Page:Pleasant Memories.pdf/85

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72
HOLYROOD.

the High School, you look down at the extremity of the Canongate upon the old palace, that, seated at the feet of Salisbury Crag, nurses in comparative desolation the memories of the past. Its chapel, floored with tomb-stones and open to the winds of heaven, admonishes human power and pride of their alliance with vanity.

Through an iron grate we saw in a damp, miserable vault the bones of some of the kings of Scotland; among them those of Henry Darnley, without even the covering of that "little charity of earth," which the homeless beggar finds. In another part of the royal chapel, unmarked by any inscription, are the remains of the lovely young Queen Magdalen, daughter of Francis the First of France, who survived but a short time her marriage with James the Fifth. In the same vicinity sleep two infant princes, by the name of Arthur; one the son of him who fell at Flodden-field, the other a brother of Mary of Scotland. Scarcely a single monument, deserving of notice as a work of art, is to be found at Holyrood, except that of Viscount Bellhaven, a privy-counsellor of Charles the First, who died in 1639. He is commemorated by a statue of Parian marble, which is in singular contrast with the rough, black walls of the ruinous tower, where it is placed. It has a diffuse and elaborate inscription, setting forth that "Nature supplied his mind by wisdom, for what was wanting in his education; that he would easily get angry, and