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Seeing Europe with Famous Authors

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Here it was that, while Caractacus himself reigned, the fate of the
brave Queen Boadicea was sealed. Stung to the quick with the insults she
had received from the Romans, this noble queen of the Iceni, the Bonduca
of some writers, and the Boo Tika of her own coins, had sworn to root
out the Roman power from this country. Had she succeeded, Caractacus
himself had probably fallen, nor had there ever been a king Lucius here.
She came, breathing utter extermination to every thing Roman or of Roman
alliance, at the head of 230,000 barbarians, the most numerous army then
ever collected by any British prince. Already had she visited and laid
in ashes Camulodunum, London, and Verulam, killing every Roman and every
Roman ally to the amount of 70,000 souls. But in this neighborhood she
was met by the Roman general Paulinus, and her army routed, with the
slaughter of 80,000 of her followers. In her despair at this
catastrophe, she destroyed herself, and instead of entering the city in
triumph was brought in, a breathless corpse, for burial.

Henry III. was born here, and always bore the name of Henry of
Winchester; Henry IV. here married Joan of Brittany; Henry VI. came
often hither, his first visit being to study the discipline of Wykeham's
College as a model for his new one at Eton, to supply students to King's
College, Cambridge, as Wykeham's does to his foundation of New College,
Oxford; and happy had it been for this unfortunate monarch had he been a
simple monk in one of the monasteries of a city which he so loved,
enjoying peace, learning and piety, having bitterly to learn:

"That all the rest is held at such a rate
As brings a thousand-fold more care to keep
Than in possession any jot of pleasure."

Henry VIII. made a visit with the Emperor Charles V., and stayed a week
examining its various antiquities and religious institutions; but he
afterward visited them in a more sweeping manner by the suppression of
its monasteries, chantries, etc., so that, says Milner, "these being
dissolved, and the edifices themselves soon after pulled down, or
falling to decay, it must have worn the appearance of a city sacked by a
hostile army." Through his reign and that of Edward VI., the destruction
of the religious houses, and the stripping of the churches, went on to a
degree which must have rendered Winchester an object of ghastly change
and desolation.

"Then," says Milner, "were the precious and curious monuments of piety
and antiquity, the presents of Egbert and Ethelwolph, Canute, and Emma,
unrelentingly rifled and east into the melting-pot for the mere value of
the metal which composed them. Then were the golden tabernacles and
images of the Apostles snatched from the cathedral and other altars,"
and not a few of the less valuable sort of these sacred implements were
to be seen when he wrote (1798), and probably are now, in many private
houses of this city and neighborhood.

The later history of this fine old city is chiefly that of melancholy
and havoc. A royal marriage should be a gay thing; but the marriage of
Bloody Mary here to Philip of Spain awakes no great delight in an
English heart. Here, through her reign and that of Elizabeth, the chief
events were persecutions for religion. James I. made Winchester the
scene of the disgraceful trials of Sir Walter Raleigh, Lords Cobham and
Grey, and their assumed accomplices--trials in which that most vain and
pedantic of tyrants attempted, on the ground of pretended conspiracies,
to wreak his personal spite on some of the best spirits of England.



VI

SCOTLAND



EDINBURGH [Footnote: From "Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh."]

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Venice, it has been said, differs from all other cities in the sentiment
which she inspires. The rest may have admirers; she only, a famous fair
one, counts lovers in her train. And, indeed, even by her kindest
friends, Edinburgh is not considered in a similar sense. These like her
for many reasons, not any one of which is satisfactory in itself. They
like her whimsically, if you will, and somewhat as a virtuoso dotes upon
his cabinet. Her attraction is romantic in the narrowest meaning of the
term. Beautiful as she is, she is not so much beautiful as interesting.
She is preeminently Gothic, and all the more so since she has set
herself off with some Greek airs, and erected classic temples on her
crags. In a word, and above all, she is a curiosity.

The palace of Holyrood has been left aside--in the growth of Edinburgh,
and stands gray and silent in a workman's quarter and among breweries
and gas-works. It is a house of many memories. Great people of yore,
kings and queens, buffoons and grave ambassadors, played their stately
farce for centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, dancing has
lasted deep into the night, murder has been done in its chambers. There
Prince Charlie held his fantom levées, and in a very gallant manner
represented a fallen dynasty for some hours. Now, all these things of
clay are mingled with the dust, the king's crown itself is shown for
sixpence to the vulgar; but the stone palace has outlived these changes.
For fifty weeks together, it is no more than a show for tourists and a
museum of old furniture; but on the fifty-first, behold the palace
reawakened and mimicking its past.

