With every century the outward aspect of the Castle has changed, so that its jagged outline to-day, blotted against the sunset sky, is utterly different from what dwellers in Edinburgh of any other century would have known. But still, looking up at the perpendicular cliffs of the Castle Rock and the strong walls and towers and fortifications that seem part of them, one can picture all those stirring scenes,--the imprisoned “maydens” of dim, legendary days; Queen Margaret and the escape through the miraculous mist; the many sieges; the starving patriotic garrisons; the prisoners in their dungeons; the wild escapes ending in liberty or in death; the brilliant scenes during the reign of James IV., that royal “knight errant,” who sat amid his knights and ladies to watch the tournaments below the Castle walls, and presented a lance tipt with pure Scottish gold to the winner. Within the Castle much remains. Queen Margaret’s chapel is the oldest bit; but there are also the palace [Illustration: THE CASTLE FROM THE TERRACE OF HERIOT’S HOSPITAL The opening in the terrace on the left of the picture shows a staircase descending to the playground of the school. Most of the Castle is seen, including the Half-Moon Battery, and part of the south retaining wall of the Esplanade. A figure in a master’s gown occupies the foreground.] and the great hall. This great hall was used for all State ceremonials, banquets, and gatherings. It was here, in all likelihood, that Alexander III. held that Council in the Castle on that stormy day in March 1286 before he took horse and rode through the darkness and storm towards Kinghorn, where the bride he had married a few months before awaited him,--rode till, close to his journey’s end, his horse stumbled--a stumble that cost Scotland dear, for it plunged her into two and a half centuries of incessant war. Quhen Alysander oure Kyng wes dede That Scotland led in luve and lé Away wes sons off ale and brede Off wyne and wax, off gamyn and glé; Our gold wes changed in to lede, Cryst, born in to Vyrgynyté, Succoure Scotland and remede That stad is in perplexyté. It was in the great hall of the Castle that the treacherous “Black Dinner” was held in James II.’s minority. It was in the great hall that many of the Scottish Parliaments met, for they were always held wherever the King happened to be at the moment, and the King often happened to be in Edinburgh Castle. Here, then, gathered all those grave or stormy Parliaments of Scottish nobles, presided over by a gallant Stuart. Here they discussed the affairs of the brave and troubled kingdom; here they doomed men to death or exile; here they planned wars with the “auld enemy”; here they passed those laws which were “good laws, had they been kept.”