MORE GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 134, 3 December 1910, Page 10

MORE GLIMPSES OF EDINBURGH.

ST. GILES* AND HOLYROOD. QUEEN MARY'S MIRROR. IN THE CHAPEL ROYAL. (Specially Written for The Post.) (By Mrs. Malcolm Ross.) My last letter left me standing in High-street, Edinburgh, watching the women gossiping at the dusky openings of the closes, and the barefooted children playing in the gutter or chasing one another across the street under the very noses of the horses. The tall, grimy, flat-faced houses were decorated with weird domestic draperies — the day's washing, and out of some of the upper windows untidy women held shrill animated converse with neighbours on uhe pavement below. The street widened into an open space centred by a statue of the Duke of Buccleugh, and, facing us, grey and stern, was St. Giles, whose beautiful spire we had seen from Prin-ces-street, fretted agaiast the blue and white of the sky. Just in front used to stand the old Tolbooth Prison, and we searched about on the paving stones — refardless of amused ' glances — till we ound the little heart that marks the site of the gallows where so many brave men died. We paid threepence to enter St. Giles' Cathedral. It was gloomy, and its impressive size was lessened by its many pillars, stout and solid and severe, as is the general effect. Of colour there is little. Only the faded flags broke the curving lines of the roof. From the east window came jewelled lights piercing the gloom. But some well-lovea names are commemorated here. We found the tombs of Mrs. Oliphant, of William Chambers, and a touching and beautiful bronze to the memory of Robert Louis Stevenson. In it the author is lying, book in hand, on a wicker lounge, a rug across his knees, and under are the pathetic words he desired should be on his tomb :—: — "Home is the hunter, home from the hill, And the sailor home from the sea." , A great monument, with many names, was in memory of those who died in the Indian Mutiny, and not far away from it was the stately statue of John Knox, in his furred gown and square cap. In St. Giles lie Montrose, the great martyred Marquis, and the Regent Moray, who was assassinated at Linlithgow. We found, with some difficulty, the brass tablet set in ' the floor that marks the spot where Jenny Ceddes flung her stool at the dean when he introduced the ser-vice-book of Charles the First. Either the church must have been altered, or the stool must have had a boomerang-like power, for now it is almost impossible to see even the pulpit from the place where the dauntless woman sat. It is bo be hoped Jenny's spirit does not haunt bt. Giles, for, if so, it must be sorely tried when the great organ peals out, and the ritual is read— so different a sfvice from the simplicity and severity oi the praise and prayer she championed. From the Market Cross, whose restoration the Scots owe to Gladstone, we passed on to the Cannongate, which abounds in interest and romance. The tall old houses here were varied by picturesque gabled buildings, some tim-ber-fronted and many red-tiled, a glorious tint against the blue sky. Here was Allan Ramsay's shop, and, only a little further on, was John Knox's house, familiar to us from many postcards. It is a fascinating building, with tiny-paned projecting windows, and an outsids- stone stair. One little triangular window is set at the angle of the wall, which here juts into the street, and from that window John Knox is said to have preached. Further on the street narrowed, and here the houses — now unkempt and dreary — used to be occupied by the nobles who clustered about Holyrood Palace. We knew we were near the debtors' sanctuary, and were speculating as to its whereabouts when a comely woman standing arms akimbo at her shop-door, broke in with apologies and information. She was versed in the matter, and actually took us back along thft street to show us the line across the cobblestones which marked the division between a prison or freedom for the delinquent. The Abbey Courthouse, where they took refuge, was close by. It looked most interesting, and had a magnificent entrance, but our guide told us that, though she had once been in, tho leddy who kept it was a verra stiff wumman, and could not bear strangers. It was amusing to imagine the brokendown gentlemen flying before their angry creditors and gaining the safety of tho sanctuary, while their baffled, pursuers were obliged, to toe the line. Sunday was a day on v/hich no arrests were made, but, like Cinderella, a man had to be careful to leave the town betimes if he valued his liberty. Just across the wide square, lovely gardens bordering it on one side and the swelling downs of Queen's Park and Arthur's Seat rising behind, lay Holyrood, most romantic of palaces. It was a convent onee — as its name signifies — which saintly King David of Scotland founded in gratitude for being saved from a furious stag who fled before an uplifted cross. But it is Queen Mary whose memory haunts its quaint rooms: — Queen Mai'y whose brief life was filled with tragic happenings. It was in Holyrood that Rizzio was murdered, and we stood in the little supper-room where he and his queen took their last meal together, and we tried to picture the scene. It is the tiniest of apartments, oak-panelled and queer-cornered, with one small, deep-sunk latticed window. The conspirators,' headed by Ruthven, entered through Mary's bedroom — out of whicb the supper-room leads — by a secret door, 'which now is quite visible behind the great mouldering bedstead. Rizzio clung to the folds of Mary's gown, but was forced apart, stabbed, and dragged through the bedroom to the door of the audience chamber, where he was killed. So dire was the hatred and eager vengeance of the nobles that no fewer than fifty-six wounds were in his body. Of course, we were shown the stain of his blood, but it is neither very marked nor very convincing, and the tragedy was as real to us without' that somewhat theatrical exhibit. It i; all the little personal touches that are fascinating in Holyrood. The picture gallery— which contains about a hundred portraits of Scottish kings, most of them done, thirteen to the dozen, by some signpainter in the 17th century— is a cham- < ber of horrors. Lord Darnley's rooms J are interesting and contain some fine tapestries and some odds and ends of old mrniture. But it is to Queen Mary's voom that the crowd floek -to linger and gaze at the sadly few relics. Queens, were sparingly housed in those' days. The audience» chamber is stately and ex yuisitely panelled, but the bedroom is not large, and is badly lit, and the groat bed takes up much of the space. In the window recess hangs a mirror — the very first, a delightful policeman told us— ever brought to England. Queen Mary had it among her treasures when she came from France, and we gazed into its dull broken surface with deep interest. There I is little reflection left after all thess years, but doubtksß it was a cheriohed

