CAWDOR CASTLE.

Ir is a matter curious, and not in itself unpleasing, that the principal places noted in the great tragedy of Macbeth should still present two remarkable baronial edifices-the huge tall isolated pile of Glammis, and the grim keep of Cawdor, surrounded by its rambling, irregular, half-fortified outworks. Their true association, however, is more with the days of Shakspeare than those of Macbeth. Perhaps some part of the great tower of Glammis may be as old as the thirteenth century, but no portion of Cawdor is older than the fifteenth; and though its threatening drawbridge, its vaults, and its dark corridors, may aptly associate themselves with the "I have done the deed;-didst thou not hear a noise?" yet the time when they were built was more distant from the days of Macbeth on one side, than from those of Queen Victoria on the other. Indeed, had we an actual building of Macbeth's day in Scotland, it would not be invested with so much tragic gloom, nor could it so appropriately associate itself with deeds of horror; for it would probably be made of wicker ware or slight timber, and be in all respects unfit to represent the proper stage properties of a tyrant's stronghold, and the scene of a royal murder. Yet not many years ago scepticism was put to utter shame at Cawdor, by being shown the identical four-posted bed in which the murder was committed, of a fashion so old that no respectable upholsterer of the nineteenth century, even in Inverness or Forres, would have tamely submitted to the scandal of having constructed it. The room, and the bed within it, were both burned by an accidental fire in the year 1815; but it is somewhat contrary to the usual course of such traditional identifications, that a mere accident should deprive the visitor, especially the native of London, of so very interesting an exhibition; and it may be hoped that the noble owner of the castle may yet restore the room where Duncan was murdered, and fit it up appropriately with a few tattered tartans, and a broadsword or two, from the decayed accoutrements of a Highland regiment.

Cawdor has, however, apart from its purely nominal association with Macbeth, some little mysteries of its own. In one of the dungeons stands a hawthorn tree, stretching from the floor to the roof,—an instance of the durability of that stubborn shrub, since the castle must have been built over it. So eccentric a circumstance of course elicited a tradition to account for it, which may be best described in the words of Mr Carruthers of Inverness:

"The Thane who founded the castle is said to have consulted a seer as to the site of his intended building. The wise man counselled him to load an ass with the iron chest full of the gold he had amassed to erect his castle with, and to build it wherever the ass should first halt. The ass stopped at the third hawthorn tree. The advice was followed; the castle was built round the tree, enclosing the precious stem; and here it still remains, many a generation having pledged to the toast of 'Freshness to the Hawthorn tree of Cawdor Castle.' The donjon is about ten feet in height, and the tree reaches to the top. There is no doubt that the walls must have been built around it. An old iron chest lies beside the tree, which is said to have borne the precious burden of gold. Two other ancient hawthorn trees grew within a few score yards, in a line with the castle-one in the garden, which fell about forty years since, and the other at the entrance to the castle, which was blown down after a gradual decay, in 1836. Some suckers are now springing from the venerable root, and are carefully enclosed by a wooden fence."

From the same picturesque pen, we quote the following description of part of the interior of the castle, supposed to have been built soon after the commencement of the sixteenth century, venturing on no antiquarian commentary of our own:

CAWDOR CASTLE, 1—2.