Access was by no means difficult to be obtained, nor was my ascent to the top of the ancient structure without its pleasures. In the first place, I passed through the apartments of the fair queen of Scotland,--the fairest, and all things considered, perhaps, the frailest of royal ladies; and there I found the whole localities of Rizzio’s murder, well preserved both in appearance and in tradition. In the second place, I had the pleasure of seeing upon the leads, dressed in the plain tartan of her adopted clan, the fair Lady Glenorchy, who possesses all the charms of Mary, without any of her faults. I am not sure that I ever saw a finer woman; I am sure that I never saw one in whose expression intellect was more blended with sweetness, or spirit softened and enriched by modesty and grace. Besides those intellectual (is that the term?) pleasures, there were other things which rendered my locality the best of any: First, it commanded a larger and better view of the procession; and, secondly, though Edinburgh looks romantic from my situation, there is none where it becomes so perfect a fairy tale. While I paced along the leads of the palace, and I had ample time to do it, I was more and more rivetted, both in motion and in gaze, by the wonderful scene. Eastward was the expanse of blue water, widening and having no boundary in the extreme horizon, and confined every where else between the soft, green, lovely, and productive shores of Lothian and Fife. Along the whole visible portion of the waters, no ship was going forth upon her voyage, but many were cruizing towards the port of Leith by the combined powers of every thing that enables man to make his way upon the deep. Northward rose the Calton Hill, ornamented with one of the best and one of the worst specimens of modern architecture, having a park of artillery and a picquet of horsemen upon its summit, and its sides groaning under the weight of a multitude which no man could count. Sufficiently elevated at one place for throwing its more elevated objects against the sky, and rapid enough in its slope for bringing out at whole length the masses of people who occupied it, the Calton did not conceal either the royal squadron in Leith roads, or the majestic summits of the remote Grampians,--from which every cloud and every trace of mist had been brushed away, when I first ascended, while the strong and peculiar refraction that the atmosphere in such cases exerts, gave to them only half their distance and double their height, as if the mountains themselves had raised them from the beds of their primeval residence, and come near, to behold the splendour which the Athens had put on, and the glory with which she hoped to be blessed. Towards the south, Salisbury Craggs and Arthur’s Seat raised their summits to the mid heaven, and threw their broad shadows over the valley, into which the beams of light which poured in at the openings of the majestic wall of rock, seamed the blue shadow as the