Nor is it only the magic of the sight that stirs strange pulses in the blood. Standing at night in the Roman Coliseum, it seems still possible to hear majestic echoes of an older world. But the Scotsman under the shadow of “high Dunedin” is moved, as nowhere else, by memories of old glory and old sorrow. Here to a Scottish heart the past comes back. Here sighed the fatal sweetness of Rizzio’s lute. Here rang the wild clan-music of Lochiel. Among these old walls, however, something more is to be remembered than the deeds of high fame. Ever and again, it is true, amid the gloom of half-forgotten centuries, there is caught the glitter of some historic pageant. Out of the silence about the Cathedral one seems to catch the chime of fuming censers and the roll of coronation litanies, with, perchance, the sonorous accents of a Gavin Douglas, poet-bishop of Dunkeld; and one thrills again to hear the boom of the Castle cannon as the Fourth James rides gallantly away to his death. But behind all this a more tender interest touches the heart. What of the real inner life of those centuries bygone--the loves and sorrows, burning once, and poignant as ours are to-day, which have passed out of sight among the years, and been forgotten? Of some of these, indeed, Sir Walter Scott has written the story on the dark curtain of the past with a pen of fire. But for countless others there is not even the poor consolation of a recorded name. Occasionally, however, amid the seething of history, or in some half-remembered old song, a reference occurs, and a glimpse all too brief is had into some tender and mournful story. And so one sees that, behind the glitter of a Stuart chivalry, of brave and splendid deeds before the world, sometimes there lay a shadow, the sigh of a breaking heart, the stain of unavailing tears.
Who knows the early history of that Lady of Loch Leven, mother of the Regent Murray? Grimly enough she is painted by Scott in her old age as the keeper of Queen Mary. Yet assuredly once she was lovely and young, and had strange beatings of heart as she listened to the whispers of her Royal lover, that all too gallant James V. What was their parting like, when the parting came? Was there the last touch of regretful hands, a remorseful caress from the royal lips, a passionate farewell? Or was there only the cruel news by alien mouths that her place was filled by another, that she had been forsaken? No one can tell us now.