instrument, we are informed by the poet Waller, she had attained great excellence.
We found ourselves attracted to make repeated visits to Holyrood, and never on those occasions omitted its roofless chapel, so rich in recollections. It required, however, a strong effort of imagination to array it in the royal splendor, with which the nuptials of Queen Mary were there solemnized; and seventy years afterwards the coronation of her grandson, Charles the First. The processions, the ringing of bells, the gay tapestry streaming from the windows of the city, the rich costumes of the barons, bishops, and other nobility, the king, in his robes of crimson velvet, attending devoutly to the sacred services of the day, receiving the oaths of allegiance, or scattering through his almoner broad gold pieces among the people, are detailed with minuteness and delight by the Scottish chronicles of that period. "Because this was the most glorious and magnifique coronatione that ever was seine in this kingdom," says Sir James Balfour," and the first king of Greate Britain that ever was crowned in Scotland, to behold these triumphs and ceremonies, many strangers of grate quality resorted hither from divers countries."
Who can muse at Holyrood without retracing the disastrous fortunes of the house of Stuart, whose images seem to glide from among the ruined arches, where they once held dominion. James the First was a prisoner through the whole of his early life, and
