Page:Audubon and His Journals.djvu/196

 Holyrood Palace. What a variety of causes has brought king after king to that spot; what horrors have been committed there! The general structure is not of a defensive nature; it lies in a valley, and has simply its walls to guard it. I was surprised that the narrow stairs which led to the small chamber where the murder was committed, communicated at once with the open country, and I was also astonished to see that the mirrors were positively much superior to those of the present day in point of intrinsic purity of reflection; the plates cannot be less than three-fourths of an inch in thickness. The furniture is all decaying fast, as well as the paintings which are set into the walls. The great room for the King's audience contains a throne by no means corresponding with the ideas de luxe that I had formed. The room, however, being hung in scarlet cloth, had a very warm effect, and I remember it with pleasure. I also recall the view I then had from a high hill, of the whole city of Edinburgh and the country around the sea; the more I look on Edinburgh the better I like it. To-day, as I have said, I have been in my rooms constantly, and after much writing received Dr. Knox and a friend of his. The former pronounced my drawings the finest of their kind in the world. No light praise this. They promised to see that I was presented to the Wernerian Society, and talked very scientifically, indeed quite too much so for the poor man of the woods. They assured me the ornithological work now about being published by Messrs. "Selby, Jameson, and Sir Somebody and Co.," was a "job book." It is both amusing and distressing to see how inimical to each other men of science are; and why are they so?

October 30. Mr. Neill took me to a Mr. Lizars, in St. James Square, the engraver for Mr. Selby, who came