Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/440

 FOURTH PERIOD 424 ARGYLL S LODGING south end (Fig. 862). Above the dining-room is a grand gallery or drawing-room, 46 feet 6 inches long by 19 feet 8 inches wide. On both floors the various rooms open into each other., and communicate with the different staircases. Several are provided with garde-robes and large closets, in the thickness of the walls. Without including these, the two upper floors contain twenty-two rooms, and there are eleven apartments (including offices) on the ground floor. With the attic rooms for servants, there are altogether about forty apartments in the building. FIG. 864. Argyll's Lodging. View from the South-East, This house was begun by Sir William Alexander of Menstrie, after- wards created Earl of Stirling, who occupies a conspicuous place in the poetical literature of Scotland during the seventeenth century, and is still better known in connection with the gigantic scheme for colonising Nova Scotia in 1621. He received from King James a charter in con- nection with this scheme, afterwards so much increased that Sir William was virtually lord of what are now the Northern States and Canada ; and probably this house was built with money realised by the Earl out of the success which at first attended his scheme. It is dated in several places 1632. The portion built by him seems to have been the whole of the eastern or central block, and the return on the north, as far as the high gable seen in Fig. 86 1, which is the thick cross wall seen on the