 as early as the days of Barbour, the cotemporary of Gower 
 and Chaucer. 
 
 Sir David Lindsay, the Lion King, who was the youthful 
 playfellow of King James V., apostrophizes Stirling by the 
 same romantic name : 
 
 " Adieu, fair Snowdoun, with thy towers high, 
 Thy chapel royal, park, and table round." 
 
THE KNIGHT OF SNOWDOUN. 
 
 The fondness of the Scottish nobility for architectural 
 splendour was so remarkable that it has been mentioned as 
 a national characteristic, and the feeling seems always to 
 have been hereditary in the line of the monarchs. 
 
 King James I., who began his reign in the year 1406, 
 was familiar with the situation of Windsor Castle during 
 his captivity in England, and the resemblance which Stir- 
 ling is thought to bear to Windsor, is considered to have 
 been the origin of the preference which James bestowed on 
 this very delightful residence. The oldest parts of the 
 building, which rise on the extremity of the ridge, are 
 undoubtedly of this reign ; they bear few traces of their 
 original splendour, but are interesting as connected with 
 the character of the feudal ages, and as a picturesque em- 
 bellishment of the admired scenery. His grandson, King 
 James III., made many considerable additions to the castle, 
 particularly to the hall; but the most attractive feature of 
 the present remains of Stirling Castle, is that part of 
 the palace erected by King James V. about the year 1530, 
 during the prevalence of a taste for magnificent architecture. 
 No other part of the castle, indeed, will bear a comparison 
 with this, for its sumptuous decoration. 
 
 One of the principal apartments of this quadrangular 
 building is called the King's Room, or Presence, and is 
 enriched on the exterior with numerous statues in the gor- 
 geous and fanciful costume of the period ; one of which is 
 considered to bear a strong resemblance to the monarch 
 himself. These figures are all executed with the masterly 
 
THE KNIGHT OF SNOWDOUN. 
 
 freedom of the Florentine school, and worked with extraor- 
 dinary care. 
 
 It was from one of the panels of the interior of this 
 elegant apartment that the portrait of the King, in the 
 plate, was derived. The ceiling of the room was originally 
 composed of singular specimens of carving in oak, in very 
 large compartments : a careful examination of these panels 
 has induced a belief that the subjects represented were not 
 ideal, but that each head was intended by the artist for the 
 individual portrait of some distinguished personage at the 
 court of James V. 
 
 The whole of this enriched ceiling was pulled down at 
 the time the room was converted into an additional barrack 
 for the soldiers of the garrison, and little is now left to 
 indicate its former grandeur. The large panels were almost 
 immediately dispersed amongst a variety of persons, and no 
 drawing having been made of the general design, it is 
 impossible to obtain a correct knowledge of their relative 
 situations. 
 
 It would have been very desirable to have known the 
 arrangement of the panels on the ceiling, as that might, in 
 all probability, have thrown a light on the persons intended 
 in the several carvings. Nearly forty of the panels are yet 
 extant; but the disappearance of almost all the painted 
 historical portraits of that age prevents the possibility of 
 discovering, in every case, the personage the carver might 
 have had in view. In some instances this has been accom- 
 plished; as in the case of the more prominent persons of the 
 
THE KNIGHT OF SNOWDOUN. 
 
 Scottish court, whose features are well known, in conse- 
 quence of the existence of cotemporary pictures by painters 
 of talent. 
 
 The carved head whence our print is taken, bears the 
 closest resemblance to the portrait of King James V. in the 
 rare book entitled, Inscriptiones Historicce Return Scotorum, 
 published in 1602, by John Johnston, the king's professor 
 of divinity at the university of St. Andrew's. The features 
 of the monarch are of precisely the same cast, although more 
 regular in the carving than in Johnston's print; the cap 
 and the whole character of the costume are exactly similar. 
 King James, according to the best authorities, was in his 
 person of the middle size, elegant and majestic ; and 
 although strong and athletic, of a graceful behaviour. His 
 face was oval, his eyes blue, his nose aquiline, and his hair 
 yellow ; his features were handsome, if his gold coins faith- 
 fully represent them ; these, of the finest workmanship then 
 extant in Europe, have seldom, even since, been excelled. 
 King James V. was the first of the sovereigns of his family 
 that suffered his beard to grow, — his was forked. It has 
 been remarked as a singularity in the state of the arts at 
 this period, that although his money is of so fine an 
 execution, one of his great seals (for he had two) is miserably 
 engraved. 
 
 The original carving here represented is in the pos- 
 session of John Crawford, Esq. of Leith. The portrait is 
 within a garland of oak, the leaves of which are tastefully 
 displayed in a circle. Besides the ancient Order of the 
 
THE KNIGHT OF SNOWDOUN. 
 
 Thistle peculiar to Scotland, King James V. was graced 
 with the Orders of St. George, the Golden Fleece, and St. 
 Michael. The mottos and other ornaments, introduced as 
 a characteristic frame-work of the portrait, have reference 
 to the poem in the scene with Fitz-James, upon Ellen 
 Douglas' introduction to court : 
 
 "And Snowdoun's knight is Scotland's king." 
 
 Another of the heads introduced in the panelling of this 
 highly ornamental ceiling, is said to be a close representa- 
 tion of Mary of Guise, whom King James V. married in 
 1537, after the death of his first queen, Magdalen; the 
 carving is considered to bear a remarkable resemblance to 
 an original picture of that princess in the gallery of his 
 Grace the Duke of Devonshire. She was no less beautiful 
 than her daughter, the celebrated Mary Queen of Scots. 
 This panel is in the possession of General Graham. 
 
 The borders of these portraits, in imitation of vegetable 
 forms, abound in exuberance of fancy and variety of elegant 
 delineation ; they will bear comparison with the beautiful 
 arabesques of Italy ; and the tasteful workmanship, as well 
 as the spirit of the designs, entitle them to admiration, 
 without taking into view the period at which they were 
 produced. 
 
 The art of carving in wood was familiar to the early 
 artists of every country ; and in many of the other heads 
 belonging to this ceiling, which were saved from de- 
 struction, there is found an elegance of attitude, a delicacy 
 
THE KNIGHT OF SNOWDOUN. 
 
 of expression, and an air of high breeding, shewing clearly 
 that it is a mistake to suppose that Scotland in the age of 
 James V. was destitute of perception and feeling for the 
 best and most rare qualities with which the art at any 
 period can be endowed. 
 
 Thirty-eight of the series of Scottish portraits have been 
 engraved in a folio volume published at Edinburgh in the 
 year 1817, entitled, " Hacimar Stretielinense : a collection of 
 Heads, after the carved work which formerly decorated the 
 roof of the King's room in Stirling Castle." In this Book 
 a very particular account of the curious and costly embel- 
 lishments of this splendid ancient apartment will be found. 
 

EGGLISTON. 
 
 " Eggleston's gray ruins." 
 
 Rokeby, canto ii. vol. ix. p. 81, 
 
 Eggliston, says Whitaker, is distinguished by the beau- 
 tiful though not magnificent remains of a Prsemonstraten- 
 sian Priory, standing on the brink of a steep and lofty 
 brow, at the juncture of the Tees with Thorgill, extremely 
 resembling a site which would have been chosen for a 
 Roman station. Immediately beneath, that broad and rapid 
 stream rolls over a bed of grey limestone, which, according 
 to Leland, was in his time wrought as a marble quarry, and 
 from which unquestionably most of the ponderous and 
 gigantic tombs yet remaining in the churches of Rich- 
 mondshire have been extracted. 
 
 Of Eggliston Priory the church is almost yet entire. It 
 is a monastic building, adapted to the revenues of the 
 foundation, and therefore, in point of extent and style, not 
 above the third order. It is a regular cross, but without 
 aisles ; forty-five paces within from east to west, and thirty 
 in the line of the transept from north to south. Having 
 had no aisles, it has, in consequence, been deprived of the 
 ornament of columns. Another disadvantage, which arises 
 from the declivity of the ground is, that a steep descent 
 
EGGLISTON. 
 
 takes place to the altar. The whole outline appears to be 
 of the original fabric, and several of the first lancet lights 
 remain; but the wide yawning east window, supported, 
 instead of ramified tracery, by perpendicular mullions, 
 which give an impression of temporary props erected to 
 sustain a falling arch, is a singular deformity. Of this 
 design, so unhappily and tastelessly conceived, I have only 
 seen one other specimen; yet it has not escaped the 
 gothicness of the present day, who, in their neglect of 
 better things, have not failed to copy the east window of 
 Eggliston. It is greatly to be regretted, says the same 
 authority, that from its distance these ruins could not have 
 been comprehended within the park and grounds of Rokeby; 
 but they are capable, at a moderate expense, of being 
 rendered more pleasing as the object of a visit — of being 
 restored to that silence, sequestration, and neatness, which 
 was their original character. 
 
 Its name is supposed to have been derived from Aikhel- 
 ston (the town of the hill covered with oaks), which is the 
 character of the scenery. It is believed to have been 
 founded by Ralph de Multon, in the latter end of the reign 
 of King Henry the Second, or the beginning of that of 
 Richard the First. The Lord Dacres, who married the 
 heiress of the Multons, was patron of this house at the 
 dissolution. 
 
