at and narrow that at high tides
the waters of the Forth meet over it. Inchcolm lies nearly six miles
north-west from the harbour of Granton, or is about eight or nine miles
distant from Edinburgh; and of the many beautiful spots in the vicinity
of the Scottish metropolis, there is perhaps none which surpasses this
little island in the charming and picturesque character of the views
that are obtained in various directions from it.

Though small in its geographical dimensions, Inchcolm is rich in
historical and archaeological associations. In proof of this remark, I
might adduce various facts to show that it has been at one time a
favoured seat of learning, as when, upwards of four hundred years ago,
the Scottish historian, Walter Bower, the Abbot of its Monastery, wrote
there his contributions to the ancient history of Scotland;[17] and at
other times the seat of war, as when it was pillaged at different
periods by the English, during the course of the fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth centuries.[18] For ages it was the site of a monastic
institution and the habitation of numerous monks;[19] and at the
beginning of the present century it was temporarily degraded to the site
of a military fort, and the habitation of a corps of artillery.[20]
During the plagues and epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, it formed sometimes a lazaretto for the suspected and
diseased;[21] and during the reign of James I. it was used as a
state-prison for the daughter of the Earl of Ross and the mother of the
Lord of the Isles[22]--"a mannish, implacable woman," as Drummond of
Hawthornden ungallantly terms her;[23] while fifty years later, when
Patrick Graham, Archbishop of St. Andrews, was "decernit ane heretique,
scismatike, symoniak, and declarit cursit, and condamnit to perpetuall
presoun," he was, for this last purpose, "first transportit to St.
Colmes Insche."[24] Punishments more dark and dire than mere
transportation to, and imprisonment upon Inchcolm, have perhaps taken
place within the bounds of the island, if we do not altogether
misinterpret the history of "a human skeleton standing upright," found
several years ago immured and built up within the old ecclesiastic
walls.[25] Nor is this eastern Iona, as patronised and protected by St.
Columba,--and, at one period of his mission to the Picts and Scots, his
own alleged dwelling-place,[26]--devoid in its history of the usual
amount of old monkish miracles and legen