Communication between places was slow in those days, and continued to be so for many a generation after. Even a hundred and fifty years later, the abdication of James VII. from the British throne was not known in some parts of Scotland until four months after the usurper had installed himself in his Palace of St. James. CHAPTER L. FALKLAND. "Where Ceres gilds the fertile plain, And richly waves the yellow grain; And Lomond hill wi' misty showers Aft weets auld Falkland's royal towers." RICHARD GALL. At the foot of the beautiful Lomond hills, lie the town and palace of Falkland--a palace now, alas! like Scotland's ancient royalty, among the things that were. Many old trees in the neighbourhood, the remnant of the ancient royal forest of Falkland, still impart to the fragment of the palace an air both melancholy and venerable; for it is but a fragment that survives, and makes one think with sorrow and anger of that remorseless system of absorption which is laying Scotland bare, and, year by year, sweeps southward some portion of her money and vitality. A day is coming, perhaps, when Holyrood, the last and least beautiful of our Scottish palaces, may be abandoned like the rest, if not to some ignoble purpose, at least to ruin and decay. The fine old pile of Falkland was successively engrafted on the ancient tower of the Thanes of Fife, by the third, fourth, and fifth Jameses, until it formed a quadrangle, one side of which alone survives the decay consequent to its desertion, and the neglect with which every feature of Scotland's ancient state is treated by the partial and (so far as _she_ is concerned) penurious government to which she yearly hands over the six millions of her revenue. Lying under the northern brow of a mountain, and so situated as to be concealed from the sun during a considerable portion of the winter, Falkland is a quaint-looking place, removed from any great thoroughfare, and still inhabited by a primitive race of weavers, who have, generation after generation, followed the same trade as their fathers. Their dwellings are thatched; each cottar has his kailyard; and, with much of our old Scottish simplicity and contentment, they jog through life as their "forbears" did before them; and it is no uncommon thing to hear the older burghers quoting the learned sayings, and relating the quaint doings of his Majesty James VI., as if he still kept court amongst them. Lying at the foot of the steep eastern Lomond, with its vanes and carved pinnacles overtopping the foliage of its old green copsewood, the ruined palace of Falkland, when seen from a little distance, resembles an ancient Scoto-French chateau, and the white smoke of its burgh-town (now diminished to a village), as it curls from the green foliage that fringes the glen, makes rustic and beautiful this solitary place, which was the scene of many a sorrow and many a joy to the illustrious line of our ancient kings.