 A mutilated statue of an abbot, removed from the abbey, 
 is preserved on Mr. Morritt's grounds. 
 
GLEN OF THE GRETA. 
 
 " The open vale is soon pass'd o'er, 
 Rokeby, though nigh, is seen no more, 
 Sinking mid Greta's thickets deep, 
 A wilder and darker course they keep, 
 A stern and lone, yet lovely road 
 As e'er the foot of minstrel trode." 
 
 Rokeby, canto ii. vol. ix. p. 85. 
 
 The Greta finds a passage between Rokeby and Mortham; 
 the former situated upon the left bank of Greta, the latter 
 on the right bank, about half a mile nearer to its junction 
 with the Tees. The river runs with very great rapidity 
 over a bed of solid rock, broken by many shelving descents, 
 down which the stream dashes with great noise and impetu- 
 osity, vindicating its etymology, which has been derived 
 from the Gothic, gridan, to clamour. The banks partake 
 of the same wild and romantic character, being chiefly lofty 
 cliffs of limestone rock, whose grey colour contrasts admir- 
 ably with the various trees and shrubs which find root 
 among their crevices, as well as with the hue of the ivy, 
 which clings around them in profusion, and hangs down 
 from their projections in long sweeping tendrils. At other 
 points, the rocks give place to precipitous banks of earth, 
 
GLEN OF THE GRETA. 
 
 bearing large trees intermingled with copsewood. In one 
 spot, the dell, which is elsewhere very narrow, widens for a 
 space to leave room for a dark grove of yew trees, inter- 
 mixed here and there with aged pines of uncommon size. 
 Directly opposite to this sombre thicket, the cliffs on the 
 other side of the Greta are tall, white, and fringed with all 
 kinds of deciduous shrubs. The whole scenery of this spot 
 is so much adapted to the ideas of superstition, that it has 
 acquired the name of Blockhula, from the place where the 
 Swedish witches were supposed to hold their sabbath. 
 The dell, however, has superstitions of its own growth ; for 
 it is supposed to be haunted by a female spectre, called the 
 Dobie of Mortham. The cause assigned for her appear- 
 ance is a lady's having been whilom murdered in the wood ; 
 in evidence of which, her blood is shewn upon the stairs of 
 the old tower at Mortham. But whether she was slain by 
 a jealous husband, or by savage banditti, or by an uncle 
 who coveted her estate, or by a rejected lover, are points 
 upon which the traditions of Rokeby do not enable us to 
 decide. 
 
 A short walk from the residence of the proprietor of this 
 delightful domain, leads to a modern bridge over the Greta, 
 and to an apartment placed on the brink of the rock, and 
 said to have been painted by the hand of Mason, from 
 which all the outrages of this dreadful torrent may be 
 contemplated in perfect security, though it sometimes 
 washes the foundation of the building above thirty feet 
 perpendicular from the channel. When the writer of these 
 
GLEN OF THE GRETA. 
 
 notes * saw it, in tranquillity, a marble bed, over which a 
 clear and lively mountain-stream hurried to the Tees, deep 
 and abrupt crags to right and left, and aged over-hanging 
 woods, as various in their forms as their species, formed the 
 character of the scene. On the whole, it most resembles 
 the stupendous termination of the Croglin in Cumberland ; 
 but the channel of the Greta is wider, less contorted, less 
 abrupt, and the rocks not of equal depth to those of Cum- 
 berland ; but in the solemnity and antiquity of the woods, 
 which darken the Greta, it has greatly the advantage. 
 Immense masses also of limestone, which even in their 
 native beds have much the effect of marble, dignify the 
 whole scene, and afford a much finer colouring than the 
 brickdust hue of the Cumberland rocks. 
 
 On the whole, the several features of Rokeby and 
 Mortham, combining the union of the Tees and Greta, 
 with their rocks, and native woods; the venerable but 
 almost disappearing fragments of the old parish church, 
 with the gravestones just peeping above the greensward; 
 the memory of the brave, the pious, the spirited family, 
 whose residence so long animated the scene; the Roman 
 station, partly within the park, and the near prospect of 
 Egglistone Abbey, with which in life and death the 
 Rokebys were so nearly connected, must be allowed to 
 constitute, in the eye of taste or in the exercise of recol- 
 lection, one of the most enchanting residences in the North 
 of England. 
 
 * Dr. Whitaker. 
 
MATILDA. 
 
 Rokeby, vol. ix. p. 170. 
 
 " Wreathed in its dark-brown rings, her hair 
 Half hid Matilda's forehead fair, 
 Half hid, and half revealed to view 
 Her full dark eye of hazel hue. 
 The rose, with faint and feeble streak, 
 So slightly tinged the maiden's cheek, 
 That you had said her hue was pale ; 
 But if she faced the summer gale, 
 Or spoke, or sung, or quicker moved, 
 Or heard the praise of those she loved,— 
 Or when if interest was expressed, 
 Aught that waked feeling in her breast, 
 The mantling blood, in ready play, 
 Rivalled the blush of rising day. 
 There was a soft and pensive grace, 
 A cast of thought upon her face, 
 That suited well the forehead high, 
 The eye-lash dark, and downcast eye ; 
 The mild expression spoke a mind 
 In duty firm, composed, resigned." 
 
 
Lov.. 
 
BARNARD CASTLE. 
 
 " Old Barnard's towers are purple still, 
 To those that gaze from Toller Hill." 
 
 Rolceby, canto v. vol. ix. p. 207. 
 
 " Barnard Castle," saith old Leland, " standeth stately 
 upon Tees." It is founded upon a very high bank, and 
 its ruins impend over the river, including within the area 
 a circuit of six acres and upwards. This once magnificent 
 fortress derives its name from its founder, Barnard Baliol, 
 the ancestor of the short and unfortunate dynasty of that 
 name, which succeeded to the Scottish throne under the 
 patronage of Edward I. and Edward III. Baliol's tower, 
 afterwards mentioned in the poem, is a round tower of 
 great size, situated at the western extremity of the build- 
 ing. It bears marks of great antiquity, and was remarkable 
 for the curious construction of its vaulted roof, which has 
 been lately greatly injured by the operations of some 
 persons to whom the tower has been leased, for the purpose 
 of making patent shot. The prospect from the top of 
 Baliol's tower commands a rich and magnificent view of 
 the Tees. 
 
 It stands upon an eminence about eighty feet perpen- 
 dicular above the river, amidst some of the wildest and 
 
BARNARD CASTLE. 
 
 most beautiful landscape scenery in the kingdom. The rapid 
 river, buried within deep rocks and steep wooded banks, 
 almost encircles the ancient town, and dashes through the 
 bridge beneath the walls of the castle ; Leland says, " The 
 Castelle of Barnard standeth stately upon Tese ; the first 
 area hath no very notable thing in it, but the fair chapelle, 
 where be two cantuaries. In the middle of the body of 
 this chapelle, is a fair marble tumbe, with an image and an 
 inscription about it in French. Ther is another in the 
 south waul of the body of the chapelle, of frestone, with an 
 image of the same ; sum say that they were of the Bail- 
 liolles. The inner area is very large, and partly moted, 
 and welle furnished with toures of great logging. Ther 
 belong two parks to this castelle; the one is caullid Mar- 
 wood, and therby is a chase, that bereth also the name of 
 Marwood, and that goeth on Tese Ripe unto Tesedale." 
 It was then in possession of the crown; but in 1635, Sir 
 Henry Vane, cofferer to the king, obtained from Charles 
 I. a grant of free-warren, with the offices of master forester 
 and chief warden of all forests and chases within the demesne 
 of Barnard Castle, for him and his heirs. From him 
 descended Christopher Vane, who was created Lord Bar- 
 nard in 1699 : one of the titles of the present noble owner 
 the Duke of Cleveland. The remains of the castle cover 
 six acres and three quarters of ground. The western side 
 of the court contained the state chambers ; over an oriel 
 window, in one of which, is the cognizance of a boar. 
 Adjoining these apartments, on the north-west corner of 
 
BARNARD CASTLE. 
 
 the fortress, is a circular tower, with the stairs channelled in 
 the wall. 
 
 In the Flats, the adjoining grounds, is a large reservoir, 
 called the Ever : water was collected, and conveyed there in 
 pipes, to supply the garrison and cattle, inclosed within 
 the walls of the outer areas, in times of public danger. 
 The outer area of the castle is now used as a pasture for 
 sheep, and other parts inclosed by the walls have been 
 converted into orchard ground. Many portions of the 
 ruin are covered with ivy, and present very fine views, 
 particularly from the south bank of the river. 
 
