"High on a rock, half sea-girt, half on land, The castle stood, and still its ruins stand. Wide o'er the German main the prospect bent, Steep is the path and rugged the ascent: There hung the huge portcullis--there the bar Drawn on the iron gate defied the war." _"Dunnottar Castle," by Mrs. Carnegie, 1796._ The view of Dunnottar Castle, which so happily illustrates this portion of the work, represents one of the most remarkable features that are anywhere to be met with on the coasts of the British empire. The drawing was taken on the spot, and shows with admirable effect and precision those striking combinations of nature and art which, during a long series of ages, rendered the fortress of Dunnottar impregnable. But those rocky foundations from which it once rose in all the strength and grandeur of feudal architecture are fast yielding to the encroachments of the sea; its crested summits, once brilliant with arms and bristling with cannon, seem ready to drop from their precipice. Unroofed, unlatticed, untenanted, with not an ember left on its once capacious hearth, desolation and ruin are vividly pictured in its dreary solitude. The floors are covered with crumbling fragments of varied and costly decorations in sculpture, painting, and fretwork. Once a palace--commanding all that could minister to the security and luxury of its almost royal possessors, its battlements gay with standards, crowded with retainers, mailed guests in the hall, and minstrels in the court--it is now dark as a sepulchre;--banners, retainers, guests, minstrels, and the master of the feast himself--all are gone! The hoarse dash of the waves, the shrill scream of the stormy petrel, the crash of some disjointed and falling rock, or the whistling of the coming tempest, are almost the only sounds that now alternate among these embattled heights, where the curious stranger retraces with melancholy interest the days and deeds of antiquity. To him who is familiar with its history, Dunnottar speaks with an audible voice; every cave has a record--every turret a tongue; his ear is struck with "wandering voices," and words that never die seem at every step to arrest his attention.