The Lord Commissioner, a kind of stage sovereign, sits among stage
courtiers; a coach and six and clattering escort come and go before the
gate; at night, the windows are lighted up, and its near neighbors, the
workmen, may dance in their own houses to the palace music. And in this
the palace is typical. There is a spark among the embers; from time to
time the old volcano smokes. Edinburgh has but partly abdicated, and
still wears, in parody, her metropolitan trappings. Half a capital and
half a country town, the whole city leads a double existence; it has
long trances of the one and flashes of the other; like the king of the
Black Isles, it is half alive and half a monumental marble. There are
armed men and cannon in the citadel overhead; you may see the troops
marshaled on the high parade; and at night after the early winter
even-fall, and in the morning before the laggard winter dawn, the wind
carries abroad over Edinburgh the sound of drums and bugles. Grave
judges sit bewigged in what was once the scene of imperial
deliberations. Close by, in the High Street perhaps, the trumpets may
sound about the stroke of noon; and you see a troop of citizens in
tawdry masquerade; tabard above, heather-mixture trouser below, and the
men themselves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic bystanders. The
grooms of a well-appointed circus tread the streets with a better
presence. And yet these are the Heralds and Pursuivants of Scotland, who
are about to proclaim a new law of the United Kingdom before two score
boys, and thieves, and hackney coachmen.

Meanwhile, every hour the bell of the University rings out over the hum
of the streets, and every hour a double tide of students, coming and
going, fills the deep archways. And, lastly, one night in the
springtime--or, say, one morning rather, at the peep of day--late folk
may hear the voices of many men singing a psalm in unison from a church
on one side of the Old High Street; and a little after, or perhaps a
little before, the sound of many men singing a psalm in unison from
another church on the opposite side of the way. There will be something
in the words about the dew of Hermon, and how goodly it is to see
brethren dwelling together in unity. And the late folk will tell
themselves that all this singing denotes the conclusion of two yearly
ecclesiastical parliaments--the parliaments of churches, which are
brothers in many admirable virtues, but not specially like brothers in
this particular of a tolerant and peaceful life.

Again, meditative people will find a charm in a certain consonancy
between the aspect of the city and its odd and stirring history. Few
places, if any, offer a more barbaric display of contrasts to the eye.
In the very midst stands one of the most satisfactory crags in nature--a
Bass Rock upon dry land, rooted in a garden shaken by passing trains,
carrying a crown of battlements and turrets, and describing its warlike
shadow over the liveliest and brightest thoroughfare of the New Town.
From their smoky beehives, ten stories high, the unwashed look down upon
the open squares and gardens of the wealthy; and gay people sunning
themselves along Prince's Street, with its mile of commercial palaces
all beflagged upon some great occasion, see, across a gardened valley
set with statues, where the washings of the Old Town flutter in the
breeze at its high windows.

And then, upon all sides, what a clashing of architecture! In this one
valley, where the life of the town goes most busily forward, there may
be seen, shown one above and behind another by the accidents of the
ground, buildings in almost every style upon the globe. Egyptian and
Greek temples, Venetian palaces and Gothic spires, are huddled one over
another in a most admired disorder; while, above all, the brute mass of
the Castle and the summit of Arthur's Seat look down upon these
imitations with a becoming dignity, as the works of Nature may look down
upon the monuments of Art. But Nature is a more indiscriminate patroness
than we imagine, and in no way frightened of a strong effect. The birds
roost as willingly among the Corinthian capitals as in the crannies of
the crag; the same atmosphere and daylight clothe the eternal rock and
yesterday's imitation portico; and as the soft northern sunshine throws
out everything into a glorified distinctness--or easterly mists, coming
up with the blue evening, fuse all these incongruous features into one,
and the lamps begin to glitter along the street, and faint lights to
burn in the high windows across the valley--the feeling grows upon you
that this is a piece of nature in the most intimate sense; that this
profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock, is
not a drop-scene in a theater, but a city in the world of everyday
reality, connected by railway and telegraph wire with all the capitals
of Europe, and inhabited by citizens of the familiar type, who keep
ledgers, and attend church, and have sold their immortal portion to a
daily paper....

