a custom to have four Marys as her ladies of honour, until at last it became a common phrase to speak or sing of a favourite waiting-woman as a Mary. The child's garden of Inchmahome, with its tall boxhedge, and its little enclosure overgrown with rank luxuriant weeds, and with bushes that have reached the altitude of trees, is a touching spectacle to such as can carry back imagination to the times when the innocent child, so sorely in her after life to be buffeted on the storms of passion and suffering, frolicked in her little isle, with nothing to do but to learn her daily lessons under the tuition of worthy John Erskine, the prior of the monastery, to tend her flower-beds, and to make merry with her artless companions. After having had charge of the little queen for two years in the Isle of Rest, Erskine was commissioned by the Scottish Estates to convey her to France to be educated under the auspices of the French king, with a view to her ultimate marriage with the Dauphin. They embarked on board of a French shipof-war, from Dumbarton Castle, attended by the four faithful Marys, and her three natural brothers, grown men, and ruthless as the other Scottish nobles of their time, and who each envied her her legitimacy, and the throne which it gave her. When Mary returned to Scotland, a lovely young widow, eleven years afterwards, her four faithful Marys returned with her. It was on the 19th of August, 1561, when the weather should have been bright in Scotland, that the great John Knox, an unfriendly and prejudiced observer, mentions the day as one of evil appearance and omen. "The very face of heaven," he says, "at the time of her arrival, did manifestly speak what comfort was brought into the country with her; to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness, and all impiety. In the memory of man, that day of the year was never seen a more dolorous face of the heaven than was at her arrival, which two days after did so continue: for, besides the surface weet (wet) and corruption of the air, the mist was so thick and so dark, that scarce might any man espy another the length of two butts. The sun was not seen to shine for two days before and two days after. That forewarning God gave to us! But, alas! the most part were blind." The happiness of poor Mary's life ended in France; and she returned to Scotland with a presentiment almost as gloomy as that of John Knox, that dark days were in store for her and for her native country, of whose people and manners she knew so little that was

favourable, and so much that was forbidding. Mary never revisited the Isle of Rest, never may be said to have known rest at all, until the final scene at Fotheringhay, when the axe of the headsman ushered her to that final repose of the grave, in which she found the peace that cruel Fate had so persistently denied her while living.

We leave Inchmahome with regret, and proceed to the clachan of Aberfoyle, a distance of about four miles, through a picturesque country, Ben Lomond looming grandly in the distance, "hill paramount and watch-tower of the clime."

It was at Aberfoyle, as all readers of Rob Roy will remember, that the excellent Bailie Nichol Jarvie met Major Galbraith, and had his memorable encounter with that hero, armed with a red-hot poker to defend himself from the major's sword. Until very recent times, it was the custom at Aberfoyle to exhibit to visitors the identical poker which the Bailie used in the encounter, from which he came out with so much credit; but the new generation has grown sceptical, and no more believes in the Bailie's poker than it does in the veritable pair of pincers with which St. Anthony pinched the devil's nose, which used to be, and possibly is still shown to the curious somewhere down in Sussex.

From Aberfoyle, after due refreshment on "the wine of the country," with oatcake, and such transcendentally good butter as Scotland and Switzerland alone can supply, we continue our course to Loch Ard and Loch Chon, places little visited, but among the wildest and grandest within the compass of the British Isles. In the solitudes of this region, under the landward shadow of Ben Lomond, the Regent Murdoch, Duke of Albany, took refuge from the cares of his uneasy and thankless sovereignty, and from a castle, which he built for himself on a small island in Loch Ard, he was taken captive to Stirling, and there executed. Two miles behind Loch Ard, lies Loch Chon, than which, with all its accessories of crag and mountain and wild-wooded defiles, there is nothing more romantically and savagely picturesque in Scotland. Both of these lochs are favourite resorts of such happy anglers as can obtain the privilege of fishing in their well-stocked waters.

The second excursion which we resolve to make from Callander is to the Braes and the Kirk of Balquhither, or Balquhidder, in the heart of the country of the great Clan Gregor, or MacAlpine, a district, almost

every hill, dell, and mountain torrent of which is renowned in song and story.

