Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/412

394 prodigious pile, though, by the specimen of what is erected, it could never have been otherwise than heavy, inconvenient, dark, and gloomy. We went up to the top of the castle first; and I never ascended, at once, so many stairs in my life; at least a hundred and fifty. At such a height, there is from the leads rather an extensive view to the west, over the town of Douglas. The round towers at the corners of the building, carried from the bottom to the top, are the pleasantest rooms by far in the castle. There are few spacious apartments, and those gloomy; the passages, and anti-room to them, from the staircase, are totally dark. There is no furniture in the castle, except two beds, and a few pictures, &c. The exhibiter diverted me by her imperfect lesson of the subjects of the pictures. A large modern piece caught our eyes; and we asked, without examining, "What is this?"—"Lord Douglas's picture, with his nurse!" What should this prove, but an emblem of his Lordship's great cause; his head, and Justice at full length trampling upon Discord, &c.—The figure of Justice, the good woman had transformed into that of his Lordship's nurse.

I left Carstairs House on the 10th of October,