THE TABLE-TALK OF SHIRLEY. A I. MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. GOOD many of our friends, English as well as Scotch, know the Castle Hill. It is part and parcel of the famous ridge on which Edinburgh Castle stands. The castle from a military point of view has ceased to be of service; I suppose modern weapons of precision could pound it into a jelly in the course of a forenoon; though as an impregnable keep it played no mean part in our national history. From the artist's point of view, however, it is still intact, or nearly so. Rude hands have been laid upon it, no doubt; it is no longer reflected in the Nor' Loch, and huge barns have been built for barracks; but, somehow, it won't spoil. Even the barns, looming dimly through the smoke Α cloud which still hangs over "Auld Reekie," become, if not too closely watched, august and venerable. The site impresses its own distinction upon them. But the outlook from the Castle Rock is quite as striking as the rock itself; and it is possibly for this that I mainly value it. The amateur architects of the War Office may build unsightly barracks, but they cannot vulgarise that spacious amphitheatre. The Lothian plain, and the Pentlands, and the blue Firth from Inchkeith to the Isle of May, and Arthur's Seat, and the Lomonds, and the Ochils, and far-off Ben Ledi, are to mortal weapon absolutely invulnerable. And then the busy city at our feet, and the murmur of its multitudinous life! There is no such coign of vantage elsewhere; no eminence where the past and present are so closely mated; or whence a wider bird's-eye view can be had. "He lives very high up in Gordon's Court," Sydney Smith said of the grave Francis Horner, "and thinks a good deal about mankind." But the Castle Hill is quite as commanding as Gordon's Court, and even better suited for the contemplation of mankind. Here, then, let us rest a bit-the modest tea-kettle meantime singing sedately on its hob-for such brief and occasional discourse as befits a rambler,-here, in the upper story of this old grey house, which has seen much famous company in its time, and round which the December twilight is closing in, as ages ago it closed in round Mary Stuart during that bitter and fateful December of 1566. "Ages ago;" but the primitive passions do not grow out of date; and indeed to those who have counted their sixty winters, and seen them fall away as softly and silently as the snow-flakes fall, five times sixty is but the other day. "Thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us." But to-day they must not mock. For to-day the marriage bells are clashing merrily, and the fair young bride goes forth on the well-trodden road with hope in her heart and a new light in her eyes. There are flowers, and wedding favours, and troops of friends, and the winter sun shines kindly on old and young who have been bidden. to the feast. "Nor count me all to blame if I Conjecture of a stiller guest, Perchance, perchance, among the rest, I wonder sometimes if Mary Stuart, when within the Castle walls, cared much, or at all, for the fair landscape which was spread out before her, as on a map. The taste for the picturesque, we are now told, is distinctively modern. Some highly artistic people indeed appear to hold that it is not older than Mr. Ruskin, just as some political people appear to hold that English history is not older than the Reform Bill. It was the "Oxford Graduate," they tell us in effect, who first opened our eyes to the fact that mountains, and valleys, and waterfalls, and Swiss chalets, produce |