toy when new. "Ye can say ye hae luiket i' the same gless 1 as Queen Mary," gaid our policeman ; "Ay, and hae seen a happier face, I daur say !" At th« head of the bed was a square opening in the thick stone wall, through whicn anyone on the winding stairs outside could watch what was going on within the room. On th& wall of the little sup-per-Toom hung a blackened mouldering square of tapestry, the only scrap left of the needlework with which the rooms had been hung. We wondered if any. one was brave enough to visit the^e rooms at night. There must be unquiet spirits that haunt them, and, twentieth century though it is, we confessed to each other that we should nob dare to face the weird possibilities of the darkness there. It is a sad place, though from the deep-sunk windows lovely glimpses can be got of green hills and fair gardens, and, beyond, beautiful Edinburgh. Treachery and tragedy! aejjm lurking) in, evety dim corner and behind each low oaken door, and the bright sunlight that is pouring down on the city— even penetrating into the squalor of the .wynds and closes— never seems to dispense the gloom that fills tL& rooms. It seems a dour setting for so bright and gay a creature as Mary Scots. The Chapel Royal is a picturesque rum, more dilapidated since the futile attempt to roof it in. p ar ts of it date back to the twelfth century, and the early English portion is most beautiful, with exquisite carving and the remains of noble columns. We had to crawl over planks, for workmen were busy preserving and restoring, and heaps of debris and scaffolding hid several of the monuments. Here, in the Royal vault, are buried several Kings of Scotland, and here Darnley's body was laid. Rizzio was buried in the passage leading to the quadrangle, on the skirts of consecrated ground, and on the wall of the chapel we saw a monument to the Bishop of Orkney— a Bothwell— who celebrated the marriage of his kinsman to Queen Mary in the great hall of tho palace. Th«re are a tew modern graves, one being that of wje Countess of Caithness, who believed that Queen Mary's spirit lived again in her. Here, in the ruins of the Chapel Royal, where long ago there was such pomp and pageantry, the sunlight streamed down on the crumbling stones and through the broken windows, and outside a bird was singing its heart out in ecstasy as it swung on the bough of a silver birch. Lawns, trees, and vivid flower-beds were as welcome as the birds carol alter the pathos and the gloom of palace' and chapel. Fascinating as our visit had been, we felt we wanted a fillip after our depression, and though the contrast was perhaps startlingly crude, we mounted a car an< *, h . led us to Portobello, the Margate of Edinburgh. Here all was gaiety and life, though perhaps the Scotch enjoyment is not so whole-hearted as that of the English coster. Even the children are more restrained in their-mirth. But all the seaside attractions, the shows, and tea-gardens, the merry-go-rounds, switchbacks, skating rinks, abounded along the sea front, and hundreds of people and thousands of children were there. One did not notice the latest fashions.— though there were a few caricatures of them— but it seemed a hearty, healthy crowd, enjoying the sea breezes and the .fair prospect of beach and sea. The last, alack! is not the sea we have on iNew Zealand shores Ihough the sky was blue and the breeze light, it was a dreary, bilious green. It scarcely seemed akin to the glorious sapphire stretches of a New Zealand bay. But, indeed, I have as yet seen no deep, blue sea here. At Brighton the sea was a vivid green— a high, keen breeze fretting it into Bullen waveß, and the Irish Sea and the English Channel were alike wanting in rich, deep colour. We got back from Portobello in time to sit for a little in the Waverley Gardens, and, turning our backs on the whirl of Princes-street, we watched the lovely silhouette of castle, spires, roofs, and towers far above us, growing duskier purple againßt the flushed sunset sky. It x had been a day of days, perfect to its close— even a moon peered out of the ' deepening blue— and its fascinating memories would intensify when we had returned to our newer and lees romantic country.