 The area on the side of the market-place appears not to 
 have had any communication with the chief strong-holds 
 and bulwarks of the fortress, and is separated from the 
 interior buildings by a deep fosse, which surrounds the 
 rest of the castle. This area is fenced with a high wall 
 along the edge of the rocks behind Brig-gate. The gate- 
 way to the Flats, opens from a large area to the ancient 
 road, which communicated with the ford. This area, 
 together with that before described, was anciently used 
 to receive the cattle of the adjacent country, in times 
 of invasion and public danger. The gateway is defended 
 by a demi-bastion, and the broken walls shew appearances 
 of maskings and out-works. At a turn of the wall south- 
 ward was a tower, which flanked the wall towards the gate, 
 from which, over the fosse, was a drawbridge. This area 
 contains the remains of some edifices, one of which was 
 called Brackenbury's tower. The chief strong-holds stand 
 
 o 
 
BARNARD CASTLE. 
 
 on more elevated ground than any within the areas 
 described; they were surrounded by a dry ditch, or 
 covered way, with small gateways through the intersect- 
 ing walls : this ditch is terminated on one hand by a sally- 
 port that commanded the bridge to the west : and on the 
 other by a sally-port to the north ; the covered way almost 
 surrounding the inner fortress. The area, in which the 
 chief erections were arranged, is almost circular ; the build- 
 ings are of different seras. Northward, the walls are of 
 modern and superior architecture, supported by strong 
 buttresses, and defended by a square turret towards the 
 east : to the south, the wall appears very ancient and thick, 
 and has been strengthened by trains, or lines of large oak 
 beams, disposed in tiers in the centre of the wall at equal 
 distances, so as to render it firm against battering engines. 
 The west side of the area contained the principal apartments; 
 the state rooms stood in this quarter : two large painted 
 windows, looking upon the river, seem to be the most 
 modern ; together with a bow window, hung on corbies in 
 the upper ceiling: here is the figure of a boar passant, 
 relieved and in good preservation. Adjoining these apart- 
 ments, is a circular tower of excellent masonry, in ashler 
 work, having a vault, the roof of which is plain, without 
 ribs or central pillar. This vault is thirty feet in diameter ; 
 the stairs of the ascent to the upper apartments are chan- 
 nelled in the wall. 
 
HALL AT ROKEBY. 
 
 Then as he crossed the vaulted porch 
 The old grey porter raised his torch, 
 And viewed him o'er from foot to head, 
 Ere to the hall his steps he led." 
 
 Rokeby, canto v. vol. ix. p. 211. 
 
 The view which the artist has painted in illustration of this 
 passage, is entirely fictitious, although no doubt the eminent 
 poet had the residence of the Rokebys of Mortham in his 
 mind at the time the passage was written. 
 
 Mortham is an embattled house, the residence of the 
 Rokebys after their ancient inheritance was sold, till some 
 of the ordinary causes of decay in ancient families, com- 
 pelled them to alienate this their last stake. Their arms 
 still appear on the exterior, and on a wall within. The 
 pile was probably erected about the reign of Henry VII., 
 a true Border mansion, with all the peculiar features of that 
 era and rank of domestic architecture ; — a thorough lobby, 
 kitchens to the left hand, with arched doors out of the 
 lobby to the butteries ; a hall on the right hand up to the 
 roof, and a handsome tower beyond the hall. At one end 
 is a bamekyn inclosure, for the nightly protection of the 
 castle from depredators, strongly walled about with stone. 
 
HALL AT ROKEBY. 
 
 To a field on the south, has been conveyed the immense 
 tombstone, of Greta or Tees marble, mentioned by Leland, 
 and removed within memory, from Eggliston Abbey. 
 
 From the Felon Sow,* it is evident that the Rokebys 
 were resident at Mortham in the reign of Henry VII., and 
 it does not seem probable that they ever returned to 
 Rokeby, as the Robinsons were certainly possessed of it 
 in the earlier part of the following century. The present 
 tower may, with the greatest probability, be ascribed to 
 Ralph Rokeby, who is there mentioned. 
 
 * This singular specimen of early English poetry is printed in Mr. 
 Evans' Collection of Ballads, and another version of it in the Appendix 
 to Rokebv. 
 

THE TOMB OF ROKEBY. 
 
 " The civil fury of the time 
 
 Made sport of sacrilegious crime ; 
 For dark fanaticism rent 
 
 Altar, and screen, and ornament ; 
 And peasant hands the tombs o'erthrew 
 Of Bowes, of Rokeby, and Fitzhugh." 
 
 RoJceby, canto vi. vol. ix. p. 290. 
 
 The general neglect into which the ecclesiastical edifices of 
 the kingdom had fallen after the Reformation, gave rise to 
 the proverb, that "Pater Noster built churches, but Our 
 Father pulls them down;" an observation rendered more 
 striking by the desecration of the Puritans, committed 
 under the authority of parliament, in the reign of Charles 
 the First. A great many of our finest churches, amidst 
 relics of ecclesiastical antiquity, bear evidence of having 
 been denuded by puritanical sacrilege ; and Dr. Whitaker, 
 a very learned antiquary, in his " History of Craven," 
 deplores that " without the aid of the press, posterity, and 
 no very late posterity, will be at a loss to know what parish 
 churches once were." 
 
 The principal ornaments of the ancient church, against 
 which the fury of misplaced zeal was first directed, were its 
 painted glass, its enriched rood-loft and chancel-screen, its 
 
THE TOMB OF ROKEBY. 
 
 shrines and solemn altar, together with the venerable font, 
 and elegant stalls. These objects having been removed, 
 popular indignation was excited against the altar-tombs, 
 and recumbent figures of the Anglo-Norman sera ; the rich 
 brasses, contemporary with the Edwards and Henrys; and 
 the kneeling forms of alabaster, coloured to the life, which 
 distinguish the worthies of Elizabeth's reign. 
 
 Bruno Ryves, in " The Country's Complaint," &c. has 
 given a most lamentable account of the profanation which the 
 Cathedral of Exeter underwent about this time. " Over 
 the communion-table was written the holy and blessed 
 name of Jesus, this they expunge as superstitious and exe- 
 crable ; on each side of the Commandments the pictures of 
 Moses and Aaron were drawn in full proportion, these they 
 
 deface." " They made the church their storehouse where 
 
 they placed their ammunition and powder, and planted a 
 court of guard to attend it, who used the church with the 
 same reverence as they would an alehouse. They break 
 and deface all the glass windows of the church, which 
 cannot be replaced for many hundred pounds, and left all 
 those ancient monuments, being painted glass, and contain- 
 ing matter of history only, a memorable spectacle of com- 
 miseration to all well affected hearts that beheld them. 
 They struck off the heads of the statues on all monu- 
 ments in the church, especially they deface the bishops' 
 tombs, leaving one without a head, and another without an 
 arm. They pluck down and deface the statue of an ancient 
 queen, the wife of Edward the Confessor, the first founder 
 
THE TOMB OF ROKEBY. 
 
 of the church, mistaking it for that of the Virgin Mary, 
 the mother of God. They brake down the organs, and 
 taking two or three hundred pipes with them, in a most 
 scornful and contemptuous manner, went up and down the 
 street piping with them, and meeting some of the choris- 
 ters, whose surplices they had stolen before, scoffingly told 
 them, e Boys, we have spoiled your trade, you must go and 
 sing hot pudding pies.' Great, and in many instances, 
 irreparable injury was at this time done to the cathedrals by 
 the fanatical sectarians and iconoclasts, and it was thus that 
 the venerable monuments of the taste, munificence, and 
 piety of our ancestors were mutilated or destroyed. 
 
 The Lord and Commons in Parliament ordained, that in 
 all churches and chapels the altar tables of stone should, 
 before the first of November, 1643, be utterly taken away 
 and demolished, and that all rails which had been erected 
 before any altar should be taken away. They also ordered 
 that all tapers, candlesticks, and basins be removed, and all 
 crucifixes, crosses, images, and pictures of any one or more 
 persons of the sanctity, or of the Virgin Mary, and all 
 images or pictures of saints, or superstitious inscriptions, 
 should be taken away and defaced. 
 
 The journal of William Dowsing is preserved, and 
 exhibits a curious list of objects destroyed in the county of 
 Suffolk. He was one of the parliamentary visitors, ap- 
 pointed under a warrant from the Earl of Manchester, for 
 demolishing the superstitious ornaments of churches in that 
 county. In St. Margaret's church, Ipswich, the window- 
 
THE TOMB OF ROKEBY. 
 
 breaking* visitors, as they were popularly called, took down 
 the twelve Apostles in stone, and ordered between twenty 
 and thirty pictures to be removed. At the beautiful little 
 church of Ufford, in the same county, the journalists say, 
 " We broke twelve cherubims on the roof of the chancel, 
 and we broke down the organ cases and gave them to the 
 poor. In the church there was on the roof above a hun- 
 dred little Jesus's and Marias in great capital letters, and a 
 crosier staff to break down in glass, and above twenty stars 
 in the roof. There is a glorious cover over the font, like a 
 Pope's triple crown, with a pelican on the top picking its 
 breast, all gilt over with gold." The cover to the font is 
 still in being ; these men, armed as they were with autho- 
 rity, could not persuade themselves to destroy so elegant an 
 ornament, not even its resemblance to the Pope's crown. 
 It is, perhaps, the only object that gives any idea of the 
 former magnificence of the church at Ufford. 
 
 At Westminster Abbey, the office of demolishing the 
 monuments of superstition was intrusted to Henry Marten, 
 (afterwards the notorious regicide), who is recorded by 
 Anthony Wood to have broken open the iron chest in 
 which the regalia was deposited, and to have arrayed George 
 Withers, the well known poet and satirist, in the regal 
 habiliments, from feelings of contempt and scorn for 
 royalty. 
 
