The place has been long deserted as a palace; but it is one of the four fortresses, which, by the articles of union between Scotland and England, are always to be kept in repair.

We passed by the town of Perth, the scene of the “Fair Maid’s” adventures.  We had received an invitation to visit it, but for want of time were obliged to defer it till our return to Scotland.

Somewhere along here Mr. S. was quite excited by our proximity to Scone, the old crowning-place of the Scottish kings; however, the old castle is entirely demolished, and superseded by a modern mansion, the seat of the Earl of Mansfield.

Still farther on, surrounded by dark and solemn woods, stands Glamis Castle, the scene of the tragedy in Macbeth.  We could see but a glimpse of it from the road, but the very sound of the name was enough to stimulate our imagination.  It is still an inhabited dwelling, though much to the regret of antiquarians and lovers of the picturesque, the characteristic outworks and defences of the feudal ages, which surrounded it, have been levelled, and velvet lawns and gravel walks carried to the very door.  Scott, who passed a night there in 1793, while it was yet in its pristine condition, comments on the change mournfully, as undoubtedly a true lover of the past would.  Albeit the grass plats and the gravel walks, to the eye of sense, are undoubtedly much more agreeable and convenient.  Scott says in his Demonology, that he never came any where near to being overcome with a superstitious feeling, except twice in his life, and one was on the night when he slept in Glamis Castle.  The poetical and the practical elements in Scott’s mind ran together, side by side, without mixing, as evidently as the waters of the Alleghany and Monongahela at Pittsburg.  Scarcely ever a man had so much relish for the supernatural, and so little faith in it.  One must confess, however, that the most sceptical might have been overcome at Glamis Castle, for its appearance, by all accounts, is weird and strange, and ghostly enough to start the dullest imagination.

On this occasion Scott says, “After a very hospitable reception from the late Peter Proctor, seneschal of the castle, I was conducted to my apartment in a distant part of the building.  I must own, that when I heard door after door shut, after my conductor had retired, I began to consider myself as too far from the living, and somewhat too near the dead.  We had passed through what is called ‘the King’s Room,’ a vaulted apartment, garnished with stags’ antlers and similar trophies of the chase, and said by tradition to be the spot of Malcolm’s murder, and I had an idea of the vicinity of the castle chapel.  In spite of the truth of history, the whole night scene in Macbeth’s castle rushed at once upon my mind, and struck my imagination more forcibly than even when I have seen its terrors represented by the late John Kemble and his inimitable sister.  In a word, I experienced sensations which, though not remarkable either for timidity or superstition, did not fail to affect me to the point of being disagreeable, while they were mingled at the same time with a strange and indescribable kind of pleasure.”