a long ascent, up which the paved street reaches all the way to its gate,
is Stirling Castle. Of course we went thither, and found free entrance,
although the castle is garrisoned by five or six hundred men, among whom
are barelegged Highlanders (I must say that this costume is very fine and
becoming, though their thighs did look blue and frost-bitten) and also
some soldiers of other Scotch regiments, with tartan trousers. Almost
immediately on passing the gate, we found an old artillery-man, who
undertook to show us round the castle. Only a small portion of it seems
to be of great antiquity. The principal edifice within the castle wall
is a palace, that was either built or renewed by James VI.; and it is
ornamented with strange old statues, one of which is his own. The old
Scottish Parliament House is also here. The most ancient part of the
castle is the tower, where one of the Earls of Douglas was stabbed by a
king, and afterwards thrown out of the window. In reading this story,
one imagines a lofty turret, and the dead man tumbling headlong from a
great height; but, in reality, the window is not more than fifteen or
twenty feet from the garden into which he fell. This part of the castle
was burned last autumn; but is now under repair, and the wall of the
tower is still stanch and strong. We went up into the chamber where the
murder took place, and looked through the historic window.

Then we mounted the castle wall, where it broods over a precipice of many
hundred feet perpendicular, looking down upon a level plain below, and
forth upon a landscape, every foot of which is richly studded with
historic events. There is a small peep-hole in the wall, which Queen
Mary is said to have been in the habit of looking through. It is a most
splendid view; in the distance, the blue Highlands, with a variety of
mountain outlines that I could have studied unweariably; and in another
direction, beginning almost at the foot of the Castle Hill, were the
Links of Forth, where, over a plain of miles in extent the river