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miles to the south of Edinburgh, which formerly was the residence of the Preston family, and afforded shelter on various occasions to Queen Mary. Borthwick Castle, also a temporary residence of the unfortunate queen, is a double tower on Middleton Burn, still bearing the marks of Cromwell's cannon balls. Crichton Castle, a mile and a quarter to the east, was the residence of the well-known family which produced the celebrated Sir William Crichton, and its ruins show " the builders various hand." Dalmahoy Castle, near llatho, is the seat of the earl of Morton, and preserves, besides other valuable antiquities, the only extant copy of the Bible of the Scottish Parlia ment, and the original warrant for committing Queen. Mary to Lochleven. Melville Castle, near Lasswade, the seat of the earl of Melville ; Colinton Hous^, the seat of Lord Dunfermline ; Calder House, the seat of Lord Torphichen ; Riccarton, belonging to Sir William Gibson Craig, Bart. ; and Lauriston Castle, once occupied by John Law of Mississippi notoriety, may also be mentioned. Temple, on the South Esk, was at one time the chief seat of the Knights

Templars in Scotland.

The history of the county is of little importance apart from that of the city of Edinburgh. Traces of early Celtic occupation still remain in such names as In- veresk, Almond, Leith, Dairy, Dalmahoy, Dalkeith, &c.; though by far the greater proportion of the villages, hamlets, and castles have received their present designation from Saxon possessors. The termination ton is very frequent. Within the county lie the battlefields of Borough-tnuir, where the English were defeated by the earl of Murray in 1334; Pinkie, near Inveresk, where the duke of Somerset inflicted tremendous loss on the Scotch; and Rullion Green, on the eastern slopes of the Pentlands, where the Covenanters were routed by the royal troops under General Dalziel.

EDINBURGH, the ancient capital of Scotland, is situated in the county of Mid-Lothian or Edinburgh, to the south of the Firth of Forth. The Royal Observatory, which is built on the summit of the Calton Hill, in the north-eastern quarter of the city, is in 55 57 23" of N. lat., and 12 m 43 s 05 X of time W. long, of the meridian of Greenwich.

Environs of Edinburgh.

The site of Edinburgh is altogether remarkable as that of a large city, and is the chief source of its peculiar characteristics. It occupies a group of hills separated by deep ravines, and is the central feature of a landscape of rare beauty. The county of Mid-Lothian forms towards the south-east a wild hilly district, diversified with fertile cultivated tracts, . but, over an extensive area, broken in to a rough pastoral country, rising at various points to upwards of 2000 feet above the level of the sea. On the north it is bounded by the Firth of Forth, from the shores of which the ground slopes gradually towards the south till it merges in the range of the Pentland Hills, with its contour diversified by various undulations and abrupt heights. On this irregular ground, amid the outlying spurs of the Pentlands, a bold cliff of trap-rock, which rises through the sandstone strata of the district, appears to have early attracted attention from its capacity for defence. Maitland, the earliest historian of the city, says, " The situation of Edinburgh plainly shows that its origin is owing to the castle; " and from its standing in St Cuthbert's parish, which surrounds the castle rock, he assumes that the first settlement was in the low ground to the north-west. From this a road anciently led up past the Well-House Tower, along the northern slope of the Castle Hill. By this access Queen Mary and other royal visitants rode up to the castle on various public entries, and then returned through the town, by way of the High Street and Canongate, to Holyrood. Symeon of Durham, under the date 854 A.D., includes Edinburgh among the churches and towns of Northumbria within the bishopric of Lindisfarne, and this is supposed to refer to the church of St Cuthbert. But the first erection of the Magli dun fortress, or " Maiden Castle," on the summit of the rock, must have tempted the natives of the district to seek the protection of its defences. Hence at an early period a hamlet grew up along the ridge which slopes from the castle rock towards the valley at the base of Salisbury Crags, distinct from the Kirk-town of St Cuthbert.

In the reign of Malcolm Canmore the Castle of Edinburgh included a royal palace. There his pious queen, Margaret, the grand-niece of Edward the Confessor, died in 1093. It continued to be a royal residence during the reigns of her three sons, and hence the first rapid growth of the upper town may be referred to the 12th century. The parish church of St Giles is believed to have been erected on its present site in the reign of Alexander I., about 1110, and the huge Norman keep of the castle, built by his younger brother, David I., continued to be known as David's Tower till its destruction in the siege of 1572. Before his accession to the Scottish throne, David I. had been earl of Huntingdon, having acquired that manor and earldom in England by his marriage with Matilda the heiress of Waltheof, earl of Northumberland. He consequently frequented the English court, and became familiar with the military and ecclesiastical architecture introduced by the Anglo-Norman kings; and soon after his accession to the Scottish throne he founded the Abbey of Holyrood, which from an early date received the Scottish court as its guests. But notwithstanding the attractions of the abbey and the neighbouring chase, the royal palace continued for centuries to be within the fortress, and there both the Celtic and Stuart kings frequently resided. Edinburgh was long an exposed frontier town within a territory only ceded to Malcolm II. about 1020; and even under the earlier Stuart kings it was still regarded as a border stronghold. Hence, though the village of Canongate grew up beside the abbey of David I., and Edinburgh was a place of sufficient importance to be reckoned one of the four principal burghs as a judicatory for all commercial matters, nevertheless, even so late as 1450, when it became for the first time a walled town, it did not extend beyond the upper part of the ridge which slopes eastward from the castle rock. But the mural defences of the town were an evidence of wealth and growing prosperity ; and no sooner was it surrounded with protecting walls than its rapid increase led to the growth of an extensive suburb beyond their limits.

The other three royal burghs associated with Edinburgh

were Stirling, Roxburgh, and Berwick ; and their enactments form the earliest existing collected body of the laws of Scotland. But the determination of Edinburgh as the national capital, and as the most frequent scene of parliamentary assemblies, dates from the assassination of James I. in 1436. Of the thirteen Parliaments summoned by

that sovereign, only one, the last of them, was held at Edinburgh, But his assassination that same year, in the Blackfriars monastery at Perth, led to the abrupt transfer of the