 The ancient screens, by which the several chapels were 
 divided from the body of the larger churches, were some- 
 times glazed, but always open so as to afford a view of the 
 
THE TOMB OF ROKEBY. 
 
 purest offeratory at the altar within, while the people knelt 
 in the area without. The chancel screen was a more 
 necessary part of the arrangement, being intended for the 
 protection of the congregation from the wind that pene- 
 trated the open parts of the building. These were generally 
 constructed of wood, and were richly painted and gilt. 
 The chancel screen of Hexham church exhibited the cele- 
 brated " Dance of Death," accompanied by verses describ- 
 ing the different characters* 
 
ALHAMBRA. 
 
 " Grenada caught it in her Moorish hall." 
 
 Vision of Don Roderick, vol. ix. p. 398. 
 
 This celebrated memorial of the taste and splendour of the 
 Moorish dominion in Spain, was commenced by King 
 Emir Alumnemin, and finished by Muley Hassem. 
 
 Over the door of the immense hall is an inscription, in 
 Arabic and Spanish, of which the following is a translation : 
 " Turn pale, O wickedness ! wheresoever you go, I will 
 follow ! Punishment always speedily follows crime ! Draw 
 near, come without fear, ye deserted orphans ! here ye shall 
 find the fathers you have lost." 
 
 The part of this stupendous monument of Moorish 
 grandeur here represented, is the court and fountain of 
 lions, an oblong square, one hundred feet in length and fifty 
 in breadth, surrounded by a corridor of one hundred and 
 twenty-eight columns, that support the arches, on which 
 rest the upper apartments of this enchanting palace. A 
 beautiful portico, not unlike the portals of some Gothic 
 churches, projects into this court at each extremity; the 
 stuccoed ceiling of which is executed with equal perfection 
 and elegance. The colonnade is paved with white marble, 
 
ALHAMBRA. 
 
 and the slender pillars themselves are of the same material. 
 They are disposed very irregularly, being sometimes single, 
 and other times in pairs, or clusters of three ; but the mag- 
 nificent coup cTceil of the whole is particularly pleasing to 
 the eye of the astonished visitor. The columns are about 
 nine feet high, including the base and capital, and eight 
 inches and a half in diameter; the larger crescent arches 
 above them are four feet two inches in width, and the 
 smaller arches are three feet wide. To the height of five 
 feet from the ground, the walls are ornamented with a 
 beautiful yellow and blue Mosaic tiling, with a border con- 
 taining the often repeated sentence, " There is no conqueror 
 but God," in blue and gold. The capitals of the pillars 
 vary in their designs, each of which is very frequently 
 repeated in the circumference of the court, but not the least 
 attention has been paid to placing them regularly or opposite 
 each other. 
 
 The arches are frequently ornamented with a great 
 variety of tastefully designed and exquisitely finished 
 arabesques, in which no trace of animal or vegetable life is 
 to be found, and which are surmounted with the usual 
 inscriptions ; and above these arches, an elegantly finished 
 cornice runs round the whole court. In the centre of the 
 court stands the celebrated fountain, whence it derives its 
 name. " Here," says a popular writer, " the hand of time 
 has fallen the lightest, and the traces of Moorish elegance 
 and splendour exist in almost their original brilliancy. 
 Earthquakes have shaken the foundations of the pile, and 
 
ALHAMBRA. 
 
 rent its widest towers; yet see! not one of those slender 
 columns has been displaced, not an arch of that light and 
 fragile colonnade has given way, and all the fairy fret-work 
 of these domes, apparently as unsubstantial as the crystal 
 fabrics of a morning's frost, yet exist after the lapse of 
 centuries, almost as fresh as if from the hands of the Moslem 
 artist. Every thing here appears calculated to inspire kind 
 and happy feelings, for every thing is delicate and beautiful. 
 The very light falls tenderly from above, through the lantern 
 of a dome tinted and wrought as if by fairy hands. The 
 lively swallow dives into the court, and then soaring upwards, 
 darts away twittering over the roofs ; the busy bee toils 
 humming among the flower beds, and painted butterflies 
 hover from plant to plant, and flutter up and sport with 
 each other in the sunny air." 
 
10NA. 
 
 " In Iona's piles. 
 
 Where rest from mortal coil the mighty of the Isles." 
 
 Lord of the Isles, canto i. vol. x. p. 21. 
 
 " Iona," says Dr. Johnson, "has long enjoyed, without 
 any very credible attestation, the honour of being reputed 
 the cemetery of the Scottish kings. It is not unlikely that, 
 when the opinion of local sanctity was prevalent, the chief- 
 tains of the isles, or perhaps some of the Norwegian or 
 Irish princes, were deposited in this venerable enclosure." 
 The effect which the visit to this island, had on the great 
 moralist, is expressed in language so beautiful, that no 
 apology can be necessary for introducing it here. " We 
 were now treading that illustrious island, which was once 
 the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage 
 clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of know- 
 ledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind 
 from all local emotions would be impossible, if it were 
 endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. 
 Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, 
 whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predo- 
 minate over the present, advances us in the dignity of 
 thinking beings. Far from me, and from my friends, 
 be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent 
 
IONA. 
 
 and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified 
 by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be 
 envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the 
 plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer 
 among the ruins of Iona" 
 
 The religious edifices, of which the ruins now only 
 remain, were established by St. Columba, about the year 
 565, who left Ireland, his native country, with the intention 
 of preaching Christianity to the Picts. He was born of 
 the highest rank in Ireland : during four and thirty years 
 of active benevolence, he continued to send out pastors to 
 inform the ignorant, and to compose the hasty disputes of 
 ragged chieftains. The remains of this excellent man were 
 removed by Kenneth, in the year 849, to Dunkeld, where 
 a church was built, and dedicated to his memory. The 
 ruins are much dilapidated, and the disgraceful state which 
 recent travellers describe them as exhibiting, is a reproach 
 to those whose duty it is to look after the preservation of 
 our national antiquities. 
 
 The Cathedral is thirty-eight yards in length, and eight 
 in breadth, and the length of the transept, is twenty-four 
 yards. The east window is a beautiful specimen of Gothic 
 architecture: the pillars are all in different styles; but 
 their capitals are ornamented with Scripture pieces, and the 
 most grotesque figures. The tower is about seventy feet 
 high, divided into three stories. It is lighted, on one side, 
 above by a plain slab, perforated by quatre-foils, and on 
 the other by a catherine-wheel window, with spiral mullions. 
 
IONA. 
 
 It stands on four cylindrical pillars of clumsy Norman 
 design, about ten feet high, and three in diameter. With 
 respect to its claim for the resting-place of the ancient 
 Scottish monarchs, Dr. Maculloch observes, "Every one 
 relates the story of the forty-eight kings of Iona, down to 
 Pennant and Cordiner, and from them down to us, without 
 hesitation or inquiry, as if it were at least possible, if not 
 true. But with all the nonsense that has been written on 
 this subject, there is a mixture of truth ; as it is evident, no 
 less from the number of ancient stones, than from the 
 remains of sculpture and inscription, that Iona was a place 
 of great posthumous resort, at least for the chiefs of the 
 Isles, even down to a late period. Some of the stones are 
 finely carved with knots and vegetable ornaments, and with 
 recumbent warriors and other emblems; but the greater 
 number are plain. Yet if personages of such high note as 
 kings, whether Scottish or Irish, or even Norwegian 
 Viceroys, or Sea-kings had been buried here in numbers, 
 we ought to have found something in the nature of testi- 
 monial sculpture or inscription; whereas there is nothing. 
 " There is little doubt, however," says Dr. Macculloch, 
 " that Duncan's body was carried to this, the sacred store- 
 house of his predecessors, and guardian of his bones." 
 
 Iona, the Island of Waves, is about three miles long, and 
 where widest, only one in breadth. The highest elevation 
 is about live hundred feet, and the surface is divided with 
 rocky hillocks and patches of green pasture, or of moory 
 and boggy soil. At the southern extremity, with the 
 
IONA. 
 
 exception of a low sandy tract near Bloody Bay, it is a mere 
 labyrinth of rocks. It is separated from Mull by a narrow 
 sound ; and the western coast is beset by numerous rocks 
 and small islands, among which Soa is the most conspicuous. 
 The Bay of Martyrs is a small creek near the village, and 
 is said to be the place where the corpses brought hither for 
 interment were landed. Port na Currach, the Bay of the 
 Boat, lies on the opposite site of the island. Here, it is 
 said, Columba first landed from Ireland ; and a heap of 
 about fifty feet in length, is supposed to be a model and a 
 memorial of his boat. But it is the antiquarian and moral 
 history of Iona which constitutes its greatest interest. It is 
 not very creditable to those who might have done it long- 
 since, that Iona, the Star of the Western Ocean, the 
 luminary of roving barbarians, the day-spring to savage 
 Caledonia, should so long have remained an object for wan- 
 dering tourists to tell of, unhonoured, undescribed by those 
 who owe it a deep debt of civilization, of letters, and of 
 religion. If time can now take nothing more from those 
 written records, to which it cannot add, yet it is making 
 daily, hourly attacks on that, which it is the duty of the 
 pencil and the graver to preserve from perishing before it 
 be too late. Not to enumerate all the advantages which a 
 country derives from the visits of tourists, fifty years ago 
 Mr. Pennant could not see the tombs of Iona without wading 
 through what a Hindoo would have considered peculiarly 
 appropriate. It could not then be said that they were 
 " lying naked to the injuries of stormy weather." The 
 
IONA. 
 
 native is no longer allowed to stable his stirks in chapel and 
 hall. They quote here a proverb of St. Columba, " that 
 where there is a cow there must be a woman, and where 
 there is a woman there must be mischief," which was the 
 sufficient reason why the Saint banished his nuns to a 
 maritime outpost near Mull. Pennant deserves equal 
 credit for having banished the cows; who, in defiance of 
 the Saint's ingenious corollary, had excluded the nuns out 
 of dormitory, chapel and all; converting them into one 
 dirty and boggy " vaccisterium." It is not probable that 
 there is a single fragment remaining of the original building. 
 Judging merely by style, St. Oran's Chapel ought to be 
 the oldest, the Nunnery Chapel the next, and the Cathedral 
 the latest. 
 
