From Stirling Castle we revelled in the view which many consider the finest in Scotland, embracing, as it does, both Lowland and Highland scenery. We drove to the towering, but rather top-heavy Wallace Monument, on Abbey Crag, and climbed its winding stone stairway, for the sake of another look at that smiling landscape, and a nearer view of the scene of Wallace's victory over Surrey at Stirling Bridge, in 1297. In one of the rooms of this great monument we gazed reverently on the hero's sword with a thrill of our boyhood enthusiasm over Scottish Chiefs, remembering that "the sword which looked heavy for an archangel to wield was light in his terrible hand." The statue of Wallace in front of the building looked like an old friend, because of our familiarity with the replica of it in Druid Hill Park, presented to the city of Baltimore by Mr. William Wallace Spence. Of course, we drove, too, to "Cambuskenneth's fane," and the field of Bannockburn, where the "bore stone" may still be seen.
Memorials of the Martyrs.
But the place that interested us most at Stirling was the Old Greyfriars Churchyard, adjoining the Castle, with its monuments of John Knox, Alexander Henderson, Andrew Melville, and especially James Renwick and Margaret Wilson. During our stay in Edinburgh we had read and talked much of the martyrs of Scotland, those glorious men and women who had died for Christ's crown and covenant in "the killing time,"—those heroic ministers, nobles, and peasants, male and female, who to the number of eighteen thousand had laid down their lives rather than submit to the tyranny and popery of the Stuarts. We had visited repeatedly Greyfriars Churchyard at Edinburgh, where the Covenant was signed, and where many of the martyrs who were beheaded in the adjoining Grassmarket are buried. The last of those who "kissed the Red Maiden" here was the youthful and gifted James Renwick. His statue at Stirling represents a mere stripling indeed. Not far from Renwick's statue stands the most beautiful of all the monuments of the Covenanters, the snow white group of Margaret and Agnes Wilson, and the figure of an angel standing by them. The inscription is as follows:
MARGARET,
Virgin Martyr of the ocean wave, with her
likeminded sister,
AGNES.
Love many waters cannot quench.
God saves His chaste impearled one in Covenant true.
O Scotia's daughters! earnest scan the page,
And prize this flower of grace—blood-bought for you.