The east of new Edinburgh is guarded by a craggy hill, of no great
elevation, which the town embraces. The old London road runs on one side
of it; while the New Approach, leaving it on the other hand, completes
the circuit.... Of all places for a view, this Calton Hill is perhaps
the best; since you can see the Castle, which you lose from the Castle,
and Arthur's Seat, which you can not see from Arthur's Seat. It is the
place to stroll on one of those days of sunshine and east wind which are
so common in our more than temperate summer. The breeze comes off the
sea, with a little of the freshness, and that touch of chill, peculiar
to the quarter, which is delightful to certain very ruddy organizations,
and greatly the reverse to the majority of mankind. It brings with it a
faint, floating haze, a cunning decolorizer, altho not thick enough to
obscure outlines near at hand. But the haze lies more thickly to
windward at the far end of Musselburgh Bay; and over the Links of
Aberlady and Berwick Law and the hump of the Bass Bock it assumes the
aspect of a bank of thin sea fog.

Immediately underneath, upon the south, you command the yards of the
High School, and the towers and courts of the new Jail--a large place,
castellated to the extent of folly, standing by itself on the edge of a
steep cliff, and often joyfully hailed by tourists as the Castle. In the
one, you may perhaps see female prisoners taking exercise like a string
of nuns; in the other, schoolboys running at play, and their shadows
keeping step with them. From the bottom of the valley, a gigantic
chimney rises almost to the level of the eye, a taller and a shapelier
edifice than Nelson's Monument. Look a little farther, and there is
Holyrood Palace, with its Gothic frontal and ruined abbey, and the red
sentry pacing smartly to and fro before the door like a mechanical
figure in a panorama. By way of an outpost, you can single out the
little peak-roofed lodge, over which Rizzio's murderers made their
escape, and where Queen Mary herself, according to gossip, bathed in
white wine to retain her loveliness.

Behind and overhead lie the Queen's Park, from Musehat's Cairn to
Dumbiedykes, St. Margaret's Loch, and the long wall of Salisbury's
Crags; and thence, by knoll and rocky bulwark and precipitous slope, the
eye rises to the top of Arthur's Seat, a hill for magnitude, a mountain
in virtue of its bold design. This upon your left. Upon the right, the
roofs and spires of the Old Town climb one above another to where the
citadel prints its broad bulk and jagged crown of bastions on the
western sky.... Perhaps it is now one in the afternoon; and at the same
instant of time, a ball rises to the summit of Nelson's flagstaff close
at hand, and, far away, a puff of smoke, followed by a report, bursts
from the half-moon battery at the Castle. This is the time-gun by which
people set their watches, as far as the sea coast or in hill farms upon
the Pent-lands. To complete the view, the eye enfilades Prince's Street,
black with traffic, and has a broad look over the valley between the Old
Town and the New; here, full of railway trains and stept over by the
high North Bridge upon its many columns, and there, green with trees
and gardens.

On the north, the Calton Hill is neither so abrupt in itself, nor has it
so exceptional an outlook; and yet even here it commands a striking
prospect. A gully separates it from the New Town. This is Greenside,
where witches were burned and tournaments held in former days. Down that
almost precipitous bank Bothwell launched his horse, and so first, as
they say, attracted the bright eyes of Mary. It is now tesselated with
sheets and blankets out to dry, and the sound of people beating carpets
is rarely absent. Beyond all this, the suburbs run out to Leith; Leith
camps on the seaside with her forests of masts; Leith roads are full of
ships at anchor; the sun picks out the white pharos upon Inchkeith
Island; the Firth extends on either hand from the Ferry to the May; the
towns of Fifeshire sit, each in its bank of blowing smoke, along the
opposite coast; and the hills enclose the view, except to the farthest
east, where the haze of the horizon rests upon the open sea. There lies
the road to Norway; a dear road for Sir Patrick Spens and his Scots
Lords; and yonder smoke on the hither side of Largo Law is Aberdour,
from whence they sailed to seek a queen for Scotland.

