Argyll’s Lodging is a large quadrangular house, built in the lordly style which prevailed during the reigns of James, and the first Charles. It was erected at the expense of Sir William Alexander, a personage who rose, in consequence of his genius and courtly qualities, from the condition of being Laird of Menstrie, (a small estate to the north-east of Stirling,) to immense wealth, and high title. Prince Henry, who was baptised in the castle, honoured him with his particular notice, and introduced him at the Court of England, where James the Sixth knighted him, and made him master of requests. He addressed a Parœnesis to the Prince, which is said to be his master-piece, and wrote an elegy on his death, in 1612, in strains nowise inferior to those of Drummond of Hawthornden, who bewailed that mournful event in an ‘elegy on the death of Mœliades,’ a name by which the Prince was known. King James appointed him preceptor to Henry’s brother, Charles; and Charles, coming to the throne in 1625, gave him a right of appointing the hundred baronets of Nova Scotia, from each of whom he received £200 sterling; raised him to various high offices of state in succession; and, finally, on the occasion of his coronation at Holyroodhouse, in 1633, created him Earl of Stirling, Viscount Canada, and Lord Alexander of Tullibody. Nova Scotia, and Canada, he is said to have discovered and colonised; and he had other extensive possessions in America. James the Sixth used to call him his philosophical poet; Ben Johnson, who travelled to Scotland to visit Hawthornden, corresponded with him; and Addison said of his whole works, which are not a few in number, that ‘he had read them with the greatest satisfaction.’ His prosperity not being continued to his offspring, this splendid house, which must have been the wonder of its day, fell into the hands of the Argyll family. Here the unfortunate Earl of Argyll received and entertained the Duke of York and his family, in 1680, when they came to visit Stirling Castle. Only five years after, he suffered death at the instance of his royal guest, who had then become James II. By another singular vicissitude of fortune, John, Duke of Argyll, in 1715, here held his counsel of war, when employed to break the interest of the son of the same James. Sir William Alexander built the centre and northern wing in 1633; and over the principal door of the centre, leading by an oaken staircase to the grand hall, is his full coat-of-arms, with the motto ‘_per mare per terras_,’ still perfectly entire. Over the windows of these parts of the building too, may still be seen the initials of William, Earl Stirling, and Jane, Countess Stirling, surmounted by a coronet.