As in the case of the other meeting, we came out long before the speeches were ended.  Well, of course, I did not sleep any all night.  The next day I felt quite miserable.  Mrs. W. went with Mr. S. and myself for a quiet drive in her carriage.

It was a beautiful, sunny day that we drove out to Craigmiller Castle, formerly one of the royal residences.  It was here that Mary retreated after the murder of Rizzio, and where, the chronicler says, she was often heard in those days wishing that she were in her grave.  It seems so strange to see it standing there all alone, in the midst of grassy fields, so silent, and cold, and solitary.  I got out of the carriage and walked about it.  The short, green grass was gemmed with daisies, and sheep were peacefully feeding and resting, where was once all the life and bustle of a court.

We had no one to open the inside of the castle for us, where there are still some tolerably preserved rooms, but we strolled listlessly about, looking through the old arches, and peeping through slits and loopholes into the interior.

The last verse of Queen Mary’s lamentation seemed to be sighing in the air:—­

  “O, soon for me shall simmer’s suns
    Nae mair light up the morn;
  Nae mair for me the autumn wind
    Wave o’er the yellow corn. 
  But in the narrow house of death
    Let winter round me rave,
  And the next flowers that deck the spring
    Bloom on my peaceful grave.”

Only yesterday, it seemed, since that poor heart was yearning and struggling, caught in the toils of this sorrowful life.  How many times she looked on this landscape through sad eyes!  I suppose just such little daisies grew here in the grass then, and perhaps she stooped and picked them, wishing, just as I do, that the pink did not grow on the under side of them, where it does not show.  Do you know that this little daisy is the gowan of Scotch poetry?  So I was told by a “charming young Jessie” in Glasgow, one day when I was riding out there.

The view from Craigmiller is beautiful—­Auld Reekie, Arthur’s Seat, Salisbury Crags, and far down the Frith of Forth, where we can just dimly see the Bass Hock, celebrated as a prison, where the Covenanters were immured.

It was this fortress that Habakkuk Mucklewrath speaks of in his ravings, when he says, “Am not I Habakkuk Mucklewrath, whose name is changed to Magor-Missabib, because I am made a terror unto myself, and unto all that are around me?  I heard it:  when did I hear it?  Was it not in the tower of the Bass, that overhangeth the wide, wild sea? and it howled in the winds, and it roared in the billows, and it screamed, and it whistled, and it clanged, with the screams, and the clang, and the whistle of the sea birds, as they floated, and flew, and dropped, and dived, on the bosom of the waters.”

These Salisbury Crags, which overlook Edinburgh, have a very peculiar outline; they resemble an immense elephant crouching down.  We passed Mushats Cairn, where Jeanie Deans met Robertson; and saw Liberton, where Reuben Butler was a schoolmaster.  Nobody doubts, I hope, the historical accuracy of these points.