SIR DAVID LINDSAY'S VIRIDARIUM.
In Lord Lindsay's very interesting Lives of the Lindsays, vol. i. p. 347., after the description of the very curious "viridarium or garden" of Sir David Lindsay at Edzell, and of the various sculptures and ornaments with which its wall is decorated, the author says: "To show how insecure was enjoyment in that dawn of refinement, the centre of every star along the wall forms an embrasure for the extrusion, if needed, of arrow, harquebuss, or pistol."
Some years before the book was published, I had visited this very interesting spot, and examined these sculptures, and other ornaments, amongst which the pierced stars puzzled me much: however, after a lengthened and very careful investigation, finding that, being at too great a height from the ground, and, moreover, that as the holes in the centre of the stars do not pass through the wall, but merely into small cavities in it, they could not have been used as embrasures, or have served for warlike purposes; and that, as there were no channels or pipes that could have
conducted water to them, they could not have been connected with fountains or water-works; I came to the conclusion that the planner of the garden, or at least of its walls, must have been an ardent lover of birds, and that these holes were for providing access for his beloved feathered friends (they would only admit the passage of small birds) to the secure resting-places which the hollow stones afforded; for whose use other niches and recesses seem also to have been planned (though some of the latter were probably intended to hold bee-hives) with a philornithic indifference for the security of the fruit tempting their attacks from all sides, but quite in character with the portrait of Sir David, as depicted by his noble biographer.
W. C. Trevelyan.
Athenæum.