&c. Here are
the pieces, esteemed most precious by reason of their histories
respectively. I saw, among the rest, Rob Roy's gun, with his initials,
R.M.C. i.e. Robert Macgregor Campbell, round the touch-hole; the
blunderbuss of Hofer, a present to Sir Walter from his friend Sir
Humphrey Davy; a most magnificent sword, as magnificently mounted, the
gift of Charles the First to the great Montrose, and having the arms
of Prince Henry worked on the hilt; the hunting bottle of bonnie
King Jamie; Bonaparte's pistols (found in his carriage at Waterloo,
I believe), _cum multis aliis_. I should have mentioned that
stag-horns and bulls' horns (the petrified relics of the old mountain
monster, I mean), and so forth, are suspended in great abundance above
all the doorways of these armories; and that, in one corner, a dark one
as it ought to be, there is a complete assortment of the old Scottish
instruments of torture, not forgetting the very thumbikins under which
Cardinal Carstairs did _not_ flinch, and the more terrific iron
crown of Wisheart the Martyr, being a sort of barred headpiece, screwed
on the victim at the stake, to prevent him from crying aloud in his
agony.

* * * * *

Beyond the smaller, or rather I should say, the narrower armoury,
lies the dining parlour proper, however; and though there is nothing
Udolphoish here, yet I can well believe that when lighted up and the
curtains drawn at night, the place may give no bad notion of the private
snuggery of some lofty lord abbot of the time of the Canterbury Tales.
The room is a very handsome one, with a low and very richly carved roof
of dark oak again; a huge projecting bow window, and the dais elevated
_more majorum_; the ornaments of the roof, niches for lamps, &c.
&c. in short, all the minor details, are, I believe, fac similes after
Melrose. The walls are hung in crimson, but almost entirely covered with
pictures, of which the most remarkable are--the parliamentary general,
Lord Essex, a full length on horseback; the Duke of Monmouth, by Lely; a
capital Hogarth, by himself; Prior and Gay, both by Jervas; and the head
of Mary Queen of Scots, in a charger, painted by Amias Canrod, the day
after the decapitation at Fotheringay, and sent some years ago as a
present to Sir Walter from a Prussian nobleman, in whose family it had
been for more than two centuries. It is a most deathlike performance,
and the countenance answers well enough to