Few, perhaps, among the gay crowds who throng Princes Street, and cast a glance at the buildings of the castle perched on the summit of rugged cliffs, are aware that in one of these buildings, long used as a state prison, poor Mackintosh of Borlum was confined for the last years of his life. Certainly, a hard fate for the old Jacobite! Cribbed and confined in his airy but miserable den, Borlum did not spend his time uselessly. Before being involved in political troubles he had devoted himself to the improvement and planting of lands. He is said to have planted a row of trees which still ornament the public road near Kingussie. Now that he was locked up, he wrote an Essay on the best means of inclosing and improving lands, which was printed in Edinburgh in 1729. Our authority adds: ‘On the 7th January 1743, after a rough earthly pilgrimage of eighty years, the gallant old soldier passed to his rest, true to the last to the principles which had influenced his whole life. One of his last acts, it is said, was to dedicate one of his teeth to the service of his exiled master, by writing with it on the wall of his room an invocation of God’s blessing on King James!’ How long Borlum was immured in that dismal prison on the castle rock, is not clearly ascertained. The obituary in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ speaks of his having been confined in the castle ‘fifteen years.’ By the authority above quoted, he is said to have been imprisoned ‘for nearly a quarter of a century.’ Truth may lie somewhere between—from twenty to twenty-one years. The _Caledonian-Mercury_, in noticing his decease at the age of ‘about eighty-five,’ gives him a high character as ‘a complete gentleman, friendly, agreeable, and courteous;’ and for what he had written as regards the improvement of land, he is to be lastingly esteemed as ‘a lover of his country.’ Nowhere is a word said of the cruelty of confining so aged and accomplished a person in the worst species of prison till he was released by death. For the seeming harshness of this prolonged imprisonment, an excuse may perhaps be found in the political apprehensions of the period; but this scarcely lessens our compassion for the sufferings of a man in so many respects estimable. With all his faults, Borlum must be admitted to have possessed that quality of earnestness of purpose which in the ordinary concerns of life is now so feebly demonstrated. It could be wished that some one had done full justice to his biography; for Borlum was undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary men of his time. W. C. HELENA, LADY HARROGATE. CHAPTER XIX.—FIRE!