Whether he would have upheld that pronouncement in cool blood is perhaps to be doubted, for the best park golf in the world cannot attain beyond a certain point, and Barnton is pure park golf. Still, it has undoubtedly many merits, and not least among them is that the greens are as good and true as any in the world. That at least is the general opinion, and I see no reason to doubt it. I cannot, on the other hand, confirm it, because I have only played at Barnton on a Sunday, and the Scottish conscience, although it will let you play, will not let the greens be swept for you, and Sunday golf at Barnton, therefore, involves some encounters with worm casts. It also involves, or did when last I went there, a drive out of Edinburgh with one's clubs elaborately hidden under horse-cloths and rugs. The principle, however, was that of the ostrich who buries his head in the sand, or rather its exact converse, for the most sedulous burying of the bodies of the clubs did not prevent the head peeping out and so advising all church-going Edinburgh of one's scandalous project. It is easy to see that on week days the course must be in absolutely apple-pie order, and that it lacks nothing that the hand of man could do for it. Nearly all the holes want good, straight, accurate play; but, as is the case with this type of golf, they make no passionate appeal to the imagination. There is a nice tee-shot from a height at the ninth, where two really good shots down a valley should take us home; and the eleventh, sixteenth, and seventeenth all want long and straight hitting. At the thirteenth a pleasing variety is introduced in the matter of hazards by two old tombstones, which may catch a badly pulled ball. These, according to Mr. Purves, are memorials of an overflow from the parish churchyard at Cramond at the time of the plague. [Illustration: BARNTON _Park golf in Scotland_] Barnton is a great resort of the lawyers of Edinburgh, and there is a nice little joke with a legal flavour to it at the end of the candidate's application for membership, wherein, after declaring that he is an "ardent admirer and player of the ancient and manly game of golf," he concludes, "and your petitioner will ever play." What is more, he has got to play in his club uniform, a red coat and a black velvet cap--he is fined if he doesn't--and very pretty the red coats look on a summer day amid the pleasant greenery of Barnton. CHAPTER XII. WEST OF SCOTLAND: PRESTWICK AND TROON.