You entered by a matted anteroom into the eating-parlour, filled with old-fashioned furniture, and hung with family portraits, which, excepting one of Sir Bernard Bethune, in James the Sixth’s time, said to be by Jameson, were exceedingly frightful. A saloon, as it was called, a long, narrow chamber, led out of the dining-parlour, and served for a drawing-room. It was a pleasant apartment, looking out upon the south flank of Holyrood House, the gigantic slope of Arthur’s Seat, and the girdle of lofty rocks called Salisbury Crags; objects so rudely wild, that the mind can hardly conceive them to exist in the vicinage of a populous metropolis. [The Rev. Mr. Bowles derives the name of these crags, as of the Episcopal city in the west of England, from the same root, both, in his opinion, which he very ably defends and illustrates, having been the sites of Druidical temples.] The paintings of the saloon came from abroad, and had some of them much merit. To see the best of them, however, you must be admitted into the very PENETRALIA of the temple, and allowed to draw the tapestry at the upper end of the saloon, and enter Mrs. Martha’s own special dressing-room. This was a charming apartment, of which it would be difficult to describe the form, it had so many recesses which were filled up with shelves of ebony and cabinets of japan and ormolu--some for holding books, of which Mrs. Martha had an admirable collection, some for a display of ornamental china, others for shells and similar curiosities. In a little niche, half screened by a curtain of crimson silk, was disposed a suit of tilting armour of bright steel inlaid with silver, which had been worn on some memorable occasion by Sir Bernard Bethune, already mentioned; while over the canopy of the niche hung the broadsword with which her father had attempted to change the fortunes of Britain in 1715, and the spontoon which her elder brother bore when he was leading on a company of the Black Watch at Fontenoy. [The well-known original designation of the gallant 42nd Regiment. Being the first corps raised for the royal service in the Highlands, and allowed to retain their national garb, they were thus named from the contrast which their dark tartans furnished to the scarlet and white of the other regiments.] There were some Italian and Flemish pictures of admitted authenticity, a few genuine bronzes, and other objects of curiosity, which her brothers or herself had picked up while abroad. In short, it was a place where the idle were tempted to become studious, the studious to grow idle where the grave might find matter to make them gay, and the gay subjects for gravity. That it might maintain some title to its name, I must not forget to say that the lady’s dressing-room exhibited a superb mirror, framed in silver filigree work; a beautiful toilette, the cover of which was of Flanders lace; and a set of boxes corresponding in materials and work to the frame of the mirror.