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by old, turreted mansions (among which, high up on the right, is Lee, with its famous talisman," the "Lee Penny "), by farms shaded with great sycamores, by quiet hamlets nestled among wood-covered hills. A ravine below the town of Lanark bears the name of Gillytudlem; and we are reminded that the so-called Castle of Craignethan, overhanging

the Nethan Water, a tributary to the Clyde from the left, supplied some touches for Lady Margaret Bellenden's Tower of Tillietudlem. We are approaching the scenery of "Old Mortality;" and although Craignethan can never have had the importance of Lady Margaret's fortalice, its remains cannot be visited without some thought of his

most sacred Majesty's "disjune," or of the visit of Claverhouse and the troubles of the fair Edith. Craignethan, rather a fortified manor-house than a castle, stands high above the narrow glen of the Nethan, the banks of which immediately above the ruin have that broken, irregular character, tufted with natural wood, which is so especially delightful to the eye and the imagination. Old sycamores brush the walls of the courtyard, round which is a high wall flanked by turrets. In ancient days Craignethan was a seat of the great Evandale branch of the House of Hamilton. Sir Walter Scott visited it in 1799 from Bothwell Castle with his hosts, Lord and Lady Douglas; and such was his delight with the scenery that his hosts, then the owners of the place, begged him to accept for his lifetime the use of a small habitable house which adjoins the ruins. Craignethan might thus have rivalled Abbotsford, but the offer was not accepted. The true character of the place, however, was

transferred to the pages of "Old Mortality, and we can give no more accurate description than is to be found there.

"The Tower of Tillietudlem stood, or perhaps yet stands, upon the angle of a very precipitous bank, formed by the junction of a considerable brook with the Clyde. The fortalice had been in times of war a post of considerable importance, the possession of which was necessary to secure the communication of the upper and wilder districts of the country with those beneath, where the valley expands and is more capable of cultivation. The view downwards is of a grand woodland character; but the level ground and gentle slopes near the river form cultivated fields of an irregular shape, interspersed with hedge-row trees and copses, the enclosures seeming to have been individually

cleared out of the forest which surrounds them, and which occupies, in unbroken masses, the steeper declivities and more distant banks. The stream, in colour a clear and sparkling brown, like the hue of the Cairngorm pebbles, rushes through this romantic region in bold sweeps and curves, partly visible and partly concealed by the trees which clothe its banks. With a providence unknown in other parts of Scotland, the peasants have in most places planted orchards around their cottages; and the general blossom of the apple-trees gives all the lower part of the view the appearance of a flower-garden. Looking up the river, the character of the scene varied considerably for the worse. A hilly, waste, and uncultivated country approached close to the banks; the trees were few, and limited to the neighbourhood of the stream; and the rude moors swelled at a little distance into shapeless and heavy hills, which were again surmounted in their turn by a range of lofty mountains, dimly seen on the horizon. Thus the tower commanded two prospects the one richly cultivated and highly adorned, the other exhibiting the monotonous. and dreary character of a wild and inhospitable moorland."

Leaving Craignethan, we return to the Clyde, and follow the windings of the river through a richly wooded and beautiful country till we reach the village of Hamilton, close to which lie the park and the palace of the premier peer of Scotland-the Duke of Hamilton, Brandon, and Chatelherault. The park is bordered by the Clyde, and lies comparatively low. The palace, originally a square tower of the usual Scottish type, was greatly altered and added to in the early part of the last century, and was brought to its present condition between the years 1822 and 1830. It is now a stately and imposing edifice-perhaps too solemn for even so great a mansion

-" of that stupendous air,
Soft and agreeable come never there."

