[Footnote 124: The recollection of the error which I made by a carelessness not in such matters usual with me, in assigning this date 1020 instead of between the years 971 and 994, as I ought to have done, has long given me annoyance, and a lesson never to trust to memory in dates; for it was thus I fell into the mistake. I had the year 1020 on my mind, which is the year assigned by Pinkerton for the writing of the _Chron. Pictorum_, and, without stopping to remember or to refer, I took it for granted that it was the year of Kenneth's death, or rather his gift.--P.] [Footnote 125: I congratulate you warmly on the discovery of this interesting and most valuable notice. Surely Boece could have had no object to serve by forging such a statement, nor had he such antiquarian knowledge as would have enabled him to forge a statement so consistent with the conclusion fairly to be drawn from the entry in the chronicle, and the characteristics of the architecture of the tower itself. It appears to me that no rational scepticism can in future be indulged as to the conclusion that the erection of this beautiful tower must be referred to the last quarter of the tenth century.--P.] [Footnote 126: The determining the age of the Brechin tower--a question which I consider as now settled--must go far towards enabling us to come to a right conclusion as to the age of the tower of Abernethy; for I think that no one possessed of ordinary powers of observation and comparison, who has examined both, can for a moment doubt that the age of the Abernethy tower is much greater than that of the tower of Brechin. This is the opinion which I formed many years ago, after a very careful examination of the architectural peculiarities of each; and I came to the conclusion that the safest opinion which could be indulged as to the age of the Abernethy tower was, that it had been erected during the reign of the third Nectan, _i.e._ between 712 and 727, and by those Northumbrian architects of the monastery of Jarrow, for whose assistance that king, according to the high authority of Bede, had applied to build for him in his capital a stone church in the Roman style. In the features of that style, during the eighth century, as exhibited in its doorway, and, still more, its upper apertures, this tower appeared to stand alone--there is nothing similar to it to be seen either in Scotland or Ireland. The tower of Brechin has indeed a Romanesque doorway, but it is plainly of a later age, and its other features are quite Irish. The circumstance of the Abernethy doorway being placed on a level with the ground, and not, as almost universally, at a considerable height from it, seemed also to support this opinion, as it indicated that the erection of the tower was of a period anterior to the irruption of the Northmen, which rendered such a defensive feature an imperative necessity. I cannot agree with you in opinion as to the cause assigned for the preservation of the towers; for, in the