than the instability of vernacular languages admits.

We found, that by the interposition of some invisible friend, lodgings
had been provided for us at the house of one of the professors, whose
easy civility quickly made us forget that we were strangers; and in the
whole time of our stay we were gratified by every mode of kindness, and
entertained with all the elegance of lettered hospitality.

In the morning we rose to perambulate a city, which only history shews to
have once flourished, and surveyed the ruins of ancient magnificence, of
which even the ruins cannot long be visible, unless some care be taken to
preserve them; and where is the pleasure of preserving such mournful
memorials? They have been till very lately so much neglected, that every
man carried away the stones who fancied that he wanted them.

The cathedral, of which the foundations may be still traced, and a small
part of the wall is standing, appears to have been a spacious and
majestick building, not unsuitable to the primacy of the kingdom. Of the
architecture, the poor remains can hardly exhibit, even to an artist, a
sufficient specimen. It was demolished, as is well known, in the tumult
and violence of Knox's reformation.

Not far from the cathedral, on the margin of the water, stands a fragment
of the castle, in which the archbishop anciently resided. It was never
very large, and was built with more attention to security than pleasure.
Cardinal Beatoun is said to have had workmen employed in improving its
fortifications at the time when he was murdered by the ruffians of
reformation, in the manner of which Knox has given what he himself calls
a merry narrative.