ever died out: but the strain
changed with the death of the last Alexander, and another change came
over Scotland not so profound as that which attended the coming of the
Saxon princess, yet great and remarkable--the end of an age of
construction, of establishment, of knitting together; the beginning of a
time disturbed with other questions, with complications of advancing
civilisation, nobles and burghers, trade and war.

[Illustration: ARMS OF QUEEN MARGARET OF SCOTLAND

(From the Ceiling of St. Machar's Cathedral, Old Aberdeen)]

PART II

THE STEWARDS OF SCOTLAND

CHAPTER I

JAMES I. POET AND LEGISLATOR

The growth of Edinburgh is difficult to trace through the mists and the
tumults of the ages. The perpetual fighting which envelops the Scotland
of those days as in the "great stour" or dust, which was Sir Walter
Scott's conception of a battle, with gleams of swords and flashes of
fire breaking through, offers few breaks through which we can see
anything like the tranquil growth of that civic life which requires
something of a steady and settled order and authority to give it being.
The revolutions which took place in the country brought perpetual
vicissitude to the Castle of Edinburgh, and no doubt destroyed and drove
from their nests upon the eastern slopes of the rock the settlers who
again and again essayed to keep their footing there. When the family of
St. Margaret came to a conclusion, and the great historical struggle
which succeeded ended in the establishment of Robert Bruce upon the
throne, that great victor and statesman destroyed the Castle of
Edinburgh with other strongholds, that it might not afford a point of
vantage to the English invader or other enemies of the country's
peace--a step which would seem to have been premature, though probably,
in the great triumph and ascendency in Scotland which his noble
character and work had gained, he might have hoped that at least the
unanimity of the nation and its internal peace were secured, and that
only an enemy would attempt to dominate the reconciled and united
country. The Castle was, however, built up again and again,
re-established and destroyed, a centre of endless fighting during the
tumultuous reigns that followed, though it is only on the accession of a
new race, a family so deeply connected with the modern history of Great
Britain that no reader can be indifferent to its early appearances, that
Edinburgh begins to become visib