These are the main features of the scene roughly sketched. How they are
all tilted by the inclination of the ground, how each stands out in
delicate relief against the rest, what manifold detail, and play of sun
and shadow, animate and accentuate the picture, is a matter for a person
on the spot, and, turning swiftly on his heels, to grasp and bind
together in one comprehensive look. It is the character of such a
prospect, to be full of change and of things moving. The multiplicity
embarrasses the eye; and the mind, among so much, suffers itself to grow
absorbed with single points. You remark a tree in a hedgerow, or follow
a cart along a country road. You turn to the city, and see children,
dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you
have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you
note ridge after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind
another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of roofs. At one
of the innumerable windows you watch a figure moving; on one of the
multitude of roofs you watch clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes a
run and scatters the smoke; bells are heard, far and near, faint and
loud, to tell the hour; or perhaps a sea bird goes dipping evenly over
the housetops, like a gull across the waves. And here you are in the
meantime, on this pastoral hillside, among nibbling sheep and looked
upon by monumental buildings.



HOLYROOD [Footnote: From "Edinburgh Sketches and Memories."]

BY DAVID MASSON

Mary, Queen of Scots, on her return to Scotland after her thirteen years
of residence and education in France, had to form her first real
acquaintance with her native shores and the capital of her realm. She
had left Calais for the homeward voyage on Thursday, the 14th of August,
with a retinue of about one hundred and twenty persons, French and
Scottish, embarked in two French state galleys, attended by several
transports. They were a goodly company, with rich and splendid baggage.
The Queen's two most important uncles, indeed--the great Francis de
Lorraine, Duke of Guise, and his brother, Charles de Lorraine, the
Cardinal--were not on board. They, with the Duchess of Guise, and other
senior lords and ladies of the French court, had bidden Mary farewell at
Calais, after having accompanied her thither from Paris, and after the
Cardinal had in vain tried to persuade her not to take her costly
collection of pearls and other jewels with her, but to leave them in his
keeping till it should be seen how she might fare among her
Scottish subjects.

But on board the Queen's own galley were three others of Guise or
Lorraine uncles--the Duc d'Aumale, the Grand Prior, and the Marquis
d'Elbeuf--with M. Danville, son of the Constable of France, and a number
of French gentlemen of lower rank, among whom one notes especially young
Pierre de Bourdeilles, better known afterward in literary history as
Sieur de Brantôme, and a sprightly and poetic youth from Dauphiné, named
Chastelard, one of the attendants of M. Danville. With these were mixed
the Scottish contingent of the Queen's train, her four famous "Marys"
included--Mary Fleming, Mary Livingstone, Mary Seton, and Mary Beaton.
They had been her playfellows and little maids of honor long ago, in her
Scottish childhood; they had accompanied her when she went abroad, and
had lived with her ever since in France; and they were now returning
with her, Scoto-French women like herself, and all of about her own age,
to share her new fortunes....

Then, as now, the buildings that went by the general name of Holyrood
were distinguishable into two portions. There was the Abbey, now
represented only by the beautiful and spacious fragment of ruin called
the Royal Chapel, but then, despite the spoliations to which it had been
subjected by recent English invasions, still tolerably preserved in its
integrity as the famous edifice, in early Norman style, which had been
founded in the twelfth century by David I., and had been enlarged in the
fifteenth by additions in the later and more florid Gothic. Close by
this was Holyrood House, or the Palace proper, built in the earlier part
of the sixteenth century, and chiefly by James IV., to form a distinct
royal dwelling, and so supersede that occasional accommodation in the
Abbey itself which had sufficed for Scottish sovereigns before Edinburgh
was their habitual or capital residence.

One block of this original Holyrood House still remains in the
two-turreted projection of the present Holyrood which adjoins the ruined
relic of the Abbey, and which contains the rooms now specially shown as
"Queen Mary's Apartments." But the present Holyrood, as a whole, is a
construction of the reign of Charles II., and gives little idea of the
Palace in which Mary took up her abode in 1561. The two-turreted
projection on the left was not balanced then, as now, by a similar
two-turreted projection on the right, with a façade of less height
between, but was flanked on the right by a continued chateau-like
frontage, of about the same height as the turreted projections, and at a
uniform depth of recess from it, but independently garnished with towers
and pinnacles. The main entrance into the Palace from the great outer
courtyard was through this chateau-like flank, just about the spot where
there is the entrance through the present middle façade; and this
entrance led, like the present, into an inner court or quadrangle, built
round on all the four sides.

