“There,” said Mr. S., as we stood on the banks of the Clyde, now lying flushed and tranquil in the light of the setting sun, “over there is Ayrshire.”

“Ayrshire!” I said; “what, where Burns lived?”

“Yes, there is his cottage, far down to the south, and out of sight, of course; and there are the bonny banks of Ayr.”

It seemed as if the evening air brought a kind of sigh with it.  Poor Burns! how inseparably he has woven himself with the warp and woof of every Scottish association!

We saw a great many children of the poor out playing—­rosy, fine little urchins, worth, any one of them, a dozen bleached, hothouse flowers.  We stopped to hear them talk, and it was amusing to hear the Scotch of Walter Scott and Burns shouted out with such a right good will.  We were as much struck by it as an honest Yankee was in Paris by the proficiency of the children in speaking French.

The next day we bade farewell to Glasgow, overwhelmed with kindness to the last, and only oppressed by the thought, how little that was satisfactory we were able to give in return.

Again in the railroad car on our way to Edinburgh.  A pleasant two hours’ trip is this from Glasgow to Edinburgh.  When the cars stopped at Linlithgow station, the name started us as out of a dream.

There, sure enough, before our eyes, on a gentle eminence stood the mouldering ruins of which Scott has sung:—­

  “Of all the palaces so fair,
    Built for the royal dwelling,
  In Scotland, far beyond compare
    Linlithgow is excelling;
  And in its park in genial June,
  How sweet the merry linnet’s tune,
    How blithe the blackbird’s lay! 
  The wild buck’s bells from thorny brake. 
  The coot dives merry on the lake,—­
  The saddest heart might pleasure take,
    To see a scene so gay.”

Here was born that woman whose beauty and whose name are set in the strong, rough Scotch heart, as a diamond in granite.  Poor Mary!  When her father, who lay on his death bed at that time in Falkland, was told of her birth, he answered, “Is it so?  Then God’s will be done!  It [the kingdom] came with a lass, and it will go with a lass!” With these words he turned his face to the wall, and died of a broken heart.  Certainly, some people appear to be born under an evil destiny.

Here, too, in Linlithgow church, tradition says that James IV. was warned, by a strange apparition, against that expedition to England which cost him his life.  Scott has worked this incident up into a beautiful description, in the fourth canto of Marmion.

The castle has a very sad and romantic appearance, standing there all alone as it does, looking down into the quiet lake.  It is said that the internal architectural decorations are exceedingly rich and beautiful, and a resemblance has been traced between its style of ornament and that of Heidelberg Castle, which has been accounted for by the fact that the Princess Elizabeth, who was the sovereign lady of Heidelberg, spent many of the earlier years of her life in this place.