Volume I Part 12 (1/2)
It was a beautiful, sunny day that we drove out to Craigmiller Castle, formerly one of the royal residences. It was here that Mary retreated after the murder of Rizzio, and where, the chronicler says, she was often heard in those days wis.h.i.+ng that she were in her grave. It seems so strange to see it standing there all alone, in the midst of gra.s.sy fields, so silent, and cold, and solitary. I got out of the carriage and walked about it. The short, green gra.s.s was gemmed with daisies, and sheep were peacefully feeding and resting, where was once all the life and bustle of a court.
We had no one to open the inside of the castle for us, where there are still some tolerably preserved rooms, but we strolled listlessly about, looking through the old arches, and peeping through slits and loopholes into the interior.
The last verse of Queen Mary's lamentation seemed to be sighing in the air:--
”O, soon for me shall simmer's suns Nae mair light up the morn; Nae mair for me the autumn wind Wave o'er the yellow corn.
But in the narrow house of death Let winter round me rave, And the next flowers that deck the spring Bloom on my peaceful grave.”
Only yesterday, it seemed, since that poor heart was yearning and struggling, caught in the toils of this sorrowful life. How many times she looked on this landscape through sad eyes! I suppose just such little daisies grew here in the gra.s.s then, and perhaps she stooped and picked them, wis.h.i.+ng, just as I do, that the pink did not grow on the under side of them, where it does not show. Do you know that this little daisy is the _gowan_ of Scotch poetry? So I was told by a ”charming young Jessie” in Glasgow, one day when I was riding out there.
The view from Craigmiller is beautiful--Auld Reekie, Arthur's Seat, Salisbury Crags, and far down the Frith of Forth, where we can just dimly see the Ba.s.s Hock, celebrated as a prison, where the Covenanters were immured.
It was this fortress that Habakkuk Mucklewrath speaks of in his ravings, when he says, ”Am not I Habakkuk Mucklewrath, whose name is changed to Magor-Missabib, because I am made a terror unto myself, and unto all that are around me? I heard it: when did I hear it? Was it not in the tower of the Ba.s.s, that overhangeth the wide, wild sea? and it howled in the winds, and it roared in the billows, and it screamed, and it whistled, and it clanged, with the screams, and the clang, and the whistle of the sea birds, as they floated, and flew, and dropped, and dived, on the bosom of the waters.”
These Salisbury Crags, which overlook Edinburgh, have a very peculiar outline; they resemble an immense elephant crouching down. We pa.s.sed Mushats Cairn, where Jeanie Deans met Robertson; and saw Liberton, where Reuben Butler was a schoolmaster. n.o.body doubts, I hope, the historical accuracy of these points.
Thursday, 21st. We took cars for Aberdeen. The appropriation of old historical names to railroad stations often reminds me of Hood's whimsical lines on a possible railroad in the Holy Land. Think of having Bannockburn shouted by the station master, as the train runs whistling up to a small station house. Nothing to be seen there but broad, silent meadows, through which the burn wimples its way. Here was the very Marathon of Scotland. I suppose we know more about it from the ”Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace bled,” than we do from history; yet the real scene, as narrated by the historian, has a moral grandeur in it.
The chronicler tells us, that when on this occasion the Scots formed their line of battle, and a venerable abbot pa.s.sed along, holding up the cross before them, the whole army fell upon their knees.
”These Scots will not fight,” said Edward, who was reconnoitring at a distance. ”See! they are all on their knees now to beg for mercy.”
”They kneel,” said a lord who stood by, ”but it is to G.o.d alone; trust me, those men will win or die.”
The bold lyric of Burns is but an inspired kind of version of the real address which Bruce is said to have made to his followers; and whoever reads it will see that its power lies not in appeal to brute force, but to the highest elements of our nature, the love of justice, the sense of honor, and to disinterestedness, self-sacrifice, courage unto death.
