which are handsome. There is a beautiful portrait of the Duchess, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. A more frank and lovely face I never beheld. The beautiful conceits of Cowley were present to my mind as I gazed upon it :-- "Love in her sunny eyes does basking play, Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair; And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there.” There is another portrait of the Duke, by Raeburn, as I was informed. This part of Scotland is eminently indebted to his Grace for the just and spirited attention which he has paid to planting. The view from the leads of the castle is very extensive and beautiful, and the eye is refreshed and gladdened by the appearance of a great park and an interminable forest, in which I was told there were vast numbers of mountain deer, though I saw none. The road to Elgin, distant about ten miles, is bad and sandy. The soil of Morayshire is for the most part a sandy loam, in some places sandy gravel, and considerable tracts of fertile clay. This town is the capital of Morayshire, and is situated in a plain, on the banks of the small river Lossie; it is very ancient, and is said to derive its name from a Norwegian Earl of Orkney, who conquered this and some of the adjoining country in 927, and whose name was Helgy. The church and the gaol are old and ugly buildings, and both encumber and disfigure the principal street, in the middle of which they stand. There are scarcely any manufactures, and very little trade, in the town, which in consequence displays the appearance both of poverty and idleness. The celebrated ruins of its cathedral, to which I hastened as soon as I had finished a rather late dinner at a dirty inn, are the only attractions to a stranger. In my way to the spot a Ciceroni followed me with great assiduity, and at last begged to shew me the cathedral, the history of which, he observed, he knew better than any one in Elgin: I accordingly asked him when it was erected? Answer--" I cannot exactly say, but it was a long time since."--"To what religious order did it belong?"---I never heard of any." When did it fall into decline?"--" That I do not ken." After such specimens of his knowledge I dismissed the poor creature with a douceur, who seemed to be more prompted by the penury that reigned around, than by any passion for antiquity, in thus offering me his services. I should be doing great injustice to the people of this part of Scotland if I were to represent this vagabond as a specimen of the rest of the lower orders. In a field near the town I heard two men, very meanly clad, one of whom held a book in his hand, disputing upon the construction of a passage in Macbeth. Here it is with pleasure I mention the two following anecdotes, to show how generally intellectual the peasantry of Scotland are. A lady of rank said, that, seeing a shepherd of her father's lying upon the side of a hill reading, curiosity led her to ask him what he was reading, when she found it was a volume of the Spectator. At another time, being desirous to witness the piety of the Scottish peasantry, she went into a peasant's cottage on a Sunday evening, and requested to be permitted to attend their family devotion, upon which the peasant placed a bit of carpet before her to kneel upon; and, when all the family were knelt, he commenced an extemporaneous prayer, full of sound sense and fervid devotion. I proceeded to the ruins of the cathedral alone, which are very fine, and highly interesting. The commencement of its fall arose from an order of the Privy Council of Scotland in 1568 for stripping off its lead, an act in which the cathedral I described at Aberdeen was also a participator, for the purpose of being sold in Holland, to raise money for paying the troops. The ship which contained the sacrilegious spoil sunk soon after it had left the port of Aberdeen, not without many a shrewd comment from the superstitious, who distinctly beheld the avenging retribution of Heaven in the event. The architect and the 2 т 322 entrance. ELGIN CATHEDRAL. antiquary may perhaps be gratified by the following description of this beautiful and venerable pile, in its perfect form, by Shaw:-" This church, when entire, was a building of Gothic architecture inferior to few in Europe; it stood due east and west, in the form of a Jerusalem cross, ornamented with five towers, whereof two parallel stood on the west side, one in the middle, and two on the east end. Betwixt the two towers at the west end was the great porch, or This gate is a concave arch, twenty-four feet. broad in base, and twenty-four in height, terminating in a sharp angle. On each side of the doors, in the sweep of the arch, are eight fluted pilasters, six feet and a half high, adorned with a chapiter, from which arose sixteen pilasters, which meet in the key of the arch. There were porticoes on each side of the church eastward, for the traverse, or cross, which were eighteen feet broad without the walls. To yield sufficient light to a building so large, besides the great windows in the porticoes, and a row of attic windows in the walls, each six feet high above the porticoes, there was in the west gable, above the gate, a window, in form of an acute-angled arch, nineteen feet broad in the base, and twenty-seven in height; and in the east gable, between the turrets, a row of fine parallel windows, each two feet broad and ten high. Above these are five more, each seven feet; and over all a circular window, near ten feet in diameter. ELGIN CATHEDRAL. 323 In the heart of the wall of the church, and leading to all the upper windows, there is a channel or walk round the whole building. "The grand gate, the windows, the pillars, the projecting table, the pedestals, cordons, &c. are adorned with foliage, grapes, and other carvings. Let us, after describing the body of the church, take a view of the chapter-house, commonly called "the Apprentices' Aisle," a curious piece of architecture, standing on the north side of the church, and communicating with the choir by the vaulted vestry. The house is an exact octagon, thirty-four feet high, and the diagonal breadth within the walls thirty-seven feet. It is arched and vaulted at the top, and the whole arched roof supported by one pillar in the centre of the house. Arched pillars from every angle terminate in the grand pillar. This pillar, nine feet in circumference, is crusted over with sixteen pilasters, or small pillars, alternately round and fluted, and twenty-four feet high, adorned with a chapiter, from which arise sixteen round pillars, that spread along the roof, and join at the top with the pillars (five in number) rising from every side of the octolateral figure. There is a large window on every side of seven, and the eighth side communicates with the choir. In the north wall of this chapter-house there are five stalls cut, by way of niches, for the bishop (or the dean, in the bishop's absence) and the dignified |