EDITH. 
 
 Lord of the Isles, canto i, vol. x. p. 25 
 
 " Retired her maiden train among, 
 Edith of Lorn received the song, 
 But tamed the minstrel's pride had been 
 That had her cold demeanour seen ; 
 For not upon her cheek awoke 
 The glow of pride when Flattery spoke, 
 Nor could their tenderest numbers bring 
 One sigh responsive to the string. 
 As vainly had her maidens vied 
 In skill to deck the princely bride. 
 Her locks, in dark brown length arrayed, 
 Cathleen of Ulne, 't was thine to braid ; 
 Young Eva with meet reverence drew 
 On the light foot the silken shoe ; 
 While on the ankle's slender round 
 Those strings of pearl fair Bertha wound, 
 That, bleach'd Lochryan's depths within, 
 Seemed dusky still on Edith's skin. 
 Yet, empress of this joyful day, 
 Edith is sad while all are gay." 
 
83J ., ' ? * ■■■••' < 
 
GLENCOE. 
 
 " Such are the scenes, where savage grandeur wakes 
 An awful thrill that softens into sighs ; 
 Such feelings rouse them by dim Rannock's lakes, 
 In dark Glencoe such gloomy raptures rise." 
 
 Lord of the Isles, canto iv. vol. x. p. 136. 
 
 This too memorable scene is situated in the district of 
 Lorn, in Argyleshire. The vale is watered by the Coe, 
 a very rapid river, the Cona of Ossian, which falls into 
 Loch-Leven. 
 
 It is celebrated as having been the birth-place of that 
 poet, in whose poems many passages, descriptive of the 
 surrounding scenery, will be found. On the south is the 
 lofty Malmor, and on the north is the celebrated Con Fron, 
 or the Hill of Fingal. The valley is closed by some 
 other grotesque mountains, which are frequently covered 
 with mist, and seem to shut the inhabitants of this spot 
 completely from the world. It would be a happy occur- 
 rence, if the strains of this wild and original poet had been 
 the sole memorial that confers celebrity on this beautiful 
 scene; but the barbarous deed perpetrated here in 1691, 
 has rendered it an object to contemplate with mingled 
 emotions : the scenery is beautiful beyond description, but in 
 surveying it, it is impossible to exclude our historical recol- 
 
GLENCOE. 
 
 lections. Mr. Laing, in his History of Scotland, has given 
 a detailed account of the treacherous proceeding. Dr. 
 Macculloch, in his interesting Memoir of the Western 
 Highlands, thus describes this spot: — "In Glencoe every- 
 thing is wild, and various, and strange; a busy bustling 
 scene of romance and wonder; terrific — but terrific from its 
 rudeness, and its barrenness, and its spiry rocks, and its 
 black precipices, not from sublimity of forms or extent of 
 space. In its own character it excels all analogous scenes ; 
 and yet there is in it that which art and taste do not love : 
 a quaintness of outline; forms unusual in nature, and 
 therefore extravagant; when painted, appearing fanciful 
 and fictitious rather than true. Such it is also when viewed 
 in nature; we rather wonder than admire: and the gloom 
 of its lofty and opposing precipices, the powerful effect of 
 its deep shadows, the impression produced by its altitude, 
 and extent and bulk, are injured by a form of outline 
 which attracts the eye as unnatural, and which forces it to 
 analyse and reason, instead of allowing it to feel. 
 
 Thus, though Glencoe presents many scenes of sufficient 
 variety, its pictures are scarcely pleasing, and they are also 
 deficient in grandeur. If the bizarre which it displays 
 in nature is somewhat overcome by its magnitude, that 
 advantage is lost in the representation; and we dwell on 
 what is wrong, unable to balance or overcome it by what is 
 right. Nor even in nature does it display much variety, 
 though its extent is so considerable. The southern moun- 
 tain outline, which is alone visible, although it undergoes 
 
GLENCOE. 
 
 variations of form as we proceed, is never thoroughly 
 altered. We trace the same shapes from the beginning to 
 the end, and are almost wearied at length by finding that 
 our hopes of promised novelty are disappointed. Thus also 
 it diminishes in interest in proceeding from the eastward; 
 the most perfect view being found near a bridge at the 
 commencement of the descent, and nearly all the scenes 
 that follow being depreciated changes of the same. Hence 
 it is preferable, if we have a choice, to enter it from Bala- 
 hulish, or, what is best, to pass it twice. He who has 
 time, however, must be told that all the beauty of Glencoe 
 will not be found from the road side. The noble ravine 
 which conducts its waters, the deep chasm through which 
 they flow, the perpendicular precipices, the varied rocks, 
 and the scattered trees wildly dispersed among them, offer 
 many scenes of a close character, of great interest and 
 much grandeur. But for these we must labour, as they are 
 not otherwise to be attained. The change of character, in 
 proceeding eastward, is completed as soon as we have sur- 
 mounted the ascent, and reached the common head of the 
 eastern and western waters. 
 
 In the middle of the valley is a small lake, and from it 
 runs the river Cona, celebrated by Ossian. Indeed, no 
 place could be more happily calculated than this for forming 
 the taste and inspiring the genius of such a poet. 
 
GOATFELLS OF ARRAN. 
 
 O'er chasms he passed, where fractures wide 
 Craved wary eye and ample stride." 
 
 Lord of the Isles, canto iv. vol. x. p. 182. 
 
 The interior of the isle of Arran abounds with beautiful 
 Highland scenery. The hills being very rocky and preci- 
 pitous, afford some cataracts of great height, though of 
 inconsiderable breadth. There is one pass over the river 
 Machrai, renowned for the dilemma of a poor woman, who, 
 being tempted by the narrowness of the ravine to step 
 across, succeeded in making the first movement, but took 
 fright when it became necessary to move the other foot, and 
 remained in a posture equally ludicrous and dangerous, 
 until some chance passenger assisted her to extricate herself. 
 It is said that she remained there some hours. 
 
 Goatfield is two thousand eight hundred and forty feet 
 above the level of the sea, and abounds with those beautiful 
 pebbles, known among jewellers as Scotch topazes. There 
 is not a more extensive prospect in Britain than that which 
 Goatfield affords. 
 
CUMRAY. 
 
 " Cumray's isles." 
 
 Lord of the Isles, canto v. vol. x. p. 190. 
 
 The islands of Cumbray More and Cumbray Beg, or 
 Great and Little Cumbray, are situated on the coast of 
 Ayrshire, in the Frith of Clyde, near the southern part of 
 the isle of Bute. The Greater Cumbray is distant about 
 two miles from Ayrshire, and three miles from Bute. It is 
 separated from the Little Cumbray upon the south, by a 
 channel three quarters of a mile broad. The length of 
 the island from north-east to south-west is two miles 
 and a half, the breadth from east to west about one mile 
 and a half. 
 
 The surface contains about two thousand three hundred 
 acres, one-third of which is or might be cultivated. With 
 a few exceptions the hills rise, with a gentle ascent to the 
 centre of the island, where they are elevated nearly four 
 hundred feet above the level of the sea. The soil in gene- 
 ral is a gravelly loam, and in some places a mixture of 
 clay. There are a few enclosures ; and some plantations 
 have been lately made by the Earl of Glasgow, who is 
 proprietor of the greatest part of the island. Here is a 
 commodious dry harbour, where, in spring tides, there is 
 
CUMRAY. 
 
 water to the height of eleven feet. There is also a safe 
 anchorage, sheltered by a rocky islet. There is plenty of 
 lime-stone, and an inexhaustible fund of excellent free- 
 stone, of which last there is exported to the value of two 
 hundred pounds per annum. There are two rocks on 
 each side of the island, which have joints and seams 
 like the basaltic rocks of Staffa, but are not so regu- 
 larly columnar. They have the same chemical properties, 
 and may be estimated as the production of volcanic fusion 
 and eruption. 
 