This rather depressing effect is mainly due to the portico of six Corinthian columns, each of which, cut out of a single stone, is thirty feet high and three feet in diameter. The house contains a vast collection of pictures, without doubt the most important in Scotland, among which are some fine Vandycks, and a well-known Rubens, representing Daniel in the lions' den. The palace is rich throughout in magnificent decoration, but Hamilton Palace and Park are less really interesting to the stranger "in search of the picturesque" than the ruins of Cadzow Castle and the fragment of ancient forest which. extends beyond them. It was here that the Hamiltons first settled; the land, which had been in the hands of the Crown from a remote antiquity, having been granted by Robert Bruce, immediately after the battle of Bannockburn, to a Walter Fitzgilbert of Hamilton. For the history of the race since that day we must search the histories of Scotland and of England. Cadzow has never passed from them; and it is to the forest here

"When princely Hamilton's abode

Ennobled Cadzow's Gothic towers"

that Sir Walter brings Bothwellhaugh after his murder of the regent Murray :

"And, reeking from the recent deed,

He dashed his carbine on the ground."

The ruins of Cadzow Castle stand on a rocky hill above the Avon or Evan, an important feeder of the Clyde. They are little more than shapeless fragments, but the fine situation and the overgrowth of ivy and wild "greenery" give a picturesque character to the remains, well in keeping with the romance which belongs to them. It is from an incident in the life of Walter de Hamilton, the first of his race who possessed Cadzow, that the Hamiltons (so it is asserted) derive the crest which still surmounts their shield -a tree half-sawn, with the motto "Through." This Hamilton, being at the Court of Edward II., managed to contract a feud with the Despencers, and was obliged to take flight. He was closely pursued, and at one time he and his servant found it necessary to change clothes with some workmen who were cutting down a tree and to take their places. The pursuers went by; and, as the servant looked after them uneasily, Sir Walter, to divert his attention, called out, "Through," and the tree soon fell.

The great oaks of Cadzow are of unknown age, and may well represent that venerable Caledonian Wood which once, it is said, extended from sea to sea through the whole of the south of Scotland. There are but few survivors of these trees, scattered over irregular and broken ground, from which ferny hollows sink away on either side. One or two of them are more than twenty-four feet in circumference. Their boughs are grey and shattered, and the ground at their feet is covered with crumbling fragments; yet, like the Yardley Oak of Cowper

"the Spring

Finds them not less alive to her sweet force
Than yonder upstarts of the neighbouring wood."

They still put forth their coronals of leafage, and still afford some kind of shade to the wild cattle which wander through the glades. These are the "beasts of chase" of Sir Walter's ballad

These cattle, entirely white except their hoofs and the tips of their horns, no doubt represent a primitive breed which roamed wild through these islands at a very ancient period. Besides the herd at Cadzow, there is another at Chillingham in Northumberland; and it is only of late years that a third, at Gisburne in Yorkshire, has become extinct. Their habits are those of wild animals. They hide their young, feed for the most part at night, and although they generally shrink from strangers, they become fierce and dangerous if at all pressed upon. These are the wild cattle,

as our readers need hardly be reminded, which Scott has placed in the park of Ravenswood, where the "Master" saves the life of Lucy Ashton by a well-directed shot.

As we descend the Clyde towards Bothwell we very soon come within sight of the "brig" which gave its name to the battle described in "Old Mortality," between the Covenanters and the royal troops under Claverhouse and Monmouth. Here again we are in the hands of Sir Walter; but of what corner of Scotland may not the same be said? The battle, and the scene about the bridge, then "a plain open field, excepting a few thickets of no great depth," overlooked from the low, distant hills, "from which can easily be discovered the windings of the majestic Clyde"-all this is so admirably painted in the story that there is little need for dwelling on it here.

The bridge itself has been greatly altered; and at the time of the battle (June 22nd, 1679) there was a portal in the middle, with gates, which were barricaded by the Covenanters. A fierce struggle took place on and about it :

The Clyde at Bothwell Bridge has a width of seventy-one yards; and at Bothwell Castle below, this has increased to eighty yards. The banks, however, quite suddenly contract below bridge; and we pass into a picturesque gorge, on either side of which rise lofty cliffs of red sandstone, overhung by trees, and clothed here and there with thick coppice-wood. The scene has something of the character of the " "about Corra; pass but the Clyde here is a quiet and majestic stream, unvexed by struggling torrents or lofty rock-ridges, and "Bothwell banks which bloom so fair" are less rugged than those