"August 23, Eccles Greig, Montrose.—This is a charming place belonging to Kyrie's[168] father, and of which he is the heir. Miss Grant drove me to-day to Denfenella, a beautiful ravine of tremendous depth, where a lovely burn dashes over a precipice, and then rushes away to the sea through depths of rock and fern, amid which it makes a succession of deep shadowy pools. Endless are the Scottish stories about this place:

"That Queen Fenella—the fairy queen—first washed her clothes in the bright shining Morne, and then walked on the tops of the trees, by which means she escaped.

"That Queen Fenella, having murdered her husband, fled to Denfenella, where she flung herself over the rocks to escape justice.

"That Queen Fenella, widow of Kenneth III., after the death of her husband and her own escape from the Castle of Kincardine, fled to Denfenella, where she was taken and put to death.

"That Queen Fenella loved a beautiful youth, but that her enemies tried to force her to marry another; and that, rather than do so, she fled from her father's castle, which is at an immense distance from this, but, on reaching Denfenella, she felt that farther escape was hopeless, and let herself float down the stream and be carried away over the waterfall into the sea.

"All the stories, however, agree in one fact, that at midnight the beautiful Fenella still always walks in the braes where she died, and still washes her clothes in the bright shining Morne.

"We went on to the 'Came of Mathers,' a wild cove on the seashore with a ruined castle on the farthest point of an inaccessible precipice, beneath which the green waves rush through deep rifts of the rock, which is worn into caves and arches. The Sheriff of these parts was once very unpopular, and the lairds complained to King James, who said in a joke that it would be a very good thing if the Sheriff were boiled and cut up and made into browse. When the lairds heard this, they beguiled the Sheriff to Gavoch, where they had a huge caldron prepared, into which they immediately popped him, and boiled him, and cut him up. Then, literally to carry out the King's words, they each ate a part of him. Having done this, they were all so dreadfully afraid of King James, that they sought every possible means of escape, and the Laird of Arbuthnot, who had been one of the most forward in boiling the Sheriff, built this impregnable castle, where he lived in defiance of the King.

"Beneath the castle is a deep cleft in the rock, which seems endless. It is said to continue in a subterranean passage to Lauriston. The drummer of Lauriston once went up it, and tried to work his way through, but he never was seen again; and at night, it is said, that the drummer of Lauriston is still heard beating his drum in the cavern beneath."

Upon leaving Eccles Greig, I joined my mother, and went with her to St. Andrews, which I had always greatly desired that she should see. Even more than the wonderful charm of the place at this time was that of seeing much of the genial, witty, eccentric Provost, Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair. He first came up to me when I was drawing—an old man in a cloak—and invited me into his garden, whither we returned several times. That garden was the most extraordinary place, representing all the important facts of the history of the world, from chaos and the creation of the sun down to the Reform Bill, "whence," said Sir Hugh, "you may date the decline of the British Empire." On the same chart were marked the lengths of all the principal ships, while representations of the planets indicated their distance from the sun! No verbal description, however, can recall the genial oddity of the garden's owner. On Saturdays he used to open his garden to the public, and follow in the crowd to hear their opinion of himself. He said they would often say, "Ah! the poor Provost, he has more money than brains; he is sadly deficient here," pointing to the forehead. Once some of the people said to him, "We do so want to see the Provost; how would it be possible to see Sir Hugh?"—"Oh," he answered, "I think you had better go and look in at the windows, and you will be sure to see him." So they all crowded to the windows, but there was no one to be seen. "Oh," he said, "I'll tell you why that is: that is because he is under the table. It is a way Sir Hugh has. He is so dreadfully shy, that whenever he hears any one coming, he always goes under the table directly." Presently, on going out, they met an official, who, coming up, touched his hat and said, "If you please, Sir Hugh, I've spoken to that policeman, as you ordered me," and the horrified people discovered their mistake, to Sir Hugh's intense amusement.

JOURNAL.