“The Fair Maid of Perth” is at once a photograph and a drama. The beautiful county of Perthshire, with its wild mountains and picturesque lakes, seems transferred bodily as by a camera to the novelist’s pages, and the historic incidents are so real and rapid in dramatic interest that they seem lifted from the realm of history into a sort of Shaksperean play. The story opens with a description of Perth from a spot called the Wicks of Baigle, “where the traveler beholds stretching beneath him the valley of the Tay, traversed by its ample and lordly stream; the town of Perth with its two large meadows, its steeples, and its towers; the hills of Moncreiff and Kinnoul faintly rising into picturesque rocks, partly clothed with woods; the rich margin of the river, studded with elegant mansions, and the distant view of the huge Grampian mountains, the northern screen of this exquisite landscape.” The time of the story is 1402. Almost a century has elapsed since the battle of Bannockburn—a century of turmoil and strife. Its history seems like a great tempest-tossed sea swept by constantly recurring whirlwinds. Three kings and as many regents reign in turn; and at the opening of our story Scotland is under the government of Robert the Third. David the Second, only son of Robert Bruce, died childless; his sister, Marjory, married Walter, the Lord High Steward of the realm; their son was crowned Robert the Third, King of Scotland. The family took the name of Stewart, which gave by direct descent the Stuart line to the throne of Britain, and their descendants are to-day upon the thrones of England, Italy and Greece. The little skiff, tossed ashore upon the rugged cliffs and cold hospitality of Lorne Castle, as described in our last article, carried therefore the ancestor of a long historic line—a line not always fortunate, not always honest, but presenting for the most part during its record of five hundred years a fair average of manhood and womanhood as kings and queens generally run. Robert the Third found his country torn by civil feuds, and his temper was too mild for those stormy times. His brother, the Duke of Albany, a crafty counselor of the Iago type, provoked strife between father and son. The good king’s heart was broken. “Vengeance followed,” says Scott, “though with a slow pace, the treachery and cruelty of his brother. Robert of Albany’s own grey hairs went, indeed, in peace to the grave, and he transferred the regency, which he had so foully acquired, to his son Murdoch. But nineteen years after the death of the old king, James the First returned to Scotland, and Duke Murdoch of Albany, with his sons, was brought to the scaffold, in expiation of his father’s guilt and his own.”