20 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



mense tablet above. But decay has been busy with the 

 guardians, and with what they guard. There is a large 

 court in the interior, whose corners are occupied by lofty 

 towers, through each of which a staircase leads to the top. 

 The view inside is very striking: all the sides are unlike. 

 One of these was built in the reign of James VI. ; and 

 from the elegance and peculiar style of the architecture, 

 I would deem it a design of Inigo Jones. The other 

 sides are of a different character, and testify of an earlier 

 age. The windows are square, and huge of dimensions, 

 labelled a-top,and divided into compartments by mullions 

 of stone. There is an uncouth profusion, too, of Gothic 

 sculpture. In the middle of the court there are the 

 ruins of a well, and beside it a hollow which must once 

 have received its waters and formed a little lake ; but 

 the stream has long since failed. I passed through a 

 wilderness of arched passages, with windows darkened 

 by mullions of crumbling stone, and grated with wasted 

 iron. I have seen the room in which the unfortunate 

 Mary was born. I have seen, too, the large hall in 

 which our Scottish parliament sometimes assembled, 

 with the stone gallery in which the beauties of other 

 days have listened to the long-protracted and often 

 stormy debate. I ascended to the top of the build- 

 ing, and from an elevation of nearly a hundred feet 

 looked over the surrounding country. The palace is 

 built on a grassy eminence that projects into the lake, 

 which extends about half a mile on either side of it, 

 and nearly as much in front. A curtain of little hills 

 rises from the opposite shore, and shuts in the scene 

 towards the north. To the south we see the town, and 

 the long line of the canal, with its multitudinous bridges ; 

 and all around there is an undulating and freely diver- 

 sified country, studded with abrupt woody knolls of 



