charms of nature, about the glories of sunset and the tenderness of moonlight, about the beauty of the pathless woods and the grandeur of the wild sea-shore, yet it is human interest, after all, that gives to inanimate nature its most potent attraction. It does not seem to matter greatly whether the personality is historical or legendary, real or fictitious. The chief desideratum is that there shall be presented to the mind in association with natural scenery human beings whose fate or whose fortunes enlist our interest and lay

Inchmahome, Lake of Menteith.

another way of saying that we find our greatest interest in ourselves, and in the reflections of ourselves. The philosopher who said

"On earth there's nothing great but man;

In man there's nothing great but mind," was a commonplace philosopher, after all. He merely put in philosophic language the very ordinary truth that men are most powerfully attracted by what they are most familiar with.

Hence it arises that the pleasure which we derive from natural scenery is chiefly due to

human association. The Trossachs and Loch Katrine were at least as beautiful before Scott "discovered" them as they are now; yet very few persons thought it worth their while to visit them. But no sooner did the magician people them with the characters, and clothe them with the incidents, of "The Lady of the Lake," than they sprang at once into wide and enduring popularity.

In like manner, what would the lakes have been without Wordsworth, Alloway Kirk and Lincluden without Burns, or the Vale of Avoca without Moore, or Holyrood without Queen Mary and Rizzio, or the Outer Hebrides without Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald-or, indeed, a score of other spots in Scotland that might be mentioned, without Sir Walter Scott?

All these cases seem to show that the most attractive pilgrim resting-places are spots which awaken human interest, either historical or fictitious, and to demonstrate the supe

riority of mind to inanimate matter, even at its best.

For example, the island of Inchmahome, in the picturesque Lake of Menteith, about four miles from Aberfoyle-the Aberfoyle of Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Rob Roy-owes its attractiveness wholly to its historical associations. It was thrice visited by King Robert the Bruce, in the anxious and troubled times that preceded Bannockburn; and there his son, King David II., was wedded to his second wife, Margaret Logie, about whom little is known. An Augustinian priory had been built on the island about the middle of the thirteenth century, the remains of which may still be seen, and it was under its roof that King Robert found a safe retreat in his times of adversity.

The interest of the island, however, centres in its association with the childhood of Mary Queen of Scots. When the French party and the English party were struggling for the possession of her person, in order to further their schemes, she was transferred from Stirling Castle to Inchmahome for greater safety, by Mary of Guise and Cardinal Beaton. She was then only five years of age-an age at which girls are concerned with their dolls and their other toys, and not at all with match-making or with affairs of State. She had with her as companions four little girls, nearly of her own age-each of them also a Mary. They are known to history and romance as "the Queen's Maries"Mary Beatoun, Mary Seton, Mary Hamilton, and Mary Fleming. The tragic fate of one of them in after years is recorded in the plaintive words of a well-known ballad, which runs:

"Yestreen there were four Maries,

This night they'll be but three,
There's Mary Beatoun and Mary Seton,
And Mary Fleming-and me."

But there was no thought of tragedy for any of them, more than for the child queen herself, as they spent their happy days under the shade of Spanish chestnuts and sycamore and walnut-trees on this isle of rest. The most touching relic of these innocent days is the child queen's garden-an oval space measuring no more than eighteen feet by twelve, with a double row of boxwood round it to indicate the walk. At three several points the boxwood edging has grown up into trees, some twenty feet high, and in the centre of the plot there is an old thorn, quaint and wind-battered, which may have been a sapling planted by the hands of the little queen herself. Evidently the custom of setting apart a little plot for the children, to be laid out for them and tended by them, is no mere modern idea. Here the child queen, surrounded by her child maids of honour, held her miniature court, and played, mayhap, at life and death and treason, all unconscious of the terrible realities that the future held for more than one of them, but especially for the central figure of the group.

The scene changes to another island, in another Scottish lake, with which the sternest of these realities is painfully associated. Between the innocent child of five years on Inchmahome, and the care-worn and by no means guiltless woman of four-andtwenty in Loch Leven Castle, what a contrast! What a story of trouble and intrigue

and tragedy the intervening nineteen years have to tell! The story includes that of two kingdoms won and lost; of three marriages, all unfortunate; of murders and battles and surrenders; of state-craft and court-craft and priest-craft; and through all of a beautiful, capricious, and most unhappy woman struggling with fate and with the stars in their courses.

It was after her surrender to the Confederated Lords at Carberry Hill, and after her final parting with Bothwell-thenceforth to devote himself to the piracies and outrages that befitted him-that Queen Mary became an inmate of Loch Leven Castle. There she signed the abdication of her crown, at the instance of Lords Ruthven and Lindsay and Sir Robert Melville. The story about Lord Ruthven leaving the mark of his mailed hand on her tender arm is most probably a piece of sympathetic fiction. No such pressure was needed in order to induce Mary to take the only course open to her.

Three weeks passed, and then Loch Leven Castle was the scene of another famous interview-that between Queen Mary and her half-brother, the Regent Murray. The conference lasted till one hour after midnight. There was much plain speaking on Murray's side, and much protesting and weeping on that of Mary. Next morning, Mary embraced and kissed her brother, and begged him to accept the Regency, for the sake of her son and of Scotland. That was on the 16th of August, 1567; and the brother and sister did not meet again till they encountered each other on the field of Langside.

