"Dunnottar Castle," by Mrs. Carnegie, 1796.

The view of Dunnottar Castle, which so happily illustrates this portion of the work, represents one of the most remarkable features that are anywhere to be met with on the coasts of the British empire. The drawing was taken on the spot, and shows with admirable effect and precision those striking combinations of nature and art which, during a long series of ages, rendered the fortress of Dunnottar impregnable. But those rocky foundations from which it once rose in all the strength and grandeur of feudal architecture are fast yielding to the encroachments of the sea; its crested summits, once brilliant with arms and bristling with cannon, seem ready to drop from their precipice. Unroofed, unlatticed, untenanted, with not an ember left on its once capacious hearth, desolation and ruin are vividly pictured in its dreary solitude. The floors are covered with crumbling fragments of varied and costly decorations in sculpture, painting, and fretwork. Once a palace—commanding all that could minister to the security and luxury of its almost royal possessors, its battlements gay with standards, crowded with retainers, mailed guests in the hall, and minstrels in the court—it is now dark as a sepulchre;—banners, retainers, guests, minstrels, and the master of the feast himself—all are gone! The hoarse dash of the waves, the shrill scream of the stormy petrel, the crash of some disjointed and falling rock, or the whistling of the coming tempest, are almost the only sounds that now alternate among these embattled heights, where the curious stranger retraces with melancholy interest the days and deeds of antiquity. To him who is familiar with its history, Dunnottar speaks with an audible voice; every cave has a record—every turret a tongue; his ear is struck with "wandering voices," and words that never die seem at every step to arrest his attention.

The Castle of Dunnottar—now the stately and magnificent ruin thus feebly sketched—stands on an isolated rock two hundred feet perpendicular, washed on three sides by the sea, and on the other separated from the adjacent land by a wide and deep chasm, from which by a gate in the wall, nearly forty feet high, there is an entrance to the fortress. Leading upwards from this gate there is a long steep passage, partly arched over, and formerly secured by two drawbridges, the grooves for which are still visible. At the inner end of this passage is another gate, opening into the castle area, which is enclosed by a wall, and occupied by buildings of various epochs. But of all the buildings on this rock the chapel is the most ancient, and there is reason to believe that it originally served as the parish church of Dunnottar. The Castle, or the peninsular rock on which it stands, makes its first appearance in Scottish history during the wars of Bruce and Baliol, when, it is alleged by some modern authorities, the castle was erected by Sir William Keith as a place of safety for himself and friends. According to Blind Harry and Hector Boece, Dunnottar was surprised and taken by Sir William Wallace in 1297, and the Blind Historian relates that Dunnottar was occupied by four thousand English troops, who had fled before the victorious arms of the Liberator; and that when Wallace made the onslaught, as many of them as the church would contain took shelter there, in the hope that consecrated ground would not be violated by their slaughter; but, says the bard,—

In the year 1336 Dunnottar was fortified and garrisoned by Edward III.; but immediately after his departure for England it was attacked and carried by the gallant Sir Andrew Moray, who destroyed the fortifications of the Castle, so that it might not again afford ready protection to an enemy.