14'4 SCOTLAND ILLUSTRATED. 



" Sir king," said the unearthly monitor, " nay Mother hath sent me to desire 

 thee not to pass at this time whither thou art purposed; for if thou dost, 

 thou wilt not fare well on thy journey, nor any that passeth with thee !"* It 

 had been well for the country and his distracted queen, had the headstrong 

 monarch availed himself of this well-timed counsel. His mind, however, though 

 deeply tinctured with superstition, was too chivalrous to retract the challenge 

 already proclaimed. He guessed, perhaps, that the voice he had just heard 

 was only that of his unhappy consort communicated through a new medium — 

 warning him to pause before he rushed upon an enterprise in which so many 

 were doomed to perish. But the king only retired from vespers to marshal his 

 host ; while Margaret, secluded in her cheerless " bower," watched his progress, 

 and " wept sore for him who should return no more." 



The fountain in the centre of the court appears to have been what historians 

 describe it — a work of elaborate design and execution ; but it is now a mass 

 of ruins, and those stones on which the chisel of the sculptor had been so long 

 and ingeniously exercised, and whose progress had been watched by the presence 

 of the sovereign, are now displaced and shapeless fragments. In 1745 it was 

 made to run wine in honour of Prince Charles ; but these Jacobite libations 

 were its expiring symptoms of loyalty, for on the arrival of the king's 

 troops the following year, the fountain was demolished, and the whole building 

 " purged " by fire. The accompanying plate presents a vivid idea of the confla- 

 gration which exposed to the bitter blast the last habitable portion of the 

 building. What renders this catastrophe the more painful is that the dragoons 

 quartered in the roj'al apartments are said to have been the incendiaries. If 

 so, their sacrifice of the palace showed what they had in reserve for the 

 peoole — 



" When the glens of the Highlands their march should proclaim, 

 Giving life to the sword and the roof to the flame." 



Till this disastrous event, the side of the square rebuilt by James VI. had 

 been kept in good repau-. 



On the many political events of which Linlithgow has been the theatre, the 

 limited nature of this work will not permit us to dwell. But the tragic fate of 

 tlie Regent Murray is so identified with the place, that, — although the open 

 balcony where the -deed was perpetrated no longer addresses us audibly as we 

 saunter through the street and its double row of antiquated dwellings — 



• See the account as detailed with minute and graphic simplicity by Lindsay of Pitscottie 



1 



