In the long picture gallery of this dull modern palace, nothing of which either Mary or James ever saw, there hangs a series of portraits, one hundred pictures of Scottish kings, painted under order of Charles II in 1680, by the Fleming, DeWitt, who agreed to furnish the pictures in two years for one hundred and twenty pounds. They begin with Fergus I, 330 B. C. They are the kings who passed before the prophetic vision of Banquo. Enough to frighten Macbeth!
One brief brilliant ghost of Stewart glory returns. In this gallery was held the ball of Prince Charles Edward, described in "Waverley."
And after this theatric moment, and after the Prince had defeated the "royalists" at Falkirk, Hardy's dragoons slashed these pictures of Scottish kings, since the Prince they could not reach.
Princes Gardens
There are certain public places of beauty where the beauty is so enveloping that the place seems one's very own, seems possessed. That, I take it, is the great democratic triumph, in that it has made beauty a common possession and places of beauty as free to the people as is the air.
Chief of these is Princes Street Gardens.
I could, in truth I have, spent there days and half-days, and twilights that I would willingly have lengthened to midnights, since the northern night never quite descends, but a romantic gray twilight veils everything, and evokes more than everything. For any lengthened visit in Edinburgh I dare not inhabit a hotel room on the Garden side, since all my time would be spent at the window. For a shorter visit, such a room lengthens the day, defies the closed gate of the Gardens.
PRINCES STREET.
It was from such a window as this, "From a Window in Princes Street" that Henley looked forth—