This year the Queen went north by Castle Howard, the fine seat of the Earl of Carlisle, the Duchess of Sutherland's brother, where her Majesty made her first halt. After stopping to open the railway bridges, triumphs of engineering, over the Tyne and the Tweed, the travellers reached Edinburgh, where, to the gratification of an immense gathering of her Scotch subjects, her Majesty spent her first night in Holyrood, the palace of her Stewart ancestors. The place was full of interest and charm for her, and though it was late in the afternoon before she arrived, she hardly waited to rest, before setting out incognito, so far as the old housekeeper was concerned, to inspect the historical relics of the building. She wandered out with her "two girls and their governess" to the ruins of the chapel or old abbey, and stood by the altar at which Mary Stewart, the fair young French widow, wedded "the long lad Darnley," and read the inscriptions on the tombs of various members of noble Scotch houses, coming to a familiar name on the slab which marked the grave of the mother of one of her own maids of honour, a daughter of Clanranald's. The Queen then visited Queen Mary's rooms, being shown, like other strangers, the closet where her ancestress had sat at supper on a memorable night, and the stair from the chapel up which Ruthven, risen from a sick-bed, led the conspirators who seized Davie Rizzio, dragged him from his mistress's knees, to which he clung, and slew him pitilessly on the boards which, according to old tradition, still bear the stain of his blood. After that ghastly token, authentic or non- authentic, which would thrill the hearts of the young princesses as it has stirred many a youthful imagination, Darnley's armour and Mary's work-table, with its embroidery worked by her own hand, must have fallen comparatively flat. The next morning the Queen and the Prince, with their children, took their first drive round the beautiful road, then just completed, which bears her name, and, encircling Arthur's Seat, is the goal of every stranger visiting Edinburgh, affording as it does in miniature an excellent idea of Scotch scenery. On this occasion the party alighted and climbed to the top of the hill, rejoicing in the view. "You see the beautiful town, with the Calton Hill, and the bay with the island of Inchkeith stretching out before you, and the Bass Rock quite in the distance, rising behind the coast.... The view when we gained the carriage hear Dunsappie Loch, quite a small lake, overhung by a crag, with the sea in the distance, is extremely pretty.... The air was delicious."