On another occasion I recollect experiencing very strikingly, the force of local impressions. It was when visiting the apartments of Mary Queen of Scots, in the palace of Holyrood. Recalling to mind, with the enthusiasm of one of her warmest admirers, every circumstance connected with the eventful history of that unfortunate princess, it was impossible for me not to feel penetrated with the deepest interest. I traversed the very rooms in which she had sat, and conversed, and passed her hours of peaceful privacy. My fancy pictured that privacy rudely and brutally invaded by Darnley and his ruffian associates, when bent on the murder of the ill-fated Rizzio. I mentally compared the circumstances of that deed of blood, as related by historians, with the facilities for committing it, afforded by the distribution of apartments. They tallied exactly. There was the little room in which sat the queen with her ladies and the devoted secretary. Close to the door appeared the dark, narrow, turret staircase, which Darnley ascended before he rushed into Mary's presence. The struggle must have been desperate, for the murder was not effected in that chamber, Rizzio being either dragged, or escaped into an adjoining and very obscure anteroom in which the crime was perpetrated. They pretend to show you marks of his blood yet visible on the floor. Although all such horrible vestiges have been most probably long since obliterated, it is yet just possible that some may remain. To believe so, at the moment, was a lawful indulgence of my previous illusion. I could have followed the train of associations thus created much further, had not the person appointed to act as Cicerone hurried me through the apartments. Their doors closed against me, and the spell was broken.