so aptly applied.  We wondered how many times her weary head had passed its restless nights there, and in the many castles in which she had been placed during her long imprisonment of nineteen years.  Half hidden by the tapestry there was a small door opening upon a secret stair, and it was by this that Darnley and his infamous associates ascended when they went to murder the Queen’s unfortunate Italian secretary, Rizzio, in the Queen’s supping-room, which we now visited.  There we had to listen to the recital of this horrible crime:  how the Queen had been forcibly restrained by Darnley, her table overthrown and the viands scattered, while the blood-thirsty conspirators crowded into the room; how Rizzio rushed behind the Queen for protection, until one of the assassins snatched Darnley’s dagger from its sheath, and stabbed Rizzio, leaving the dagger sticking in his body, while the others dragged him furiously from the room, stabbing him as he went, shrieking for mercy, until he fell dead at the head of the staircase, pierced by fifty-six wounds; and how one of the assassins threatened to cut the Queen “into collops” if she dared to speak to the populace through the window.  The bloodstain on the floor was of course shown us, which the mockers assert is duly “restored” every winter before the visiting season commences.

Leaving the Palace, we saw Queen Mary’s Bath, a quaintly shaped little building built for her by King James IV, in which she was said to have bathed herself in white wine—­an operation said to have been the secret of her beauty.  During some alterations which were made to it in 1798, a richly inlaid but wasted dagger was found stuck in the sarking of the roof, supposedly by the murderers of Rizzio on their escape from the palace.

[Illustration:  CHAPEL ROYAL, HOLYROOD.]

We then visited the now roofless ruins of the Abbey or Chapel Royal adjoining the Palace.  A fine doorway on which some good carving still remained recalled something of its former beauty and grandeur.  There were quite a number of tombs, and what surprised us most was the large size of the gravestones, which stood 6 to 7 feet high, and were about 3 feet wide.  Those we had been accustomed to in England were much smaller, but everything in Scotland seemed big, including the people themselves, and this was no less true of the buildings in Edinburgh.  There was a monument in one corner of the Chapel Royal on which was an inscription in Latin, of which we read the English translation to be:—­

   HERE IS BURIED A WORTHY MAN AND AN INGENIOUS MASON,

   ALEXANDER MILNE, 20 Feb.  A.D. 1643

  Stay Passenger, here famous Milne doth rest,
  Worthy to be in AEgypt’s Marble drest;
  What Myron or Apelles could have done
  In brass or paintry, he could do in stone;
  But thretty yeares hee [blameless] lived; old age
  He did betray, and in’s Prime left this stage.

   Restored by Robert Mylne