The work begins with the Life of Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII. of England, and married at the early age of fourteen to James IV., the heroic and brilliant King of Scotland. This choice, in many respects, was fortunate, as it commences with the period when the fortunes of the two kingdoms became closely interlaced, and with the princess whose marriage with James was the immediate cause of the union of the two crowns on the same head, and the placing of the Stuart, and through it of the Hanoverian family, on the British throne. The first chapter is occupied with the details of the journey of the royal bride from London to Edinburgh, which was somewhat a more tedious and fatiguing undertaking than it is now when performed by her descendant Queen Victoria, for it took above _three weeks_ to perform. The reception of the youthful princess at York, Newcastle, and Durham, where she was met and attended by the whole nobility and gentry of the northern counties, who accompanied her on her progress northward on horseback, gives occasion for several faithful and animated pictures. Her first day's journey in Scotland, however, brought her into ruder scenery, characteristic of the stormy life which lay before her; and she rested the first night at _Fastcastle_, then a stronghold of the Home family, now belonging to Sir John Hall of Dunglass, which modern genius, under a feigned name, has done so much to celebrate. "Fastcastle is no other than the veritable Wolf-Crag Tower, celebrated in Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_ as the abode of the Master of Ravenswood. It is seated on a lofty promontory, which commands the lonely indented bay of which St Abb's Head forms the extreme point to the right, with a wild array of rifted rocks terminating in the Wolf-Crag, which soars high in mid air above the fortress--black, gloomy, and inaccessible. The way by which the southern bride and her company reached this rugged resting-place lay across the Lammermuir, several miles of wild heath and treacherous bog, which no stranger might traverse in safety without guides well acquainted with the track. Before they entered on this pass, they had to descend a hill which was so steep and precipitous that, even within the last century, it was customary for the passengers by the mail-coach between Berwick and Edinburgh to alight and cross it on foot, while the carriage was taken off the wheels and carried over by a relay of men, stationed on the spot for that purpose. Of course the roads were not better in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Fastcastle is approached by one or two descents and ascents of this kind, and is separated from the mainland by a cleft between the rocks, which has to be crossed by a natural bridge formed of a ledge of rock, without rail or guard, with the vexed billows boiling and thundering sixty feet below.