Balfours, a great family in Fife, situated in the midst of a morass; and between both, in a dry, salubrious, and warm situation, in the plain, and near the Eden, the seat of the earl of Crawfurd: which has not been built above thirty years ago; the antient seat of Struther's, situated, according to the genius of the times, in a hilly district, and on a strong position on a deep glen or den, has been exchanged for this new residence, called, I think, Crawfurd Lodge. In Scots-Tarvet, or Tarbat Tower, and the castle of Fairney, the main object was protection: in Crawfurd Lodge, the object is convenience and comfort.

*

The first object that strikes a traveller on his arrival at Falkland, from the east, is the palace. This was originally the principal seat of the Macduffs, earls of Fife. On the attainder of the seventeenth earl of that antient and illustrious family, who have deserved so well of their country, it became, in 1424, forfeited to the crown. By James V. it was enlarged and improved. Several of the apartments are yet in a tolerable state of repair, and have been for many years past, I believe the greater part of the last, as well as what has run of the present century, the residence of the parish minister of Falkland: which saved the duke of Athol, and the other heritors, the expense of repairing the manse. Enough of it still remains to shew its former mag

* The present Earl, in an age of commerce and the arts, displays in his various improvements, on his extensive estates, the same ardent and persevering enterprize, that his ancestors did in arms. His wise and liberal economy is a blessing to his tenants; and his example a benefit to his country.

nificence and elegance, and the fine taste of the princely architect.

It is situated on plain ground, near the foot of the Eastern Lomond Hill. But on the north side, the land suddenly sinks-so that the palace, viewed from that quarter, seems to stand on a high shelf or terraceon the plain below were the stables and other offices, part of which are still standing, and the gardens, as at the beautiful place of Penycuik, about nine miles from Edinburgh, near the roots of the Pentland Hills. Beyond these gardens, a park, interspersed with large clumps and groves of fine oak trees; and beyond this, Falkland forest, extending over no inconsiderable portion of the How of Fife, and abounding with deer: where the kings of the House of Stewart, while they remained in Scotland, enjoyed their favourite diversion of hunting. Stumps of old oaks, of a large size, are here and there still to be seen, as well as vestiges of the dykes that inciosed the park. The park was ruined during the usurpation of Oliver Cromwell, by general Monk, who cut down the fine oaks, to build the fort at Perth, called now the Mount.

The palace was, or intended to be,* a spacious quadrangle the south side fronting the Lomond Hills; the west overlooking the town of Falkland; the east the southern skirts, and the hilly tract bounding on that side the How of Fife; and the north looking down on the offices and gardens below, and commanding a prospect of the whole

*I am uncertain whether the north side, or facade, was ever built. If not, it must have been intended.

plain, bounded by the gentle and green acclivities of the Aichil Hills. Being on the north side of the Forth, and thirteen miles from Edinburgh, where the parliament assembled, and the business of the state was transacted, it was a fit retreat for the princes, and might have been called the Windsor of Scotland: though in respect of position there be a greater resemblance between Windsor and Stirling.

The gateway, which fronts the south, is placed between two fine round towers, and on the right hand joins the chapel, roofed with wood, like those of Sweden and Norway, and handsomely gilt and painted, but now in a very ruinous condition. The inner fronts of the wings, or those next to the court, were adorned with statues, heads in basso relievo, and elegant columns, not reducible to any order, but of fine proportion, with capitals approaching to the Ionic scroll. Underneath some of these pillars is inscribed I. R. M. D. importing, Jacobus Rex, Maria De Guise. The east wing of the palace was accidentally burnt in the reign of Charles II. Falkland, which is still of considerable extent, was once a royal burgh: but it lost its privileges by declining to be at the expense of sending a deputy to the Scottish, parliament. Abernethey, Newburgh, Auchlerander, Dunblane, and other villages or towns, are now in a similar predicament.

It is unfortunate that luxury and debauchery should so uniformly keep pace with the progress of art and the refinement of manners! What would the manly and dignified, though severe and stern lords, that ruled Scotland in the times of the Congregation and the Covenant, have said, if they had

been told, that among the sons of their great grandchildren, there would be some who should convert their houses into bagnios? The passions, no doubt, surprize even the best men into folly and vice; but for a man of high birth and the best education, day after day, and year after year, not only to keep a haram of a dozen or twenty women in his house, but also to parcel them out among the acquaintance that come to visit him, and call this proper hospitality, is shameful in the extreme, and exceeds, even in this loose and dissolute age, the usual measure of profligacy. Such, however, it seems, is the conduct of a right honourable person in Fife, residing, to use the language of the newspapers, not an hundred miles from Falkland.

The Lomonds are a beautiful range of hills extending between Falkland and Lochlevin, a space of about five miles, verdant to the top, and yielding pasture to some herds of cattle and great flocks of sheep. At the eastern and the western extremity they rise into conical summits, that appear like two bastions flanking the curtain of a stupendous wall. The western summit is considerably higher than the eastern; yet the eastern, from its relative position, commands a more variegated prospect, which is compensated to the western summit by that beautiful expanse of water, Lochlevin, which lies immediately below. Though this isolated range of hills does not rise, where highest, more than two hundred feet above the level of the sea, they are so situated as to command, perhaps, the finest prospect in all Scotland; if the fineness of a prospect is not to be measured by mere extent, but by a combi

nation of extent and variety: a variety of objects not faintly and obscurely, but clearly and distinctly discerned. From the eastern peak you see St. Andrews Bay, the intervening part of Fife, and the coast of Angus; on the south and the west, the counties watered by the Forth, and through openings in the Aichil Hills on the north, long, and unbounded vistas of both the lowland and highland parts of Perthshire. They form a land mark at sea, and are seen by travellers in every direction.

But there is a hill not far from the Lomonds which, for the command of what is called a home prospect, is superior even to the Lomonds: this is Norman Law, one of the Aichil Hills, rising boldly to a great height from the Frith of Tay, about three miles east from Newburgh, and opening on the south into the valley that forms the parish of Dunbog. From this hill the whole extent of the Carse of Gowrie, from Perth to Inver Gowry, near Dundee, about twenty miles in length, and on an average three in breadth, is seen below as one luxuriant and well-cultivated garden, green at all seasons, except when it is decked in the livery of yellow autumn. It is bounded and sheltered on the northwest, north, and north-east, by a range of hills winding in a semicircular form from a spur of the Sidley Hills, in Angus, of which they may be considered as a continuation or part, though at no great elevation above the plain until they rise gradually into the hill or cliff of Kinnoull, in which they terminate. These winding acclivities are cultivated from their bottom to their top. The Frith of Tay, with its islands and salmon fisheries, add