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EDINBURGH—A SCOTCH BREAKFAST—THE CASTLE—PALACE OF HOLYROOD—QUEEN MARY—RIZZIO—CHARLES THE TENTH.

It is an old place, Edinboro’. The old town and the new are separated by a broad and deep ravine, planted with trees and shrubbery; and across this, on a level with the streets on either side, stretches a bridge of a most giddy height, without which all communication would apparently be cut off. “Auld Reekie” itself looks built on the back-bone of a ridgy crag, and towers along on the opposite side of the ravine, running up its twelve-story houses to the sky in an ascending curve, till it terminates in the frowning and battlemented castle, whose base is literally on a mountain top in the midst of the city. At the foot of this ridge, in the lap of the valley, lies Holyrood-house; and between this and the castle runs a single street, part of which is the old Canongate. Princes street, the Broadway of the new town, is built along the opposite edge of the ravine facing the long, many-windowed walls of the Canongate, and from every part of Edinboro’ these singular features are conspicuously visible. A more striking contrast than exists between these two parts of the same city could hardly be imagined. On one side a succession of splendid squares, elegant granite houses, broad and well-paved streets, columns, statues, and clean sidewalks, thinly promenaded and by the well-dressed exclusively—a kind of wholly grand and half deserted city, which has been built too ambitiously for its population—and on the other, an antique wilderness of streets and “wynds,” so narrow and lofty as to shut out much of the light of heaven; a thronging, busy, and particularly dirty population, sidewalks almost impassable from children and other respected nuisances; and altogether, between the irregular and massive architecture, and the unintelligible jargon agonizing the air about you, a most outlandish and strange city. Paris is not more unlike Constantinople than one side of Edinboro’ is unlike the other. Nature has probably placed “a great gulf” between them.

We toiled up the castle to see the sunset. Oh, but it was beautiful! I have no idea of describing it; but Edinboro’, to me, will be a picture seen through an atmosphere of powdered gold, mellow as an eve on the Campagna. We looked down on the surging sea of architecture below us, and whether it was the wavy cloudiness of a myriad of reeking chimneys, or whether it was a fancy Glenlivet-born in my eye, the city seemed to me like a troop of war-horses, rearing into the air with their gallant riders. The singular boldness of the hills on which it is built, and of the crags and mountains which look down upon it, and the impressive lift of its towering architecture into the sky, gave it altogether a look of pride and war-likeness that answers peculiarly well to the chivalric history of Scotland. And so much for the first look at “Auld Reekie.”

My friend had determined to have what he called a “flare-up” of a Scotch breakfast, and we were set down, the morning after our arrival, at nine, to cold grouse, salmon, cold beef, marmalade, jellies, honey, five kinds of bread, oatmeal cakes, coffee, tea, and toast; and I am by no means sure that that is all. It is a fine country in which one gets so much by the simple order of “breakfast at nine.”

We parted after having achieved it, my companion going before me to Dumbartonshire; and, with a “wee callant” for a guide, I took my way to Holyrood.

At the very foot of Edinboro’ stands this most interesting of royal palaces—a fine old pile, though at the first view rather disappointing. It might have been in the sky, which was dun and cold, or it might have been in the melancholy story most prominent in its history, but it oppressed me with its gloom. A rosy cicerone in petticoats stepped out from the porter’s lodge, and rather brightened my mood with her smile and courtesy, and I followed on to the chapel royal, built, Heaven knows when, but in a beautiful state of gothic ruin. The girl went on with her knitting and her well-drilled recitation of the sights upon which those old fretted and stone traceries had let in the light; and I walked about feeding my eyes upon its hoar and touching beauty, listening little till she came to the high altar, and in the same broad Scotch monotony, and with her eyes still upon her work, hurried over something about Mary Queen of Scots. She was married to Darnley on the spot where I stood! The mechanical guide was accustomed evidently to an interruption here, and stood still a minute or two to give my surprise the usual grace. Poor, poor Mary! I had the common feeling, and made probably the same ejaculation that thousands have made on the spot, that I had never before realized the melancholy romance of her life half so nearly. It had been the sadness of an hour before—a feeling laid aside with the book that recorded it—now it was, as it were, a pity and a grief for the living, and I felt struck with it as if it had happened yesterday. If Rizzio’s harp had sounded from her chamber, it could not have seemed more tangibly a scene of living story.

“And through this door they dragged the murdered favorite; and here under this stone, he was buried!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Poor Rizzio!”

“I’m thinkin’ that’s a’, sir!”

It was a broad hint, but I took another turn down the nave of the old ruin, and another look at the scene of the murder, and the grave of the victim.

“And this door communicated with Mary’s apartments!”

“Yes—ye hae it a’ the noo!”

I paid my shilling, and exit.

On inquiry for the private apartments, I was directed to another Girzy, who took me up to a suite of rooms appropriated to the use of the Earl of Breadalbane, and furnished very much like lodgings for a guinea a week in London.

“And which was Queen Mary’s chamber?”

“Ech! sir! It’s t’ither side. I dinna show that.”

“And what am I brought here for?”

“Ye cam’ yoursell!”

With this wholesome truth, I paid my shilling again, and was handed over to another woman, who took me into a large hall containing portraits of Robert Bruce, Baliol, Macbeth, Queen Mary, and some forty other men and women famous in Scotch story; and nothing is clearer than that one patient person sat to the painter for the whole. After “doing” these, I was led with extreme deliberativeness through a suite of unfurnished rooms, twelve, I think, the only interest of which was their having been tenanted of late by the royal exile of France. As if anybody would give a shilling to see where Charles the Tenth slept and breakfasted!

I thanked Heaven that I stumbled next upon the right person, and was introduced into an ill-lighted room, with one deep window looking upon the court, and a fireplace like that of a country inn—the state chamber of the unfortunate Mary. Here was a chair she embroidered—there was a seat of tarnished velvet, where she sat in state with Darnley—the very grate in the chimney that she had sat before—the mirror in which her fairest face had been imaged—the table at which she had worked—the walls on which her eyes had rested in her gay and her melancholy hours—all, save the touch and mould of time, as she lived in it and left it. It was a place for a thousand thoughts.

The woman led on. We entered another room—her chamber. A small, low bed, with tattered hangings of red and figured silk, tall, ill-shapen posts, and altogether a paltry look, stood in a room of irregular shape; and here, in all her peerless beauty, she had slept. A small cabinet, a closet merely, opened on the right, and in this she was supping with Rizzio when he was plucked from her and murdered. We went back to the audience chamber to see the stain of his blood on the floor. She partitioned it off after his death, not bearing to look upon it. Again—“poor Mary!”

On the opposite side was a similar closet, which served as her dressing room, and the small mirror, scarce larger than your hand, which she used at her toilet. Oh for a magic wand, to wave back, upon that senseless surface, the visions of beauty it has reflected!