The road lies almost due north, by Bochastle, a spur or ridge of Ben Ledi, of which mention is more than once made in the Lady of the Lake, and through the small village of Kilmahog, where, over the door of a wayside inn, we see a rude attempt at heroic art, in the shape of a sign, representing a duel between two ferocious-looking combatants, one of whom, in the Highland garb, represents Roderick Dhu, and the other the Knight of Snowdoun. Continuing this road we come to the celebrated Pass of Leni, one of the entrances to those Alpine regions, which a very small force of the native population could, and often did, defend successfully against vastly superior numbers. Emerging from this rugged defile, we come in sight of Loch Lubnaig, or the Crooked Lake, about five miles in length, surrounded by steep, and in some places perpendicular banks of crag and mountain, which throw their deep shadows far over the lake, and give it the dark and gloomy aspect which it exhibits, except when the sun pours its meridian rays directly upon it. Half-way up the loch on the eastern side stands a solitary farm-house, called Ardchullerie, the property, but not the residence, of a ripe scholar, the wellknown and highly-respected Laird of Kier; and noted as the place where another scholar, Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, secluded himself from the world, while engaged in writing the work which has made his name famous.

Skirting Loch Lubnaig for its whole course, and thence traversing for three miles the district of Strathire, we diverge from the high road eastwards at Kingshouse, and enter upon the village and the Braes of Balquhither. At Kirkton, close to Loch Voil, where a new church has recently been erected, highly useful in the neighbourhood, but not very ornamental— and Scottish churches seldom are ornamental, except in the great cities-lie, buried side by side, the famous Rob Roy and Helen, his wife. A heavy slab of grey stone, without any inscription to denote the names of the "poor inhabitants below," lies over each grave. On the tombstone of Rob is rudely sculptured a Highland broadsword, the weapon that he could wield so well, and in the use of which, from his great strength as well as his length of arm (he was able to tie his garter below his knee without stooping) he was more than a match for all com

petitors. At the head of Loch Voil, a smaller sheet of water than Loch Lubnaig, still stands the house of Inverlochlary, where he lived during the peaceful latter years of a life of more than average storminess in its youth and maturity, and where he died at an advanced age in 1736. The history of the Clan Gregor, and of Rob Roy, its last great central character, are well told by Sir Walter Scott in the introduction to the Abbotsford Edition of the novel. The whole of the circumstances connected with the cruel persecution of the clan during many ages would, if truly told-as they have never yet been-reflect high discredit, not only upon the great families who were the immediate neighbours of the Macgregors, but upon the governments both of Scotland and England, which legalised the rapacity and vindictiveness of those who sought to profit by the extermination of a race which had given many kings to Scotland before the Stuarts were ever heard of. Even Scott himself has not done historical justice to Rob Roy, who was not a thief, in the Saxon and vulgar acceptation of the word, and who only laid himself open to the charge of being a robber and a freebooter, because, in conformity with the wild and all but regal notions of his tribe, and of the Highlanders generally, he considered himself as much entitled to wage war against his enemies, as the king of Great Britain. Private war is murder and robbery in the eyes of the law, but they were not such in the eyes of Robert Macgregor, or in those of any of his clan contemporaries, who did not hope to profit in lands and honour by the impoverishment and ruin of the Macgregors. Rob Roy was a Highland gentleman, neither much better nor much worse than his neighbours, and, when he died, was honoured with a funeral which showed the high estimation in which he was held, and at which all the gentry and leading people for fifty miles round attended.

One story of Balquhither, characteristic alike of the Macgregors and their enemies, and of a barbarous time, but too recently passed away, is recorded by Sir Walter Scott in the introduction to the Legend of Montrose, and forms the main incident of that romance.

