old chapel, said to have been built by a Queen of Scotland, the sister of
Harold, King of England, and occupying the very highest part of the hill.
It is the smallest place of worship I ever saw, but of venerable
architecture, and of very solid construction. The old soldier had not
much more to show us; but he pointed out the window whence one of the
kings of Scotland is said, when a baby, to have been lowered down, the
whole height of the castle, to the bottom of the precipice on which it
stands,--a distance of seven hundred feet.

After the soldier had shown us to the extent of his jurisdiction, we went
into a suite of rooms, in one of which I saw a portrait of Queen Mary,
which gave me, for the first time, an idea that she was really a very
beautiful woman. In this picture she is wonderfully so,--a tender
womanly grace, which was none the less tender and graceful for being
equally imbued with queenly dignity and spirit. It was too lovely a head
to be cut off. I should be glad to know the authenticity of this
picture.

I do not know that we did anything else worthy of note, before leaving
Edinburgh. There is matter enough, in and about the town, to interest
the visitor for a very long time; but when the visit is calculated on
such brevity as ours was, we get weary of the place, before even these
few hours come to an end. Thus, for my part, I was not sorry when, in
the course of the afternoon, we took the rail for Melrose, where we duly
arrived, and put up at the George Inn.



MELROSE.