WE spend our days as usual, “sight-seeing.” The first place we sought was Holyrood Palace. It is not palatial compared to Windsor, Hampton Court, and the situation is not a cheerful one—low, in a kind of a hollow. I can imagine it oppressively gloomy to a young girl of nineteen, just from gay and sunny Paris, and one of the ornaments of its brilliant court. In the picture gallery there is a lovely, full-length portrait of Mary; but there is a still lovelier picture of her at the castle. I saw her apartments, her bed with its faded velvet hangings, that are slowly dropping to pieces too; one of her paintings on marble, much chipped and defaced, showing no little merit; a piece of her embroidery in a glass case; the little mirror hung on the wall she doubtless took much pleasure in seeing her fair face in; the small supper-room, with its closet, where the dreadful murder of Rizzio was begun, and the splotch of blood on the landing at the head of the stairs, where it was finished. How well we seem to know all about her—poor

queen, unfortunate and to be pitied, even if as wicked as her worst enemies think. At the castle, on the hill that springs up in the very heart of the city, another suite of “Queen Mary’s apartments” is shown, in one of which her son was born. The situation of the castle is incomparably fine. It overlooks the entire city and a wide and varied range beyond. Ben Lomond and Ben Ledi show themselves to the north-west, and on a fair day the Pentland hills lie low and purple in another direction; the Firth carries the gaze with it to the sea in the east, and it is dotted with pretty islands, and its thither side is bounded by the misty shores of Fife. This same view is commanded by Arthur’s Seat and Calton Hill. Arthur’s Seat is the highest point—everybody and every guide-book says so, and I know it from experience, having climbed its 823 feet. We make all kinds of excursions in the environs, and find it the easiest thing in the world to keep up our ecstasies.

Alexander Swift says, “Every true Scotsman thinks Edinburgh the most picturesque city in the world.” No wonder. It certainly possesses every feature requisite to constitute that preeminence—“hill, crag, castle, rock, blue stretch of sea, the picturesque ridge of the old town, the squares and terraces of the new”—the quaint streets with their ancient houses “peaked and jagged by gable and roof, and windowed from basement to cope” with those small diamond-paned sashes that seem meant only “to make darkness visible,” and yet other streets of a later and more stately architecture; the Nor’ Lock converted into a dreamland of park and gardens; the splendid monuments arresting the eye in every direction to recall the illustrious dead and give proof of the appreciation and taste of the living; the hills, crags and slopes that “stand dressed in living green,” and the squares and terraces a mass of verdure and flowers—all these and more are the charms of this “Edina, Scotia’s darling.” Add to them the innumerable resorts, historic, beautiful, grand!—Oh! everything—all around in every direction, and one’s sympathy leaps forth to meet that of “every Scotsman.”

Now, shall I tell you what a “Bohemian” I have grown to be? Perhaps you will be shocked, but really it is the most fascinating life conceivable, and not to be condemned untried. We go where, and when, and how we please; en grandes dames, in the conventional splendor of full dress and the swellest turnout of the stand, this always “under protest.” Oftener, we set our own “locomotives” to the way and find unsuspected Edens. But oftenest and to my heart’s delight, we mount to a super-royal perch atop of the “tram,” as the street car is called here, and “view the landscape o’er” at such advantage as no crown or throne can command. And that’s the way we went to Morning Side, Edinburgh’s Clifton, and to Portobello, its sea-bathing resort. Don’t be alarmed though; we are not setting a fashion, only following one already established. If only this mode of traveling were practicable for everywhere. Alas! instead the railway comes in to sadly curtail the enchantment of “views.” We had to submit to it in order to see Roslyn Chapel, that ideal morceau of architecture, that exquisite efflorescence of solid rock, that chapel of chapels, “one among ten thousand and altogether lovely.” First we struck through Hawthorden, a walk of three miles, beginning with an ordinary park that quickly led to an ivy-mantled ruin, hung on the very brink of a beetling crag, the rock-ribbed foundation of which dropped almost sheer to a swift and clamorous stream two or three hundred feet below. In this underlying basement of rock, queer caverns had been hewn, but farther back than dates reach. We explored them notwithstanding some hesitation, which, however, gave way to the liveliest enthusiasm. In one we came across a sword of Robert Bruce in an open wire case. The meshes were about an inch in length; by counting them I found the sword measured fifty-eight inches. I wondered how much taller the warrior was than his weapon of warfare! Leaving these caverns we were soon descending a path that brought us to the edge of the stream and then ran along it the rest of the way. Anything wilder or more beautiful is rarely met, but I have seen Trenton Falls in my own native land, and it surpasses. Climbing the hill again at the end of the three miles we reached the chapel. Another day we spent at Dunfermline. In the Abbey we stood on the grave of Robert Bruce; it is right under the pulpit. In the ancient and long-disused, but well-preserved, nave we saw that inexplicable caprice or trick of architecture, one of the great Norman columns that scanned from one place shows the upper half much smaller than the lower; from another, the reverse effect, and from yet another, a pillar of perfect proportion. The ruins of the old palace and part of the abbey are very touching and beautiful. It too has “a den,” as every deep wooded and rocky glen with a stream running through its dark length is called. We sat on the rustic seat under a grand old tree and looked at the ruins and moralized, raved over the vistas, shadows, flashing sunlight and—munched our lunch. Saturday we skimmed away on the wings of the delicious morning as well as the wings of steam to Dalkeith and Newbattle Abbey to spend the day between the two. The former is the favorite seat of the Duke of Buccleugh, the latter that of his son-in-law, the Marquis of Lothian. The ducal palace is positively ugly; but it has its complement of grand state apartments filled with fine pictures and the usual quota of superb articles of vertu and bric-a-brac.

Newbattle Abbey is a charming home. Its park boasts some rare old trees, among them a giant beech that is “a monarch of the forest” verily, measuring twenty-three feet in girth. Thursday we start on our excursion to the Highlands; it will take a week. We shall return here for a fresh departure. Then look out for another half quire of this moving matter.

L. G. C.

Edinburgh, July 21, 1882.