A country lip may have the velvet touch;
Though she's no lady, she may please as much.

DRYDEN.

Perth, boasting, as we have already mentioned, so large a portion of the
beauties of inanimate nature, has at no time been without its own share
of those charms which are at once more interesting and more transient.
To be called the Fair Maid of Perth would at any period have been a
high distinction, and have inferred no mean superiority in beauty, where
there were many to claim that much envied attribute. But, in the feudal
times to which we now call the reader's attention, female beauty was a
quality of much higher importance than it has been since the ideas of
chivalry have been in a great measure extinguished. The love of the
ancient cavaliers was a licensed species of idolatry, which the love of
Heaven alone was theoretically supposed to approach in intensity, and
which in practice it seldom equalled. God and the ladies were familiarly
appealed to in the same breath; and devotion to the fair sex was as
peremptorily enjoined upon the aspirant to the honour of chivalry as
that which was due to Heaven. At such a period in society, the power of
beauty was almost unlimited. It could level the highest rank with that
which was immeasurably inferior.

It was but in the reign preceding that of Robert III. that beauty alone
had elevated a person of inferior rank and indifferent morals to share
the Scottish throne; and many women, less artful or less fortunate, had
risen to greatness from a state of concubinage, for which the manners
of the times made allowance and apology. Such views might have dazzled
a girl of higher birth than Catharine, or Katie, Glover, who was
universally acknowledged to be the most beautiful young woman of the
city or its vicinity, and whose renown, as the Fair Maid of Perth, had
drawn on her much notice from the young gallants of the royal court,
when it chanced to be residing in or near Perth, insomuch that more than
one nobleman of the highest rank, and most distinguished for deeds of
chivalry, were more attentive to exhibit feats of horsemanship as they
passed the door of old Simon Glover, in what was called Couvrefew, or
Curfew, Street, than to distinguish themselves in the tournaments, where
the noblest dames of Scotland were spectators of their address. But the
glover's daughter--for, as was common with the citizens and artisans of
that early period, her father, Simon, derived his