the spot covered by Rizzio's body, staining the floor deeply enough never
to be washed out. It is now of a dark brown hue; and I do not see why it
may not be the genuine, veritable stain. The floor, thereabouts, appears
not to have been scrubbed much; for I touched it with my finger, and
found it slightly rough; but it is strange that the many footsteps should
not have smoothed it, in three hundred years.

One of the articles shown us in Queen Mary's apartments was the
breastplate supposed to have been worn by Lord Ruthven at the murder, a
heavy plate of iron, and doubtless a very uncomfortable waistcoat.



HOLYROOD ABBEY.


From the Palace, we passed into the contiguous ruin of Holyrood Abbey;
which is roofless, although the front, and some broken columns along the
nave, and fragments of architecture here and there, afford hints of a
magnificent Gothic church in bygone times. It deserved to be
magnificent; for here have been stately ceremonials, marriages of kings,
coronations, investitures, before the high altar, which has now been
overthrown or crumbled away; and the floor--so far as there is any floor
--consists of tombstones of the old Scottish nobility. There are
likewise monuments, bearing the names of illustrious Scotch families; and
inscriptions, in the Scotch dialect, on the walls.

In one of the front towers,--the only remaining one, indeed,--we saw the
marble tomb of a nobleman, Lord Belhaven, who is represented reclining on
the top,--with a bruised nose, of course. Except in Westminster Abbey, I