r I have
been an on-and-off reader in these pages for years--and getting just
pleasantly pricked with a number of new ideas, as to which I felt no
responsibility--no need of ticketing or labeling or packing them--when
I came suddenly upon a paper which sharply roused me from my mood of
_laisser aller_. It was by your accomplished and amusing contributor
Lady Blanche Murphy, and the subject just such a one as one would wish
to happen on under the circumstances--Slains Castle, one of the oldest
and most romantic of the grim palace-keeps which are dotted over
Scotland, round which legends cluster so thick that there is not one
of their towers, scarcely a slender old mullioned window, which is not
specially connected with some stirring tale of love, war or crime. But
Slains stands pre-eminent among Scotch castles on other grounds, and
has an interest which the doings of the earls of Errol, its lords,
could never have won for it. The Wizard of the North has thrown his
spell over it, and, whether Sir Walter Scott intended it or not,
Slains is accepted now as the Elangowan Castle in _Guy Mannering_.

Now, with all these rich stores to work on, these exceeding many
flocks and herds of Northern legend and glamour, Lady Blanche should
surely have been content, and not have descended into the South of
England, upon a quiet country-house in Berkshire, to seize its one
ewe lamb and claim that the heroine of the story which I hope to tell
before I get to the end of my paper was none other than the termagant
Countess Mary, hereditary lord high constable of Scotland, and the
owner of Slains Castle at the beginning of last century.

Sir, I am bound to admit that this audacious claim spoilt my
wanderings up and down the pages of your excellent magazine, and I
resolved that whenever I should find time I would write to you to
revindicate the claims of the "Berkshire Lady" to be native born and
entirely unconnected with the Countess Mary or Slains Castle. I can
scarcely remember the time when I did not know the story, which indeed
all Berkshire boys--or at any rate all Bath-road Berkshire boys--took
as regularly as measles in early youth. But let me explain to
New-World readers what I mean by a Bath-road Berkshire boy. Our royal
county of Berks is in shape somewhat like a highlow or ancle-jack boot
with the toe toward London, and at the tip of the toe Windsor Castle,
which, as we all know, looks down on the Thames as it finally leaves
the