lung,
The quivering drawbridge rocked and rung,
And echoed loud the flinty street
Beneath the coursers' clattering feet,
As slowly down the steep descent
Fair Scotland's king and nobles went,
While all along the crowded way
Was jubilee and loud huzza."

The place has been long deserted as a palace; but it is one of the four
fortresses, which, by the articles of union between Scotland and
England, are always to be kept in repair.

We passed by the town of Perth, the scene of the "Fair Maid's"
adventures. We had received an invitation to visit it, but for want of
time were obliged to defer it till our return to Scotland.

Somewhere along here Mr. S. was quite excited by our proximity to
Scone, the old crowning-place of the Scottish kings; however, the old
castle is entirely demolished, and superseded by a modern mansion, the
seat of the Earl of Mansfield.

Still farther on, surrounded by dark and solemn woods, stands Glamis
Castle, the scene of the tragedy in Macbeth. We could see but a glimpse
of it from the road, but the very sound of the name was enough to
stimulate our imagination. It is still an inhabited dwelling, though
much to the regret of antiquarians and lovers of the picturesque, the
characteristic outworks and defences of the feudal ages, which
surrounded it, have been levelled, and velvet lawns and gravel walks
carried to the very door. Scott, who passed a night there in 1793, while
it was yet in its pristine condition, comments on the change mournfully,
as undoubtedly a true lover of the past would. Albeit the grass plats
and the gravel walks, to the eye of sense, are undoubtedly much more
agreeable and convenient. Scott says in his Demonology, that he never
came any where near to being overcome with a superstitious feeling,
except twice in his life, and one was on the night when he slept in
Glamis Castle. The poetical and the practical elements in Scott's mind
ran together, side by side, without mixing, as evidently as the waters
of the Alleghany and Monongahela at Pittsburg. Scarcely ever a man had
so much relish for the supernatural, and so little faith in it. One must
confess, however, that the most sceptical might have been overcome at
Glamis Castle, for its appearance, by all accounts, is weird and
strange, and ghostly enough to start the dullest imagination.

On this occasion Scott says, "After a very hospitable reception from the
late Peter Proctor, seneschal of the castle, I w