 Little Cumbray is about a mile in length, and half a mile 
 in breadth. The strata of rocks are horizontal, and as they 
 recede from the shore they rise above each other like stairs. 
 There are several caves in the island, an old fortress, 
 and the ruins of a very ancient chapel, said to have been 
 dedicated to St. Vey, who lies interred near it, and which 
 was most probably a dependency of the celebrated monas- 
 tery of I-Colm-Kill. The island abounds with rabbits. 
 Upon the highest part of the island a light-house was 
 erected in the year 1750; but as, ftom its elevated situation, 
 the light was liable to be obscured in fogs, another, with a 
 reflector, was lately erected upon a lower station. The 
 whole island belongs to the Earl of Eglintoun, who 
 resided here at the period when Cromwell nearly de- 
 stroyed the Castle of Ardrossan, and who must have 
 viewed the melancholy havoc of one of the ornaments 
 of a property, from which he derives one of his titles, with 
 deep regret. 
 
CUMBRAY. 
 
 It is said that the Greater Cumbray once possessed a 
 church dedicated to St. Columba, but no traces remain ; to 
 all those who visit it, even though not pretending- to geo- 
 logy, the huge trap vein which courses the island like a 
 wall, and with a very picturesque effect, will be found the 
 most striking object on the island. 
 
 Cambray (Cumbray) is said to be derived from the 
 Gaelic, implying a place of shelter or refuge : distant from 
 the Isle of Bute four miles, and separated from the Little 
 Cumbray by a strait of three-quarters of a mile. With few 
 exceptions the hills rise with a gentle ascent. The prospect 
 from every point of view is delightful, particularly from 
 the south, where the Little Cumbray, and the Point of 
 Pent-cross, with their ancient castles, bound it by sea. 
 The Frith, too, often displays the beautiful scenery of 
 the extensive navigation of the west; while that noble 
 beacon, Ailsa, rises towards the horizon; and to the north, 
 Goatfield in Arran, seems to support the clouds on its 
 brow. 
 
 Besides the views of Bute and Arran, and of the Clyde 
 scenery in general which may be obtained here, there 
 is a wild and strange character about the high part of 
 the island itself, which is very pleasing. On the Ayr- 
 shire side there is a distinct flat tract, and of an entirely 
 different character, containing some farms, but more re- 
 markable for a castle, consisting of a square tower, in 
 good preservation, perched on the very border of the sea. 
 The exact correspondence of this with that of Pent- 
 
CUMBRAY. 
 
 cross on the opposite side, gives additional effect to both, 
 as they look like the joint guardians, the Sestos and Abydos 
 of the Strait. 
 
 Both these castles have the reputation of having been 
 royal palaces or residences. Whatever kings of Scotland 
 resided in them, must have been very indifferent to accom- 
 modation, as they would now be scarcely more than houses 
 for an ordinary farmer. 
 
 
.':3V m 
 
 
THE BIER OF DE ARGENTINE. 
 
 " Bid Ninian's convent light their shrine, 
 For late- wake of De Argentine ; 
 O'er better knight on death-bier laid, 
 Torch never gleamed, nor mass was said." 
 
 Lord of the Isles, canto vi. vol. x. p. 265. 
 
 The Church of St. Ninian's, in which the funeral ceremony 
 of Sir Giles de Argentine was performed after the battle 
 of Bannoekburn, is now entirely destroyed, with the ex- 
 ception of the ancient tower, which still remains at a little 
 distance from the modern church, about a mile from the 
 stream whence the field of battle was named. Having been 
 used as a powder magazine by the Highland army, the 
 edifice was blown up, either by accident or design, imme- 
 diately after the battle of Falkirk, in the year 1746, when 
 an attempt had been made to reduce the town of Stirling. 
 
 At the period when St. Ninian's Church was originally 
 founded, a new style of architecture had been recently 
 introduced ; a style which has excited the admiration of all 
 succeeding ages. The semicircular arches and massive 
 columns of the Anglo-Normans were entirely laid aside, 
 and slender shafts, insulated or clustered, supported lancet 
 arches sharply pointed, a prevailing feature in that particular 
 
THE BIER OF DE ARGENTINE. 
 
 manner of building which has been called Saracenic, and 
 has also been supposed to derive its origin from the holy 
 groves or thickets of the ancient Celtic nations. 
 
 Arches when so constructed are found to present an 
 unrivalled perspective, distinguished by the greatest sim- 
 plicity and elegance, and which never fails to convey the 
 most exalted impressions of grandeur and sublimity. 
 
 To the enrichments of architecture in this golden age of 
 the pointed style, were superadded the embellishments of 
 heraldry, and sculptured emblazoned shields were then first 
 admitted amongst the gorgeous ornaments of the choir. 
 The walls also of this part of the church were stained with 
 a thousand beautiful rays, harmoniously blended in the 
 reflection of painted glass, which then filled the mullioned 
 windows and their ramified tracery. 
 
 On all festivals of high solemnity, the choir, destined 
 more particularly to the service of religion, was usually 
 lined with richly embroidered tapestry, representing the 
 most captivating subjects, selected from a series of events 
 in the legendary life and miracles of the patron saint. The 
 single figures or groups were raised amidst fanciful designs 
 of interlaced foliage, with gold and silver, on hangings of 
 woollen or silk. 
 
 " Motion and life did every part inspire, 
 Bold was the work, and proved the master's fire." 
 
 These subjects were regarded with the most fervent devotion 
 in an age when religious zeal animated every order of 
 
THE BIER OF DE ARGENTINE. 
 
 persons, and exerted its full influence on the embellishment 
 of ecclesiastical architecture. 
 
 Besides the large slabs of marble filled with intagliated 
 brass, disposed in forms of robed priests under canopies, or 
 knights in complete armour, which covered the floor, 
 painted tiles of variegated patterns composed the beautiful 
 and highly ornamental pavement of the altar in all the most 
 distinguished buildings of this early period. These vitrified 
 tiles formed, when connected and arranged, a curious and 
 diversified display of regular designs, exhibiting sometimes 
 scriptural sentences, but not unfrequently the arms of 
 founders and contributors to the convent : in the splendid 
 effect produced, they were evidently intended to vie with 
 the elegant Mosaic productions of Italy, for which Taffi, 
 Gaddi, and Giotto of Florence, were then so celebrated.* 
 
 No event is perhaps recorded by the Scottish historians 
 with a greater degree of national pride than the memorable 
 battle fought on the 24th of June, 1314, between the 
 English and Scots army on the fields of Bannockburn, three 
 miles south of Stirling. The poet dwells with admiration 
 on the heroism displayed in the eventful life of the valiant 
 Bruce, the competitor of Baliol for the crown: many 
 combats were gallantly sustained by the Scots, though 
 unattended with success, before the decisive battle of Ban- 
 nockburn, which effectually disappointed the hopes of 
 
 * The picture over the great door of St. Peter's, at Rome, called the 
 Navicula di Giotto, is said to be a more modern work, copied from a 
 former one of that artist. 
 
THE BIER OF DE ARGENTINE. 
 
 Edward of Carnarvon. The King of England's army may 
 be described in the words of a contemporary poet, although 
 written upon another occasion, in which that prince was 
 successful. " They were habited not only in coats and 
 surcoats, but were mounted on powerful and costly chargers ; 
 and that they might not be taken by surprise they were 
 well and securely armed. There were many rich caparisons 
 embroidered on silks and satins ; many a beautiful penon 
 fixed to a lance, and many a banner displayed. Afar off 
 was heard the neighing of horses; hills and valleys were 
 every where covered with sumpter-horses and wagons with 
 provisions, and sacks of tents and pavilions. As the days 
 were long and fine, they proceeded by easy journeys."* 
 
 King Edward proceeded from the city of Edinburgh, and 
 halted at Falkirk, on the river Carron ; in the afternoon of 
 the following day he pitched his tent nearly opposite to the 
 camp of Bruce, who under the royal banner awaited his 
 coming. 
 
 By day-break the English army, having the superiority 
 in point of numbers, advanced in divisions to the very brink 
 of the Burn, the centre being led on by the King in person, 
 and the wings, consisting chiefly of cavalry, commanded by 
 the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford. The battle raged 
 with fury, and in the very midst an appearance of reinforce- 
 ment on the Scottish side is said to have struck a panic into 
 
 * Walter of Exeter, author of an heraldic poem descriptive of the siege 
 of Carlaverock Castle on the Nith, in June, 1300, and at which Edward, 
 then Prince of Wales, was present. 
 
THE BIER OF DE ARGENTINE. 
 
 the English troops, who fearing- their retreat might be cut 
 off, fled in all directions : so great and so general was the 
 slaughter on both sides, that historians are at a loss now to 
 estimate it. 
 
 The flower of the English nobility, lay on the field of 
 battle, and many were taken prisoners, whose ransoms 
 enriched the victorious army. King Edward fled to Dun- 
 bar, on the coast, and thence went by sea to Berwick 
 upon Tweed. 
 
 Sir Giles De Argentine, who in the beginning of the 
 battle had exposed himself with unwary forwardness, per- 
 ceiving the king in danger, it is said, advised him to retire, 
 but adding that "he himself was not used to flight," 
 returned immediately to the engagement, where he was 
 slain together with numerous other gallant English knights. 
 
