218 DOUNE CASTLE 



miles to the east, at the foot of the Ochil range, is the 

 Hydropathic Establishment of Dunblane, arrogantly 

 new and square, dwarfing the old cathedral, which 

 has of late been reverently, discreetly, and altogether 

 rightly restored ; the other, as far to the west, is Doune 

 Castle, grey and tiineworn, but gleaming to-day like a 

 tarnished silvern clasp in the great girdle of woodland 

 that lies about the feet of the Highland hills. 



Murdoch, second Duke of Albany, who was to lose 

 his head so soon as his master, James I., returned from 

 captivity in England, signalised his Regency, from 1419 

 to 1424, by the erection of at least two notable strong- 

 holds, of which one is famed Tantallon and the other 

 Doune. It was just the time when Scottish domestic 

 or defensive architecture (for the terms are nearly 

 synonymous in speaking of that age) moved forward 

 from the plan of a simple keep, entered on the second 

 floor by a movable ladder, to the grander design of a 

 continuous building surrounding a central court. The 

 keep still remained an important feature, but the rooms 

 in it increased in size; the inmates were no longer 

 huddled into comfortless apartments where cooking, 

 eating, and sleeping went on simultaneously. Banquet- 

 ing halls, chapels, visitors' suites and offices were added, 

 evidence of a growing desire for refinement, and of a 

 revival from the extreme poverty of the fourteenth 

 century, when the national exchequer and private re- 

 sources had been drained to the lowest ebb, in the long 

 struggle for Independence. Still, one is struck, even 

 in a pile of the importance of Doune, by the vast 



