Perth, the central city of Scotland, whose name has been so flourishingly transplanted to the antipodes, is a very ancient place. Not to insist on fond derivation from a Roman _Bertha_, there seems to have been a Roman station on the Tay, probably at the confluence of the Almond; and curious antiquarians have found cause for confessing to Pontius Pilate as perhaps born in the county, a reproach softened by the consideration of his father being little better than a Roman exciseman. The _alias_ of St. Johnston Perth got from its patron saint, who came to be so scurvily handled at the Reformation. At this date it was the only walled city of Scotland. Before this, it had been intermittently the Stuart capital in such a sense as the residence of its Negus is for Abyssinia; and farther back Tayside was the seat of the Alpine kingdom that succeeded a Pictish power. Now sunk in relative importance, Perth makes the central knot of Scottish railway travelling; so on the Eve of St. Grouse its palatial station becomes one of the busiest spots in the kingdom, though the main platform is a third of a mile long. To the stay-at-home public it may perhaps be best known by an industry that [Illustration: PERTH FROM THE SLOPES OF KINNOUL HILL] has given rise to the proverb “See Perth and _dye_,” one which might have darker significance in days when this low site depended for drainage on the floods of the Tay flushing its cellars and cesspools. But its own citizens are brought up to believe that no Naples of them all has so much right to the title of the “Fair City.”