 A Leonine couplet on his lamented fall at the battle of 
 Bannockburn has been extolled by Lord Hailes, as abound- 
 ing in sentiment.* — 
 
 " Nobilis Argentem, pugil inclyto dulcis Egidi 
 Vix scieram mentem cum te succumbere vidi."-j- 
 
 * So sure was King Edward of success, that he brought with him in 
 his train, a Carmelite friar, of the name of William Baston, one of the 
 best poets of his age, that he might witness and celebrate the victory. 
 The poet was taken prisoner, and obtained his liberty on condition of 
 composing a poem in honour of the victorious Scots. This poem in 
 Latin, of which the above is an extract, is still extant, and is considered 
 a literary curiosity. 
 
 f " Fair flower of Chivalry, brave Argentine, 
 
 Twas as my own death-blow to witness thine." 
 
THE BIER OF DE ARGENTINE. 
 
 This celebrated flower of chivalry, was the son of Lord 
 Chancellor Argentine, whose family derived their name 
 from Argenton in France, and obtained the manor of 
 Wymondley in Hertfordshire, by a marriage with the 
 heiress of Fitz-Tees. This manor was held of the king 
 by grand sergeantry; its possessor performing the service 
 of presenting the king with the first cup he drank at the 
 coronation feast, receiving the cup of silver ungilt for his 
 fee. 
 
 In allusion to his office of chief cupbearer to the king, 
 Sir Giles De Argentine bore three silver cups on his shield. 
 The Lord High Chamberlain at the same chivalric period, 
 adopted the long necked silver bottle, then in use, as his 
 badge of office. Menial services of this nature were closely 
 connected with feudal dignities, and have been held by 
 families of the highest rank and noblest descent. 
 
 The armour usually worn in the reign of Edward the 
 Second, was the beautiful interlaced chain-mail, of Asiatic 
 origin, which was used for horses as well as men. Over 
 this was worn the caparison, which had on it the armorial 
 bearings of the rider. Knights so arrayed, are constantly 
 found represented on contemporary seals — 
 
 " With haubergeons and cervelieres, 
 Gauntlets, tags, and gorgets." 
 
 It is recorded, that in the battle of Bannockburn, Gilbert 
 Clare, the young Earl of Gloucester, would not have been 
 killed, but he incautiously went into the field without his 
 
V 
 
 THE BIER OF DE ARGENTINE. 
 
 emblazoned surcoat, and was not recognized ; or the Scots 
 would gladly have spared his life, had he been known, in 
 the hope of a good ransom. This distinguishing part of 
 the knight's dress was clasped by a military girdle, highly 
 ornamented with silver and precious stones. The sword 
 was suspended at the left hip by a belt, which passed over 
 the right shoulder, and its scabbard was ornamented with 
 several little shields of arms ; the dagger depended on the 
 right side, attached to the sword belt by a small strap. 
 
 Considerable improvements had recently been made in 
 defensive armour, in comparison with that previously worn ; 
 the great advantages of compactness and pliability afforded 
 by the invention of chain-mail, rendered its use, at this 
 period, almost universal. Banners of arms were carried, 
 wherever those to whom they belonged, and their followers 
 were engaged. Penons also, and its dimunitive pencille, or 
 penoncille, a long narrow flag, on which the cognizance of 
 the knight was emblazoned, was fixed on the end of a lance, 
 while the great standard set before the king's pavilion, or 
 tent, and not borne in battle, was two yards in length. 
 
 " With all their banners bravely spread, 
 And all their armour flashing high ; 
 Saint George might waken from the dead, 
 To see fair England's standards fly." 
 
 The respect paid to the body of De Argentine, was a 
 tribute to his superior valour; and his bier ornamented with 
 his own caparisons, was placed by the victors before the 
 high altar or shrine of St. Ninian, with all the state belong- 
 ing to a person of his degree. 
 
METELILL. 
 
 Harold the Dauntless, vol. xi. p. 169* 
 
 And nought of fraud, or ire, or ill, 
 Was known to gentle Metelill ; 
 
 A simple maiden she. 
 The spells in dimpled smile that lie, 
 And a downcast look, and the darts that fly 
 With the side-long glance of a hazel eye, 
 
 Were her arms and witchery. 
 So young, so simple was she yet, 
 She scarce could childhood's joys forget ; 
 And still she loved, in secret set 
 
 Beneath the greenwood tree^ 
 To plait the rushy coronet, 
 And braid with flowers her locks of jet, 
 
 As when in infancy." 
 
turl H11 Fleel 
 

ANCIENT FURNITURE. 
 
 Flagons, and ewers, and standing cups, were all 
 
 Of planish'd gold, or silver nothing clear, 
 
 With throne begilt, and canopy of pall 
 
 And tapestry clothed the walls, with fragments sear, 
 
 Frail as the spider's mesh did that rich woof appear." 
 
 Harold the Dauntless, canto vi. vol. xi. p. 238. 
 
 The costume of a scene, if the expression may be allowed, 
 is of infinitely more importance than painters, in general, 
 are willing to admit. Almost every historical picture 
 receives its embellishment from the playful invention of the 
 artist, who is much too fearful of incurring the charge of 
 "pedantry or of servile imitation. 
 
 There is an anecdote related of Rubens, by which it 
 appears that that great painter considered the delineation of 
 the subordinate parts of the greatest consequence to the 
 effect of the picture. Rubens, on being required to take 
 under his instruction a youth of promise, the gentleman 
 who recommended him, in order to induce the painter the 
 more readily to accept him for a pupil, said he was a young 
 man of great talent, and already capable of assisting him in 
 his back grounds. Rubens, smiling at his simplicity, told 
 
ANCIENT FURNITURE. 
 
 his friend that if he was capable of that, the youth stood in 
 no need of his instructions ; for the regulation and manage- 
 ment of the back ground required the most comprehensive 
 knowledge of the art of painting. 
 
 The subject of the annexed engraving is calculated to 
 please from its novelty; although most of the articles of 
 ancient furniture present interesting objects of curiosity, 
 these are rarely or never introduced as subordinate parts, 
 even, of a picture. Furniture of this early period is yet 
 abundant; but with the almost solitary exception of Hard- 
 wick Hall in Derbyshire, the magnificent interiors of the 
 Tudor period have never been made the painter's study. A 
 careful attention to such aids would stamp life, character, 
 and expression on the work of the artist, as if Nature herself 
 had done it.* 
 
 In this series of illustrations, the painter's attention has 
 been excited to correctness of detail by the extreme fidelity 
 of the author. Sir Walter Scott was an antiquary as well 
 as a poet, and honoured the Royal Academy by accepting 
 the office of Antiquary to that body. The spirit of minute 
 detail incident to the study of antiquity, after passing 
 through the medium of his elegant mind, came with a 
 freshness over his readers scarcely to be accounted for : it 
 
 * Two or three very splendid compositions for interiors, of this precise 
 period, were painted by Mr. Pugin, as scenes for the interesting ballet of 
 Kenilworth, at the King's Theatre, which was founded upon one of Sir 
 Walter Scott's most popular novels. These scenes were so striking 
 from their fidelity and magnificence, that they will not fail to be 
 remembered. 
 
ANCIENT FURNITURE. 
 
 was portrayed with a degree of energy that shewed touches 
 of a learned master in the art. Sir Walter Scott's first 
 performances were evidently formed upon the model of the 
 earliest romantic poems exhibited in our language. Chaucer, 
 reflecting the manners of the times in which he wrotej is 
 exceedingly minute in his description of 
 
 " The galleries right wele ywrought, 
 As for dauncing and otherwise disporte." 
 
 Harrison, the historian of the reign of Elizabeth, merely 
 alludes to the general magnificence then to be found in the 
 larger mansions. " Certes," he says " in noblemen's houses 
 it is not rare to see abundance of Arras, rich hangings of 
 tapestrie, silver vessell, and so much other plate as may 
 furnish sundrie cupbords, to the sum ofttimes of a thousand, 
 or two thousand, pounds at the least ; whereby the value of 
 this, and their other stuffe, dooth growe to be almost ines- 
 timable." It is well known that both Rafaello and Giulio 
 Romano were engaged in painting cartoons to be wrought 
 into tapestry, and that the princes of Europe were most 
 ambitious of such splendid decoration of their state apart- 
 ments. The enumeration of the tapestries procured by 
 Francis I. for his palaces would exceed belief, both with 
 respect to quality and value, was it not derived from 
 undoubted authority. To give some idea of the quantity, 
 Felibien says that the story of Psyche by Rafaello consisted 
 of twenty-six pieces, and one hundred and six yards. Some 
 
ANCIENT FURNITURE. 
 
 singularly rich tapestry was brought into England by 
 Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, to ornament the noble 
 mansion which he had recently built at his manor of Grims- 
 thorp in Lincolnshire. It was so valuable as to form part 
 of the dower of his royal bride, Mary Queen of France, 
 the younger sister of King Henry VIII. This splendid 
 decoration soon excited a similar taste in that sovereign and 
 his favourite, Cardinal Wolsey. The several palaces, 
 according to the inventories now preserved in the British 
 Museum, were furnished with a profusion scarcely credible, 
 both as to the number and the cost of the pieces, on multi- 
 farious subjects, wrought with silk and threads of gold and 
 silver. In the fabrication of these gorgeous hangings the 
 most costly materials were used, as from the wardrobe 
 accounts of both the king and the cardinal is sufficiently 
 apparent.* 
 
 The tapestry was loosely hung on projecting frames by 
 tenterhooks against the walls (which were sometimes not 
 even plastered), covering the whole surface from the floor 
 to the ceiling, and was, like most other furniture, removable 
 from one residence of its owner to another. A servant of 
 the house, appointed for the purpose, and called " the 
 upholder," superintended these matters. There are yet in 
 the king's household six yeomen hangers, whose duty is to 
 attend the king in all his progresses or removals, with the 
 hangings, tents, &c. 
 
