solation to the inefficient angler that one can hardly
expect to see it abolished. The unsuccessful clamour for trolling,
instead of consoling themselves, as sportsmen should do, with the
conversation of the gillies, their anecdotes of great trout, and their
reminiscences of great anglers, especially of the late Mr. Russell, the
famed editor of the "Scotsman." This humourist is gradually "winning his
way to the mythical." All fishing stories are attached to him; his
eloquence is said (in the language of the historian of the Buccaneers) to
have been "florid"; he is reported to have thrown his fly-book into Loch
Leven on an unlucky day, saying, "You brutes, take your choice," and a
rock, which he once hooked and held on to, is named after him, on the
Tweed. In addition to the humane and varied conversation of the boatmen,
there is always the pure pleasure of simply gazing at the hillsides and
at the islands. They are as much associated with the memory of Mary
Stuart as Hermitage or even Holyrood. On that island was her prison;
here the rude Morton tried to bully her into signing away her rights;
hence she may often have watched the shore at night for the lighting of a
beacon, a sign that a rescue was at hand.

The hills, at least, are much as she may have seen them, and the square
towers and crumbling walls on the island met her eyes when they were all
too strong. The "quay" is no longer "rude," as when "The Abbot" was
written, and is crowded with the green boats of the Loch Leven Company.
But you still land on her island under "the huge old tree" which Scott
saw, which the unhappy Mary may herself have seen. The small garden and
the statues are gone, the garden whence Roland Graeme led Mary to the
boat and to brief liberty and hope unfulfilled. Only a kind of ground-
plan remains of the halls where Lindesay and Ruthven browbeat her forlorn
Majesty. But you may climb the staircase where Roland Graeme stood
sentinel, and feel a touch, of what Pepys felt when he kissed a dead
Queen--Katherine of Valois. Like Roland Graeme, the Queen may have been
"wearied to death of this Castle of Loch Leven," where, in spring, all
seems so beautiful, the trees budding freshly above the yellow celandine
and among the grey prison walls. It was a kindlier prison house than
Fotheringay, and minds peaceful and contented would gladly have taken
"this for a hermitage."

The Roman Emperors used to banish too powerful subjects to the l