During the next six months Mary remained quietly at Loch Leven, longing to be free. On the 25th of April, 1568, an attempt to effect her release was made by George Douglas, a younger brother of Sir Robert, the keeper of the Castle; but it ended in failure, and in the banishment of Douglas from the Castle. Another plot, concocted by little Douglas, a youth of sixteen, and presumably a kinsman of the keeper's family, was successful. According to the accepted story, the keys of the Castle were placed every night at supper in front of the keeper. Little Douglas dropped a napkin over them while waiting at table, and in lifting the napkin he lifted the keys also. He then let the Queen and her waiting-maid out of the room in which they were secured. Emerging from the Castle-gate, they locked it behind them, and made for the shore, where they embarked in a skiff and rowed toward the land, carefully dropping the keys into the lake. They

landed near "Mary's Knowe," on the southern. shore of the lake, where they found friends, who had been warned by a signal, awaiting them-George Douglas, the Queen's servant, Beaton, Lord Seytoun, and Hamilton of Orbieston, with a band of faithful followers. They rode off to Queen's Ferry, crossed over to Niddrie Castle, and thence passed to Hamilton, where she was in the midst of friends. The traditional story has been confirmed in the present century by the finding of the keys, which were presented to the Earl of Morton. These events found their fitting sequel in the defeat of Mary at Langside, and in her precipitate flight to Terregles, to Dundrennan, and thence to England, where she encountered the not too tender mercies of her cousin Elizabeth.

In later times, Loch Leven has acquired a new fame as one of the most attractive angling resorts in Scotland. Not only Scotsmen, but also Englishmen flock to its waters every summer in pursuit of its world-famed trout, which are captured by rod and fly at the rate of something like ten thousand pounds' weight a year. But there are few of the brothers of the angle who do not turn aside from their sport to regard with reverence the ruins on Castle Island; or the scarcely less cherished remains of the Abbey on St. Serf's Island, which is associated with the life and work of Andrew Wyntoun, its famous Abbot, whose Orygynale Chronykil of Scotland, written there in the early part of the fifteenth century, is one of the best extant examples of a metrical history in the old Scots tongue.

The pilgrim who wanders over Scotland in search of historic resting-places finds welcome footprints leading him to Tantallon and the Bass. Tantallon Castle, now a picturesque ruin on the coast of Haddingtonshire, three miles from North Berwick, was one of the coast castles common both on the east and on the west of Scotland, of which Dunottar and Turnberry are typical examples. It stands on a steep rock, which is surrounded on three sides by the sea, so that access can be obtained to it only from the land side, where it was guarded by ditches of great depth and by massive towers. Its strength, in olden times, was proverbial. The proverb is expressed tersely in the old saying:

"Ding down Tantallon, Mak' a brig to the Bass;"

the meaning of which was that it would be as easy to overthrow the castle as it would be to bridge the Forth from the mainland to the Bass Rock.

At a later period in Scottish historyduring the minority of Queen Mary-Mary of Guise, the Queen Regent, tried to induce the Earl of Angus of that day to put Tantallon into her keeping. It was part of a scheme to entrust the defence of the country to a standing army, instead of relying on the barons and their retainers-a scheme which was naturally very unpopular with the nobles. When the Regent made her request to Angus, he was feeding a hawk which he held on his wrist. Answering the Regent, while speaking to the bird, he said, "The devil is in the greedy gled, will she never be full ?" Not choosing to accept this very broad rebuff, the

it was in the Douglas days:

"It was a wide and stately

Whereupon the Earl, turning and facing her

Tantallon was also the scene of the famous interview between Earl Douglas and Lord Marmion, in which the parting guest gave his host the lie. The picture introduces some of the most striking features of the castle as a place of strength in the olden time.

"On the earl's cheek the flush of rage
O'ercame the ashen hue of age:

Fierce he broke forth, "And dar'st thou then
To beard the lion in his den,

The Douglas in his hall?

And hop'st thou hence unscathed to go?
No, by St. Bride of Bothwell, no!

Up drawbridge, grooms-what, warder, ho!
Let the portcullis fall."

Lord Marmion turned-well was his need,
And dashed the rowels in his steed,
Like arrow through the archway sprung;
The ponderous grate behind him rung:
To pass there was such scanty room
The bars, descending, razed his plume."

replied,

Majesty, "The castle, madam, is yours at command; but by St. Bride of Douglas, I must be its captain, and I will keep it for you as well as any one you will put into it."

The Bass Rock is generally associated with Tantallon in the popular mind; but the association is due to geographical proximity, rather than to natural character or to historical resemblance. There is, indeed, much more of contrast than of likeness between

the subjects. The one was an artificial place of strength on land, the other was a natural place of strength at sea; the one was a feudal stronghold connected with the civil history of Scotland, the other is famous chiefly as a state prison connected with ecclesiastical troubles in Covenanting times.

The Bass is a stupendous mass of basalt in the Firth of Forth, a mile and a quarter from the coast of Haddingtonshire, and rising to a height of 300 feet or more above the level of the sea. Hugh Miller described it as a pillar of lava which had been moulded in a circular crater, and which had survived the softer and more pliable rocks that formed its case. Its surface slopes from north to south, and is partly covered with pasture which yields sustenance to a few sheep. The