 * See also very ample accounts in Dallaway's Discourses on Archi- 
 tecture ; a work abounding with information on the subject. 
 
ANCIENT FURNITURE, 
 
 The splendid hangings at St. James's Palace, described 
 by the Sieur de la Serre, in his account of the visit of 
 Mary de Medicis to Queen Henrietta Maria, were from the 
 looms at Mortlake, established in the reign of James I. by 
 Sir Francis Crane ; some few specimens are yet remaining 
 in the palace, but the best were purchased, with others 
 belonging to Hampton Court and Whitehall, by Oliver 
 Cromwell, at the sale of King Charles's effects. One set 
 of hangings, relating to the story of Abraham, was valued 
 in the inventory at eight thousand two hundred and sixty 
 pounds ; and another, in two parts, representing the history 
 of Julius Csesar, was appraised at five thousand and nine- 
 teen pounds. 
 
 Cabinets of massive proportions, carved in oak, ebony, 
 walnut, and other woods inlaid, were conspicuous objects in 
 these apartments. The ceilings were groined with painted 
 ribs; and superbly wrought mouldings and ornaments, height- 
 ened by gilding, appeared on the richly carved frieze; 
 while the glowing tints of stained glass, admitted through 
 lofty mullioned windows, gave full effect to these splendid 
 chambers.* 
 
 * The large bay or oriel window was a favourite resort of the ladies, 
 Bianca, in Middleton's play of "Woman beware of Women," says, 
 
 " Methinks this house stands nothing to my mind, 
 I 'd have some pleasant lodging i' th' High-street, sir; 
 Or if 't were near the court, sir, that were much better ; 
 'T is a sweet recreation for a gentlewoman 
 To stand in a bay window, and see gallants." 
 
ANCIENT FURNITURE. 
 
 In King Henry the Eighth's temporary banqueting 
 room at Greenwich, " the candlestykes were of antyke 
 worke, which bare little torchetts of white waxe; these 
 candlestykes were polished lyke ambre." They are also 
 mentioned as being of gold, silver, and silver gilt, the forms 
 various and fanciful. At Wolsey's celebrated feast were two 
 great candlesticks of silver gilt, most curiously wrought, 
 the workmanship whereof, with the silver, cost three hun- 
 dred marks, and lights of wax burning upon the same. 
 To give more light, plates were hung on the walls, of 
 silver gilt, with lights burning in them ; and on this occasion, 
 every chamber was furnished with a silver candlestick or 
 two, with both white and yellow lights of their sizes of wax. 
 
 Amongst the numerous, costly, and magnificent articles 
 for the table, wrought in silver, gold, and other precious 
 materials, were chargers, dishes, bowls, &c, cups of gold, 
 of gold and sapphire, of beryl, garnished with gold, gold 
 enamelled with images; and others enamelled with arms, 
 of silver gilt, silver parcel gilt, silver enamelled, gold set 
 with rubies and other jewels frequently occur; nor were 
 they less various in their fashions and workmanship. China 
 dishes may be added to those of silver and pewter. Venice 
 banqueting dishes are frequently mentioned, and described 
 as being of fine painted earth, brought hither from Venice, 
 but of oriental manufacture. In the reign of Elizabeth, 
 several Spanish carracks were taken, partly laden with 
 Chinaware of porcelain. 
 
 Coifers and chests were the general repositories for 
 
ANCIENT FURNITURE. 
 
 articles of every kind, writings and apparel were kept 
 within them. Many of these chests were beautifully 
 ornamented with carving and other sumptuous enrichments. 
 Cypress wood was selected for its rare properties of neither 
 rotting nor becoming worm-eaten. The ivory coffers were 
 small, and either carved or engraved in devices, with silver 
 or gilt locks and ornaments, and were used for keeping 
 jewels and other valuables. Small coffers of silver are also 
 mentioned, and robe chests of scented wood. Pictures in 
 considerable number adorned the houses of the nobility, 
 and those of value had curtains drawn before them. Shaks- 
 peare in many instances notices the practice and its useful- 
 ness. Holbien, who was one of the king's painters, had a 
 salary of thirty pounds a year. 
 
 In the time of Henry VIII., John Winchcombe was the 
 greatest clothier in England, and is better known from 
 the place of his residence as Jack of Newbury. It is said 
 that the king, together with his queen, Katherine of Arra- 
 gon, and many of the nobility were splendidly entertained 
 at his house, in the early part of his reign. It appears* 
 that " In a faire large parlour, which was wainscotted round 
 about, Jacke of Newberry had fifteene faire pictures hang- 
 ing, which were covered with curtains of greene silke, 
 frienged with gold, which he would often shew to his 
 friends." The most valuable pictures are still so preserved 
 in the galleries of our time.f 
 
 * Delaney's "Pleasant History of Jacke of Newberry." 
 
 f Hunt's Tudor Architecture, vide pages 107, 118, 136, and 148. 
 
ANCIENT FURNITURE. 
 
 Needlework seems to have been the great occupation 
 of the ladies. Queen Elizabeth was eminent both for her 
 skill and industry as a needlewoman. The various kinds 
 of needlework practised by our indefatigable grandmothers, 
 says Mr. Douce, if enumerated would astonish even the 
 most industrious of our modern ladies. Many curious 
 books of patterns for all sorts of needlework were published, 
 some of which, adds that gentleman, are worth pointing out 
 to the curious. Amongst others he mentions, " The 
 Needle's Excellency, a newe booke wherein are divers 
 admirable workes wrought with the needle newly invented, 
 and cut in copper, for the pleasure and profit of the Indus- 
 trious." 
 
 Before the art of carpet weaving was known in this 
 country, it was the fashion for ladies to work carpets with 
 the needle. George Lord Darcy, in the year 1548, be- 
 queathed to his daughter, Agnes Fairfax, his " best wrought 
 silk carpet, bordered with crimson velvet, which she made." 
 Narrow carpets of tapestry, or woollen cloths were partially 
 applied to the floors of rooms of ceremony or state. 
 
 In most apartments the seats are described as " Flemish 
 chairs," "scrolled chairs," and "turned chairs," wrought in 
 ebony, walnut, cherry-tree, &c, with high backs, either 
 stuffed in one long upright panel, or filled with wicker- 
 work; the seats also stuffed and covered with costly kinds of 
 materials, as various as their shapes. To these may be 
 added low armed chairs, tastefully turned, and carved in 
 ebony, enriched with ivory knobs and inlayings, chiefly of 
 
ANCIENT FURNITURE. 
 
 Italian or Flemish manufacture. But the ordinary and 
 by far the most numerous kind of seats were stools, of 
 great variety of form and fashion. The very handsome 
 ebony chairs from Esher Palace, and which formerly 
 belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, were amongst the curious 
 furniture collected by Mr. Beckford at Fonthill Abbey. 
 Others of the same interesting period are constantly pre- 
 served as articles of virtu. 
 
WATERLOO. 
 
 Then Wellington ! thy piercing eye, 
 This crisis caught of destiny." 
 
 Field of Waterloo, vol. xi. p. 274, 
 
 The account of this celebrated movement is thus detailed 
 by one of the heroes of this memorable day. " The Duke 
 now ordered the whole line to move forward: nothing could 
 be more beautiful. The sun, which had hitherto been 
 veiled, at this instant shed upon us his departing rays, as if 
 to smile upon the efforts we were making, and bless them 
 with success. As we proceeded in line down the slope, the 
 regiments on the high ground on our flanks were formed 
 into hollow squares, in which manner they accompanied us, 
 in order to protect us from cavalry. The blow was now 
 struck; the victory was complete; and the enemy fled in 
 every direction." 
 
 No persuasion or authority could prevail upon the French 
 troops to stand the shock of the bayonet. The imperial 
 guards, in particular, hardly stood till the British were 
 within thirty yards of them, although a French writer has 
 put into their mouths the magnanimous sentiment, " The 
 guards never yield — they die." 
 
WATERLOO. 
 
 The artist, it will be generally allowed, has most happily 
 portrayed the moment alluded to in this tremendous conflict. 
 
 " Millions of tongues record thee, and anew 
 Their childrens' lips shall echo them, and say- 
 Here, where the sword united nations drew, 
 Our countrymen were warring on that day ! 
 And this is much, and all which will not pass away." 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED BY MANNING AND SMITHSON, 
 
 12, IVY LANE. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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