to-Irish
kings,--in imitation of the numerous similar structures belonging to
their original mother-church in Ireland. We may feel very certain, also,
that they were not erected later than the commencement of the twelfth
century, for by that date the Norman or Romanesque style,--which
presents no such structures as the Irish Round Towers, was apparently in
general use in ecclesiastic architecture in Scotland, under the pious
patronage of Queen Margaret Atheling and her three crowned sons.
Abernethy--now a small village--was for centuries a royal and pontifical
city, and the capital of a kingdom, "fuit locus ille sedes principalis,
regalis, et pontificalis, totius regni Pictorum" (Goodall's
_Scotichronicon_, vol. i. p. 189); but all its old regal and
ecclesiastical buildings have utterly vanished, with the exception only
of its solitary and venerable Round Tower. And perhaps the preservation
of the Round Tower in this, and in numerous instances in Ireland, amidst
the general ruin and devastation which usually surround them, is owing
to the simple circumstance that these Towers--whatever were their uses
and objects--were structures which, in consequence of their remarkable
combination of extreme tallness and slenderness, required to be
constructed from the first of the very best and strongest, and
consequently of the most durable building materials which could be
procured; while the one-storeyed or two-storeyed wood-roofed churches,
and other low and lighter ecclesiastical edifices with which they were
associated, demanded far less strength in the original construction of
their walls, and consequently have, under the dilapidating effects of
centuries, much more speedily crumbled down and perished.]

[Footnote 124: The recollection of the error which I made by a
carelessness not in such matters usual with me, in assigning this date
1020 instead of between the years 971 and 994, as I ought to have done,
has long given me annoyance, and a lesson never to trust to memory in
dates; for it was thus I fell into the mistake. I had the year 1020 on
my mind, which is the year assigned by Pinkerton for the writing of the
_Chron. Pictorum_, and, without stopping to remember or to refer, I took
it for granted that it was the year of Kenneth's death, or rather his
gift.--P.]

[Footnote 125: I congratulate you warmly on the discovery of this
interesting and most valuable notice. Surely Boece could have had no
object to serve by forgin