them gives access to Gordon’s College, the centre portion of which is a piece of sober eighteenth century work. The wings and colonnades were added subsequently. The Head Office of the North of Scotland and Town and County Bank at the top of King Street has its entrance porch at the angle with a colonnade of pillars. Near it is the Town Cross, a hexagonal erection with Ionic columns and a tapering shaft rising from the centre of the roof, with a heraldic unicorn as terminal. It dates from the end of the seventeenth century. In the panels of the balustrade are half-length portraits of Scottish and British Kings (including the seven Jameses). It is a fine example [Illustration: Bridge of Don, from Balgownie] of its class and was the work of a local mason. The royal portraits are real and authentic. The Ionic screen or façade between Union Street and the city churches gives some idea of the severely classic architecture that was the vogue in Aberdeen nearly a century ago. [Illustration: Old Bridge of Dee, Aberdeen] A word must be said about the chief bridges. Union Bridge has a span of 130 feet, and was built in 1802 to facilitate the making of Union Street. It was originally narrower than the street and has recently been widened to meet the requirements of increased traffic. The Bridge of Don (Balgownie), probably built early in the fourteenth century if not earlier, throws its one Gothic arch over the deep contracted stream of the river. A small bequest in the seventeenth century for its maintenance has been so well husbanded that out of its accumulations the cost of the new Bridge (£17,000), and other buildings has been defrayed, and the capital value of the fund—called the Bridge of Don fund—is to-day £26,500. The new bridge, much nearer the sea and with five arches, was designed by Telford and completed in 1830. The Old Bridge of Dee (with seven arches) was founded by Bishop Elphinstone and completed in 1527 by Bishop Gavin Dunbar. In 1842 it was widened 11-1/2 feet. The New (Victoria) Bridge, a continuation of Market Street, was opened in 1882, since when quite a new and populous city has sprung up on the south side of the river, entirely eclipsing the old fishing village of Torry which formerly monopolised this side of the water. 21. Architecture—(_d_) Domestic. The mansion-houses of the county, whether they are ancient fortalices modernised by later additions or entirely modern buildings erected within a century of the present time, deserve more space than can be allotted to them here. They are of all types of architecture, classical, renaissance, and composite, but there is no doubt that the castellated, Scotch baronial, the traditional type so common in the seventeenth century, still predominates. [Illustration: Balmoral Castle]