This murder cost the Macgregors dear, for the privy council of Scotland granted a commission to the Earl of Huntly and others, to attack and pursue the offenders with fire and sword, and exterminate them, like wild beasts, wherever they might be found; a commission which appears to have been executed with the utmost rigour. At a subsequent time the

Macgregors were forbidden to wear armour, or to use any weapons except a blunt knife to carve their food with, and their very name was considered too offensive to belong to a good man and a loyal subject, and was consequently rendered illegal. A worthy gentleman of this ancient clan, still living and flourishing, maintains that the Macgregors, notwithstanding all the persecutions they have suffered, are the greatest and noblest of the clans; that all others are by hundreds of years their juniors, and that all mankind are divided into three classes; first, the Macgregors proper; second, those who, by their virtue, bravery, and genius, are worthy to be Macgregors; and, thirdly, the oi polloi, the swinish multitude, who are too ignorant and brutal to rank on an equality with the meanest member of the royal clan. This worthy gentleman's idea hurts nobody, and is as amusing to his friends as it is consolatory to himself. He does me the honour to say that I ought to be a Macgregor, and hints that, somehow or other, though neither he nor I can trace the genealogy, I must have had a member of that glorious clan among my maternal an

cestors.

Passing from Rob Roy's grave, and forgetting for awhile the rights and the wrongs, the bravery and the cruelty, the chivalry and the lawlessness of the turbulent but much-wronged family, who were first of all oppressed, and then barbarously punished for resistance, we retrace our steps to Kingshouse, and proceed to Lochearn Head, or as it was formerly, and ought still to be called, Kinloch Earn. Here, at the commodious inn that commands a view of the loch in its full length and breadth, we put up our steeds and order dinner. There is no lovelier spot in Scotland, or one in which it would be pleasanter for a man wearied with mental work to take up his abode for a couple of summer months, with nothing to do but to explore the glens, thread the mazes of the streams, climb the mountain tops, row or sail upon the placid water surrounded by hills, like a gem in its setting, or, if his tastes inclined that way, to make war upon the pike, the trout, and the salmo ferox which abound in the rivers that run into the loch.

Our third and last excursion from Callander is the one best known and most popular, and one never omitted by the tourists, who are attracted to Scotland by their admiration of Scott's genius, and who think themselves bound in duty to tread

the beaten track which he has celebrated. With these hero-worshipping tourists, not to see Loch Katrine and the Trossachs is not to see Scotland, and so thoroughly is Scott master of their movements that they leave unvisited hundreds of scenes as beautiful as any which he has described, and which lie in close proximity to the well-worn track. To any one who has Scott's poetry in remembrance it is easy to cite the various passages that mention the places on this well-frequented road. First is Coilantogle Ford, at which Roderick Dhu's safe-conduct of the Knight of Snowdoun ended; and next is Loch Vennachar, in the description of which the poet, has lavished all his wealth of imagery. Vennachar is five miles in length, and neither more nor less lovely than five hundred other lakes and lakelets that gem all the west of Scotland, and of which the praises have not yet been sung by any bard or minstrel known to fame in our day.

Most travellers desire to obtain a glimpse of Lanrick Mead, the trysting-place of the Clan Gregor, to which Malise in the poem summons the son from the funeral of his father, the bridegroom from his bride at the altar, the ploughman from the field, the smith from the anvil, to carry out the high behests of their chieftain. The place is only interesting for its association with the poem, but no reader of Scott passes it without the tribute which genius exacts from its admirers. The Bridge of Turk, where Fitz-James shot ahead of all his companions in the chase, and “rode alone,' and by so doing led to the incidents and the catastrophe of the poem, is next passed. Beyond the Bridge of Turk is Loch Achray, smaller than Loch Vennachar. Its northern shore is bold, rocky, and picturesque, and brings us to what many travellers consider to be the crowning glory and beauty of Scottish scenery, the world-renowned Trossachs. The name in Gaelic signifies the rough and broken territory which it was, when no road existed through it, except that which was traced by the feet of the roving Highlander. In days not very remote, when Queen Victoria was in her youth, there was a comfortable little inn in the Trossachs, with an all but unpronounceable Gaelic name; but since that time the great stream of summer travel has so largely increased, that a spacious baronial hostelry has displaced its humble predecessor, and taken possession of the place in the name of "modern improvement." I for one am not ashamed to own that I regret the disappearance of the little inn, with its few