These things will live and form high and imperishable elements of our nature, when mankind have learned to develop them in other spheres than that of physical force. Burns's lyric, therefore, has in it an element which may rouse the heart to n.o.ble endurance and devotion, even when the world shall learn war no more.
We pa.s.sed through the town of Stirling, whose castle, magnificently seated on a rocky throne, looks right worthy to have been the seat of Scotland's court, as it was for many years. It brought to our minds all the last scenes of the Lady of the Lake, which are laid here with a minuteness of local description and allusion characteristic of Scott.
According to our guide book, one might find there the visible counterpart of every thing which he has woven into his beautiful fiction--”the Lady's Rock, which rang to the applause of the mult.i.tude;”
”the Franciscan steeple, which pealed the merry festival;” ”the sad and fatal mound,” apostrophized by Douglas,--
”That oft has heard the death-axe sound As on the n.o.blest of the land, Fell the stern headsman's b.l.o.o.d.y hand;”--
the room in the castle, where ”a Douglas by his sovereign bled;” and not far off the ruins of Cambuskenneth Abbey. One could not but think of the old days Scott has described.
”The castle gates were open flung, The quivering drawbridge rocked and rung, And echoed loud the flinty street Beneath the coursers' clattering feet, As slowly down the steep descent Fair Scotland's king and n.o.bles went, While all along the crowded way Was jubilee and loud huzza.”
The place has been long deserted as a palace; but it is one of the four fortresses, which, by the articles of union between Scotland and England, are always to be kept in repair.
We pa.s.sed by the town of Perth, the scene of the ”Fair Maid's”
adventures. We had received an invitation to visit it, but for want of time were obliged to defer it till our return to Scotland.
Somewhere along here Mr. S. was quite excited by our proximity to Scone, the old crowning-place of the Scottish kings; however, the old castle is entirely demolished, and superseded by a modern mansion, the seat of the Earl of Mansfield.
Still farther on, surrounded by dark and solemn woods, stands Glamis Castle, the scene of the tragedy in Macbeth. We could see but a glimpse of it from the road, but the very sound of the name was enough to stimulate our imagination. It is still an inhabited dwelling, though much to the regret of antiquarians and lovers of the picturesque, the characteristic outworks and defences of the feudal ages, which surrounded it, have been levelled, and velvet lawns and gravel walks carried to the very door. Scott, who pa.s.sed a night there in 1793, while it was yet in its pristine condition, comments on the change mournfully, as undoubtedly a true lover of the past would. Albeit the gra.s.s plats and the gravel walks, to the eye of sense, are undoubtedly much more agreeable and convenient. Scott says in his Demonology, that he never came any where near to being overcome with a superst.i.tious feeling, except twice in his life, and one was on the night when he slept in Glamis Castle. The poetical and the practical elements in Scott's mind ran together, side by side, without mixing, as evidently as the waters of the Alleghany and Monongahela at Pittsburg. Scarcely ever a man had so much relish for the supernatural, and so little faith in it. One must confess, however, that the most sceptical might have been overcome at Glamis Castle, for its appearance, by all accounts, is weird and strange, and ghostly enough to start the dullest imagination.
On this occasion Scott says, ”After a very hospitable reception from the late Peter Proctor, seneschal of the castle, I was conducted to my apartment in a distant part of the building. I must own, that when I heard door after door shut, after my conductor had retired, I began to consider myself as too far from the living, and somewhat too near the dead. We had pa.s.sed through what is called 'the King's Room,' a vaulted apartment, garnished with stags' antlers and similar trophies of the chase, and said by tradition to be the spot of Malcolm's murder, and I had an idea of the vicinity of the castle chapel. In spite of the truth of history, the whole night scene in Macbeth's castle rushed at once upon my mind, and struck my imagination more forcibly than even when I have seen its terrors represented by the late John Kemble and his inimitable sister. In a word, I experienced sensations which, though not remarkable either for timidity or superst.i.tion, did not fail to affect me to the point of being disagreeable, while they were mingled at the same time with a strange and indescribable kind of pleasure.”