Perth, boasting, as we have already mentioned, so large a portion
of the beauties of inanimate nature, has at no time been without
its own share of those charms which are at once more interesting
and more transient. To be called the Fair Maid of Perth would at
any period have been a high distinction, and have inferred no mean
superiority in beauty, where there were many to claim that much
envied attribute. But, in the feudal times to which we now call
the reader's attention, female beauty was a quality of much higher
importance than it has been since the ideas of chivalry have been
in a great measure extinguished. The love of the ancient cavaliers
was a licensed species of idolatry, which the love of Heaven alone
was theoretically supposed to approach in intensity, and which in
practice it seldom equalled. God and the ladies were familiarly
appealed to in the same breath; and devotion to the fair sex was as
peremptorily enjoined upon the aspirant to the honour of chivalry
as that which was due to Heaven. At such a period in society, the
power of beauty was almost unlimited. It could level the highest
rank with that which was immeasurably inferior.

It was but in the reign preceding that of Robert III. that beauty
alone had elevated a person of inferior rank and indifferent morals
to share the Scottish throne; and many women, less artful or less
fortunate, had risen to greatness from a state of concubinage, for
which the manners of the times made allowance and apology. Such
views might have dazzled a girl of higher birth than Catharine,
or Katie, Glover, who was universally acknowledged to be the most
beautiful young woman of the city or its vicinity, and whose renown,
as the Fair Maid of Perth, had drawn on her much notice from the
young gallants of the royal court, when it chanced to be residing