travellers, every one of whom was a welcome guest. The new building is doubtless a convenience, but its appearance is not in keeping with the wild accessories of the scene, and jars upon the harmony of surrounding objects like a discord in music. Hence, after due rest and refreshment,. we push on to Loch Katrine, or the lake of the Catterans (be it said, by the way, that this etymology is disputed). This lake has been so often and so well described in prose and verse, and notably by the great wizard himself, that any new pen that would attempt to do justice to its mingled loveliness and grandeur has a hard task. Language, at the best, is poor and weak in the description of the sublimities of nature. There are but few adjectives that can be employed, and they speedily become threadbare, and the mock raptures of sentimental description convey but faint impressions. It is of little use to tell the world that such a scene is fine, or lovely, or grand, or solemn, or sublime. The world either does not understand the epithets, or interprets them in a manner different from that of the writer; and there is an end. It must suffice to say that the scenery of the Trossachs disappoints none of the pilgrims who come to visit it, and that it is a fortunate thing for everybody in the neighbourhood, who owns land or who has his living to get, that Sir Walter Scott came, saw, admired, and described it.

Loch Katrine has its utilitarian as well as its romantic aspects. It supplies the city of Glasgow, nearly forty miles distant, with an abundant, and, in case of need, an over-abundant wealth of the finest water in the world. Happy is Glasgow to be so provided. Happy would London be if it were only half as well cared for. The needs of Glasgow, amply as they are met, make but little, if any, difference in the broad expanse of Loch Katrine. The mountains feed the lake with their constant rills, and burns, and foaming torrents, and Glasgow takes away the superfluity, leaving Loch Katrine none the poorer for the abundant largess which she has given to the crowded city.

We of course visit Ellen's Isle, the isle where the Lady of the Lake, in the poem but not in the fact, lived in a castle, such as only a novelist could have created in so limited a space. The sail over the lake beautiful exceedingly, and the little isle itself, steep of ascent, is well worth a visit on its own account, irrespective of the halo of romantic glamour which the poet's genius has thrown over it. But for the in

struction of a matter-of-fact age, let it be here recorded that there never was a house, much less a castle upon it, and that Ellen's home might as well have been in the clouds as in the little isle of Loch Katrine.

This queen or empress of Scottish lakes, as she might be called were there no Loch Lomond, Loch Long, or Loch Awe to contest the sovereignty, is about ten miles in length, with an average breadth of a mile and a half. Having used up all my adjectives, I can say no more about it than to advise all those who seek for fine scenery in continental Europe, or America, or anywhere else under the benignant sun, to try this part of Scotland; and if they are not satisfied, the fault will lie in themselves.

THE ROSE AND THE KEY.

CHAPTER LXIX. A RIOT.

In the mean time, Maud had reached the steps of the door which opens on the terrace-walk of the quadrangle; and from that elevation she made a survey of the ground.

This fruitless pursuit of her hostess was beginning to grow ridiculous; she would have laughed, I dare say, if she had not been also very near crying. For her comprehensive survey was unrewarded by a sight of Lady Mardykes; and here was she already in the third day of her visit, without having yet exchanged a word with her hostess, or having been introduced to a single person; and were it not for the absurdly magnificent proofs of Lady Mardykes's very marked attention to her comforts and luxuries, displayed in the number of rooms assigned to her use, and the exquisite taste in which they were furnished, she would have begun to suspect that Lady Mardykes had quite forgotten that she had ever invited her to Carsbrook. Occupied, somewhat uncomfortably, with these thoughts, Maud wandered across the croquet-ground, and up and down some of the shady alleys which lie beyond it. But her search was fruitless. Lady Mardykes was nowhere to be found.

So Maud, disappointed and a little offended, returned with a slower step to the place from whence she came, wondering whether she was ever to meet Lady Mardykes again.

Her guests certainly did not seem to trouble her a great deal, and, so far as Maud could see, she was pleased to leave

them very much to amuse and take care of themselves.

