The west side of the quadrangle, which is the most ancient, was originally
built and inhabited by Edward I., and is also interesting as the
birth-place of Queen Mary. The room in which she first saw the light is on
the second story. Her father, James V., then dying of a broken heart at
Falkland, on account of the disaster at Solway Frith, prophetically
exclaimed, "It came with a lass," alluding to his family having obtained
the crown by marriage, "and it will go with a lass."

The east side, begun by James III., and completed by James V., contains the
Parliament Hall. This was formerly the front of the palace, and the porch
was adorned with a statue of Pope Julius II., who presented James V. with a
consecrated sword and helmet for his resistance to the Reformation. This
statue escaped the iconoclastic zeal of the Reformers; but at the beginning
of the last century was destroyed by a blacksmith, whose anger against the
Papal power had been excited by a sermon.


On an inn-window at Tarbet, in Dunbartonshire, is perhaps the longest
specimen of brittle rhymes ever written. They are signed "Thomas Russell,
Oct. 3, 1771," and extend to thirty-six lines, being a poetical description
of the ascent to Ben Lomond. What would Dr. Watts have said to such a
string of inn-window rhymes!


_Ossian._


The principal curiosity in the environs of Dunkeld is the Cascade of the
Bran at Ossian's Hall, about a mile distant. This hermitage, or