The small garden and
the statues are gone, the garden whence Roland Graeme led Mary to the
boat and to brief liberty and hope unfulfilled. Only a kind of ground-
plan remains of the halls where Lindesay and Ruthven browbeat her forlorn
Majesty. But you may climb the staircase where Roland Graeme stood
sentinel, and feel a touch, of what Pepys felt when he kissed a dead
Queen--Katherine of Valois. Like Roland Graeme, the Queen may have been
"wearied to death of this Castle of Loch Leven," where, in spring, all
seems so beautiful, the trees budding freshly above the yellow celandine
and among the grey prison walls. It was a kindlier prison house than
Fotheringay, and minds peaceful and contented would gladly have taken
"this for a hermitage."
The Roman Emperors used to banish too powerful subjects to the lovely
isles that lie like lilies on the AEgean. Plutarch tried to console
these exiles, by showing them how fortunate they were, far from the
bustle of the Forum, the vices, the tortures, the noise and smoke of
Rome, happy, if they chose, in their gardens, with the blue waters
breaking on the rocks, and, as he is careful to add, _with plenty of
fishing_. Mr. Mahaffy calls this "rhetorical consolation," and the
exiles may have been of his mind. But the exiles would have been wise to
listen to Plutarch, and, had I enjoyed the luck of Mary Stuart, when Loch
Leven was not overfished, when the trout were uneducated, never would I
have plunged into politics again.
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