That quadrangle of chateau, touching the Abbey to the back from its
northeastern corner, and with the two-turreted projection to its front
from its northwestern corner, constituted, indeed, the main bulk of the
Palace. There were, however, extensive appurtenances of other buildings
at the back or at the side farthest from the Abbey, forming minor inner
courts, while part of that side of the great outer courtyard which faced
the entrance was occupied by offices belonging to the Palace, and
separating the courtyard from the adjacent purlieus of the town. For the
grounds of both Palace and Abbey were encompassed by a wall, having
gates at various points of its circuit, the principal and most strongly
guarded of which was the Gothic porch admitting from the foot of the
Canongate into the front courtyard. The grounds so enclosed were ample
enough to contain gardens and spaces of plantation, besides the
buildings and their courts. Altogether, what with the buildings
themselves, what with the courts and gardens, and what with the natural
grandeur of the site--a level of deep and wooded park, between the
Calton heights and crags, on the one hand, and the towering shoulders of
Arthur's Seat and precipitous escarpment of Salisbury Crags on the
other--Holyrood in 1561 must have seemed, even to an eye the most
satiated with palatial splendors abroad, a sufficiently impressive
dwelling-place to be the metropolitan home of Scottish royalty.



LINLITHGOW [Footnote: From "Provincial Antiquities of Scotland."]

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

The convenience afforded for the sport of falconry, which was so great a
favorite during the feudal ages, was probably one cause of an attachment
of the ancient Scottish monarchs to Linlithgow and its fine lake. The
sport of hunting was also followed with success in the neighborhood,
from which circumstance it probably arises that the ancient arms of the
city represent a black greyhound bitch tied to a tree....

A Celt, according to Chalmers, might plausibly derive the name of
Linlithgow from Lin-liah-cu, the Lake of the Greyhound. Chalmers himself
seems to prefer the Gothic derivation of Lin-lyth-gow, or the Lake of
the Great Vale. The Castle of Linlithgow is only mentioned as being a
peel (a pile, that is, an embattled tower surrounded by an outwork). In
1300 it was rebuilt or repaired by Edward I., and used as one of the
citadels by which he hoped to maintain his usurped dominion in Scotland.
It is described by Barbour as "meihle and stark and stuffed weel." Piers
Luband, a Gascoigne knight, was appointed the keeper, and appears to
have remained there until the autumn of 1313, when the Scots recovered
the Castle....

Bruce, faithful to his usual policy, caused the peel of Linlithgow to be
dismantled, and worthily rewarded William Binnock, who had behaved with
such gallantry on the occasion. From this bold yeoman the Binnies of
West Lothian are proud to trace their descent; and most, if not all of
them, bear in their arms something connected with the wagon, which was
the instrument of his stratagem.

When times of comparative peace returned, Linlithgow again became the
occasional residence of the sovereign. In 1411 the town was burned by
accident, and in 1414 was again subjected to the same calamity, together
with the Church and Palace of the king, as is expressly mentioned by
Bower. The present Church, which is a fine specimen of Gothic
architecture, having a steeple surmounted by an imperial crown, was
probably erected soon after the calamity.

The Palace arose from its ashes with greater splendor than before; for
the family of Stuart, unhappy in some respects, were all of them
fortunate in their taste for the fine arts, and particularly for that of
architecture. The Lordship of Linlithgow was settled as a dowry upon
Mary of Gueldres in 1449, and again upon Margaret of Denmark in 1468.

James IV., a splendid gallant, seems to have founded the most
magnificent part of Linlithgow Palace; together with the noble entrance
betwixt two flanking towers bearing, on rich entablatures, the royal
arms of Scotland, with the collars of the Orders of the Thistle, Garter,
and Saint Michael. James IV. also erected in the Church a throne for
himself, and twelve stalls for Knights Companions of the Thistle.... His
death and the rout of his army clouded for many a day the glory of
Scotland, and marred the mirth of her palaces.

James V. was much attached to Linlithgow, and added to the Palace both
the Chapel and Parliament Hall, the last of which is peculiarly
striking. So that when he brought his bride, Mary of Guise, there, amid
the festivities which accompanied their wedding, she might have had more
reason than mere complaisance for highly commending the edifice, and
saying that she never saw a more princely palace. It was long her
residence, and that of her royal husband, at Linlithgow. Mary was born
there in an apartment still shown; and the ill-fated father, dying
within a few days of that event, left the ominous diadem which he wore
to the still more unfortunate infant....

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