Читать книгу Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Letters & Travel Sketches from Europe онлайн

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There, sure enough, before our eyes, on a gentle eminence stood the mouldering ruins of which Scott has sung:—

"Of all the palaces so fair,

Built for the royal dwelling,

In Scotland, far beyond compare

Linlithgow is excelling;

And in its park in genial June,

How sweet the merry linnet's tune,

How blithe the blackbird's lay!

The wild buck's bells from thorny brake.

The coot dives merry on the lake,—

The saddest heart might pleasure take,

To see a scene so gay."

Here was born that woman whose beauty and whose name are set in the strong, rough Scotch heart, as a diamond in granite. Poor Mary! When her father, who lay on his death bed at that time in Falkland, was told of her birth, he answered, "Is it so? Then God's will be done! It [the kingdom] came with a lass, and it will go with a lass!" With these words he turned his face to the wall, and died of a broken heart. Certainly, some people appear to be born under an evil destiny.

Here, too, in Linlithgow church, tradition says that James IV. was warned, by a strange apparition, against that expedition to England which cost him his life. Scott has worked this incident up into a beautiful description, in the fourth canto of Marmion.