assured that these were Lennox, Mar, and his other friends, ordered them to be admitted. Rushing forward, and finding the king, unexpectedly, safe, nothing could exceed the warmth of their congratulations; while James, falling on his knees with all his attendants around him, offered up fervent thanks to God for so miraculous a deliverance. But the danger was not yet over; the inhabitants of Perth, of which Gowrie was provost-and in that office highly popular,* on hearing the fate of the two brothers, flew to arms, beset the house, and threatening revenge, applied the most opprobrious epithets to the king. James endeavoured to pacify the exasperated multitude by speaking to them from the window; he admitted their magistrates to his presence, related the whole circumstances as they had occurred, and these being repeated to the people, their fury subsided, and they dispersed.

The man in armour, who was afterwards discovered, on a promise of pardon, and proved to be Gowrie's steward, declared that he was totally ignorant of his master's design. After many trials, and several executions, nothing was ever elicited that could throw any light upon this mysterious plot. The clergy, however, boldly maintained that the "court account" was a mere fabrication, formed and executed by the king himself, for destroying two popular characters, who were known to favour the Presbyterian interest, and whose family had long been privately obnoxious to James. Rendered stubborn by this conviction, they refused to return public thanks for the king's escape, and several were banished in consequence.†

Having mentioned Ruthven, now Huntingtower Castle, as that in which the Scottish sovereign was unlawfully detained, we may add the following anecdote by way of contrast. A daughter of the first Earl Gowrie, being addressed by a young gentleman, much her inferior in rank and fortune, (disadvantages which were entirely overlooked by the lady,) her family, although they discouraged the match, permitted his visits at the castle. On one of these

Alexander Ruthven was a young man of great hopes, learned, handsome, young, and active; his brother and he belonged to the class of men which most readily attracted the king's notice; and generous, brave, and religious to a degree, not common with men so young, they were the darlings of the people.Sir Walter Scott.

+ Even on the continent, says Osborn, not a Scotchman could be found who did not laugh at it, and agree that the relation murdered all possibility of credit. The whole, indeed, is a story which might almost stagger a believer in miracles, and, for its proof, demands an evidence which neither the history of the times, nor the most intimate knowledge of human nature, can produce. We can only say with Bruce, one of the clergymen who demurred at thanking the Almighty for the discomfiture of this pretended conspiracy, that, "if we must, on pain of death, reverence his Majesty's report of the transaction, we will reverence it, but we will not say that we are convinced of the truth of it."- See also Lives of Scottish Poets, art. James VI.

THE MAIDEN S-LEAP.-THE ROYAL WELCOME.

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occasions, he was lodged in a tower, nearly opposite to that of his mistress, but communicating with a different staircase, and divided at top by a wide interval of nine feet between the walls, which were sixty feet in height. In the evening the young lady was accidentally missed from her chamber, at the accustomed hour; and some suspicion having arisen that she had mistaken the staircase, and was secreted in the turret of her lover, her mother hastened thither in search of the fair truant. The latter, however, rightly guessing what must ensue were she discovered in the prohibited "bower," and hearing the maternal footsteps approaching, formed the desperate resolution to elude detection under such delicate circumstances, or perish in the effort. Thus nerved for the attempt, and with the agility of a chamois on its native precipices, she cleared the frightful chasm at a bound, lighted on her own battlements without injury, and retired to bed, where the wary countess, defeated in her previous search, found her shortly afterwards apparently asleep, and could hardly forgive herself for her unjust suspicions of so dutiful a daughter. Next night, however, the young lady, taking a still more desperate step, eloped from the paternal castle, and was married to her lover. The battlements where this daring experiment was tried are still shown as the "maiden's leap."

One of the proudest days in the annals of Perth seems to have been that on which King David Bruce, or David II., was conducted thither on his return from France, and where he assembled the vast army with which he afterwards invaded England. The account given by Froissard, who was then in Scotland, furnishes a vivid picture of the scene. As soon as the young king landed at Inverbervie, in the Mearns, his subjects flocked to him in multitudes, and thence, with great joy and solemnity, conducted him to Perth. His arrival there was the signal of national festivity, and all classes hastened to bid him a loyal welcome. The smile of the sovereign was like a sudden light in a dark place; and for some time, every day was a renewal of the festival. When the first outpourings of the national spirit had in some measure subsided, it was represented to the king what waste and woe had been brought upon the country by his great enemy, Edward, the English king. David expressed his deep sense of the sufferings of which so many of his loyal subjects had been the innocent victims, but consoled them with the prospect of speedy retaliation, and pledged his royal word to see their wrongs redressed, or to perish in the attempt. Full of this lofty resolve, and with the advice of his council, he sent messages to all his friends and vassals, to entreat that they would unite their strength to his, and thereby insure a triumph to his patriotic enterprise. The

first who responded to the royal summons was the earl of Orkney, who had married the king's sister, and now arrived with a powerful subsidy of hardy mountaineers. Numerous barons and knights, also, from Sweden, Denmark, and other parts beyond sea-some for affection to the king and his cause, some for pay-swelled the amount of the Scottish host. So great were the numbers that arrived from all parts, that, on the day of rendezvous appointed by the king, sixty thousand warriors on foot, and three thousand horse, with a long roll of knights and squires, made their entrance into Perth. Ronald, Lord of the Isles, who governed the "wild Scots," as Froissard terms them, and whom only they would obey, was especially invited to attend the king in Parliament, and brought with him three thousand of the "wildest of his countrymen." Unhappily for the latter chief and his sovereign's cause, there was a deadly feud between him and the powerful earl of Ross, by whose machinations Ronald was murdered by a faithless harper, while lodged in the monastery of Elcho, near Perth. Ross, justly dreading the king's resentment, immediately retired with his followers; while the men of the Isles, disgusted by the base assassination of their chief, and viewing the disaster as a bad omen for the cause, broke up, and deserting the royal standard, retired in disorder to their native mountains. The king, though disconcerted, and greatly weakened by this desertion, which lost him the service of two of the most effective chiefs and their clans, resolved to proceed; and on the disastrous field, near Durham, that closed the expedition, left the best part of that noble army which marched under the royal standard from Perth.

The Carse of Gowrie, in fertility of soil and beauty of scenery, may be nct inaptly designated the Val d'Arno of Scotland. The interval between Perth and Dundee, a space of twenty-two miles, is filled up with a continued series of highly cultivated and productive farms, noblemen's seats, populous villages, and garden and orchard grounds. On the left, on leaving Perth, is the romantic Craig of Kinnoul, with Kinfauns Castle beneath, sheltered in luxuriant woods, and overlooking the Tay. Among the antiquities preserved in this castle, is Charteris's sword, five feet nine inches long. This formidable weapon is said to have belonged to Sir Thomas Charteris, or Thomas de Longueville, the ancient proprietor of Kinfauns. He was a native of France, and representative of a family well known in that country; but at the close of the thirteenth century, when at the court of Philip the Fair, having a dispute with one of the noblemen, he slew him in the king's presence. Being refused pardon for the rash and bloody act, he betook himself to the high seas, and under the name of the Red Reaver,

• Froissard's Chron. c. cxxxv.