Holyrood Palace, in Mary Stuart's time, was not of its present shape. The tower containing her rooms was standing, and from that tower the building extended eastward to the abbey, and then it veered to the south. Much of the building was destroyed by fire in 1544, and again in Cromwell's time, but both church and palace were rebuilt. The entire south side, with its tower that looks directly towards the crag, was added in the later period of Charles the Second. The furniture in Mary Stuart's room is partly spurious, but the rooms are genuine. Musing thus, and much striving to reconstruct those strange scenes of the past, in which that beautiful, dangerous woman bore so great a part, the pilgrim strolls away into the Canongate,--once clean and elegant, now squalid and noisome,--and still the storied figures of history walk by his side or come to meet him at every close and wynd. John Knox, Robert Burns, Tobias Smollett, David Hume, Dugald Stuart, John Wilson, Hugh Miller, Gay, led onward by the blithe and gracious Duchess of Queensberry, and Dr. Johnson, escorted by the affectionate and faithful James Boswell, the best biographer that ever lived,--these and many more, the lettered worthies of long ago, throng into this haunted street and glorify it with the rekindled splendours of other days. You cannot be lonely here. This it is that makes the place so eloquent and so precious. For what did those men live and labour? To what were their shining talents and wonderful forces devoted? To the dissemination of learning; to the emancipation of the human mind from the bondage of error; to the ministry of the beautiful,--and thus to the advancement of the human race in material comfort, in gentleness of thought, in charity of conduct, in refinement of manners, and in that spiritual exaltation by which, and only by which, the true progress of mankind is at once accomplished and proclaimed. [Illustration: HOLYROOD CASTLE AND ARTHUR'S SEAT]