Well, it was disappointing; but, after all, Lady Mardykes was sure to be home for luncheon, possibly an hour before it. In the mean time, other people might introduce themselves, as had happened yesterday, and so her acquaintance might grow.

Her anticipations were quickly justified, for as she was walking down, by this time pretty well resigned to her disappointment, toward the yew-hedge walk, a singularlooking person accosted her.

He was almost a pigmy in stature, and his air was ineffably pompous; his face was long and pallid, with a turn-up nose, and he wore an expression of conceit and scorn as he eyed passers-by, such as Miss Vernon could not have believed in except perhaps in the caricature of a pantomime. He walked slowly, rising on his toes as he did so, and carried a big portfolio and a small shagreen case under his arm, and a quadrant strapped across his back. To Miss Vernon he made a slight bow and a smile, so transitory that it amounted to little more than a momentary grimace, the effect of which was rather odd than alluring.

His long chin terminated in a lank white beard, unaccompanied by either whisker or moustache. A solemn gloom overspread his countenance, and an habitual look of surprise made his small eyes round, except when a smirk of contempt or of self-esteem lighted his face.

It seemed to be the rule in this house not to wait for introduction. The appearance of this dwarfish sage aroused Miss Vernon's curiosity, and she was rather glad that she had so quickly found some one willing to entertain her.

"You have heard, madam," said he, walking at her side, "of Laplace, of Newton, you have heard of Watt, you have heard of Davy. I see, by your head and eye, that you have an intellect and an interest for the physical sciences, and, I need scarcely add, you have heard of Sidebotham, and the perpetuum mobile. He is at present a guest at this place, and of course he comes and goes as he pleases."

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Oh? Indeed!" said Miss Vernon, affecting a greater interest in the worthies of science than perhaps she felt, and ashamed to admit that she had never before heard of Sidebotham in that brilliant muster-roll. "Lady Mardykes has so many distinguished guests that one is scarcely surprised to meet any great name among them."

He simpered with gratified self-complacency and made his bow, and in an instant was more solemn than ever.

"The individual who has the honour of addressing you," he continued, "is Sidebotham, the mechanist, the mechanical genius of this, and all ages, as I have had the honour of being termed."

At this moment a sweet voice inquired:

"Well, Mr. Sidebotham, how goes on the perpetual motion ?"

And raising her eyes, Maud saw the Duchess of Falconbury before her, smiling.

"That is a question that answers itself," said the professor, slowly averting his face with upturned nose and a sublime sneer. How goes on the perpetuum mobile? Why it goes on for ever? Ha, ha, ha!" And he laughed, as demons do in melo dramas, in three distinct "Ha's."

Her grace was not in the least ruffled, for her attention was engaged by a melancholy but gentleman-like looking man who was approaching.

"You see that man," whispered the duchess in Maud's ear; her eyes looking down the shady walk, which they had now entered.

"The Spanish ambassador ?" inquired Maud, who saw that minister, in the an tique costume which he affected, approach ing with toes turned out, at a slow and grand pace, in the rear of the melancholy

man.

"Ambassador! He's no ambassador, my dear; he has lost his head a little; he's a Mr. Ap-Jenkins, who has a slate quarry in Carnarvonshire; but it is not about him. You see this man in black who walks towards us, looking down on the gravel over his shoulder. Did you ever see such a comically miserable face? When he comes up we'll talk to him; he'll amuse you."

Maud thought that such pining misery and malignity as were expressed in that dark face, could not have been conveyed in the human countenance.

The duchess said, as he was passing by, unheeding:

"I hope, Mr. Poinders, you find that boiling sensation a little better to-day ?"

Sensation?" he repeated, stopping suddenly, and raising his dreadful face. "Heat and motion tell pretty plainly, when water, much less blood, is bubbling at a boil? No, not better, worse. My blood boils; as yesterday, so to-day, and so for ever and ever, amen!"

"I'm so sorry," said the duchess, pressing her hand ever so little on Maud's arm,