LINLITHGO W PALA CE. 1 9 



tion buildings. I never look up to a lofty stone roof 

 without feelings of awe. Burke has said that tVar is a 

 necessary ingredient in the sublime. I do not know 

 but that there is a lurking sensation of terror in the feel- 

 ing which I experience ; it does not OAve its existence 

 to the art in which, according to Thomson, " greatest 

 seems the little builder man." I sit in the northern 

 aisle every Sunday, beside a huge column, and directly 

 opposite the gallery in which the spectre appeared to 

 James IV. The clergyman is a fine, useless preacher 

 of the Moderate party, who gives us rather ordinary 

 matter dressed up in pretty good language. He does 

 not pray on Sabbaths, like our north-country ministers, 

 to be " preserved from thinking his own thoughts," and 

 may, indeed, spare himself the trouble he has none of 

 his own to think. 



' The palace is situated a little behind the church. 

 It is a huge quadrangular pile, about sixty paces on each 

 side, full of those irregularities which would not be 

 tolerated in a modern building, but which, associated as 

 they are with our conceptions of Scotland in the past, 

 please more than elegance itself. There runs along the 

 top a deeply-tusked cornice ; the corners are crowned 

 with turrets, and broken piles of building, which finely 

 vary the outline a-top, rise high above the outer wall on 

 either side. The carvings are sorely time-worn, and they 

 seem to have been grotesque enough when at their best. 

 On either side of an old gateway, which was shut up 

 in the reign of James VI., there are two Gothic niches, 

 surmounted by miniature cupolas that resemble the 

 models of an architect ; at the base of each there is the 

 figure stretching forth his hands, and writhing in agony, 

 as if crushed by the superincumbent weight. The Scot- 

 tish shield, guarded by angels, is blazoned on an im- 



