tunate creature were chained in '{the good old may be imagined.
times " romancists write so glibly of. The origin
of all these vaults is lost in antiquity.
There prisoners have made many desperate, but
in the end always futile, attempts to escape-particularly
in 1761 and in 1811. On the former
occasion one was dashed to pieces ; on the latter,
a captain and forty-nine men got out of the fortress
in the night, by cutting a hole in the bottom of
the parapet, below the place commonly called the
Devil's Elbow, and letting themselves down by a
Tope, and more would have got out had not the
nearest sentinel fired his musket. One fell and
was killed zoo feet below. The rest were all
re-captured on the Glasgow Road.
In the Grand Parade an octagon tower of considerable
height gives access to the strongly vaulted
crown room, in whicb the Scottish regalia are
shown, and wherein they were so long hidden
from the nation, that they were generally believed
to have been secretly removed to England and
destroyed; and the mysterious room, which was
never opened, became a source of wonder to the
soldiers, and of superstition to many a Highland
sentinel when pacingon his lonely post at night.
On the 5th of November, 1794, in prosecuting
a search for some lost Parliamentary records,
the crown-room was opened by the Lieutenant-
Governor and other commissioners. It was dark,
being then w.indowless, and filled with foul air. In
the grated chimney lay the ashes of the last fire
and a cannon ball, which still lies where it had
fallen in some past siege ; the dust of eighty-seven
years lay on the paved floor, and the place looked
grim and desolate. Major Drummond repeatedly
shook the oak chest; it returned no sound, was
supposed to be empty, and stronger in the hearts
of the Scots waxed the belief that the Government,
" It was with feelings of no common anxiety that
the commissioners, having read their warrant, proceeded
to the crown-room, and, having found a11
there in the state in which it had been left in 1794,
commanded the king's smith, who was in attendance,
to force open the great chest, the keys of which had
been sought for in vain. The general impression
that the regalia had been secretly removed weighed
heavily on the hearts of all while the labour proceeded.
The chest seemed to return a hollow and
empty sound to the strokes of the hammer; and
even those whose expectations had been most
sanguine felt at the moment the probability of bitter
disappointment, and could not but be sensible that,
should the result of the search cmfirnl those forebodings,
it would only serve to show that a national
affront-an injury had been sustained, for which it
might be ditficult, or rather impossible, to obtain
redress. The joy was therefore extreme when, the
ponderous lid of the chest having been forced open,
at the expense of some time and labour, the regalia
were discovered lying at the bottom covered with
linen cloths, exactly as they had been left in 1707,
being I 10 years before, since they had been surrendered
by William the ninth Earl Marischal to the
custody of the Earl of Glasgow, Treasurer-Deputy
of Scotland. The reliques were passed from hand
to hand, and greeted with the affectionate reverence
which emblems so venerable, restored to public
view after the slumber of more than a hundred
years, were so peculiarly calculated to excite. The
discovery was instantly communicated to the public
by the display of the royal standard, and was
greeted hy the shouts of the soldiers in garrison,
and a vast multitude assembled on the Castle hill ;
indeed the rejoicing was so general and sincere as
plainly to show that, however altered in other
in wicked policy, had destroyed its contents j but ' respects, the people of Scotland had lost norhing of
murmurs arose from time to time, as the years went that national enthusiasm which formerly had dison,
and a crown, called that of Scotland, was ac- played itself in grief for the loss of those emblematic
honours, and now was expressed in joy for their I tually shown in the Tower of London !
of Cardinal York, the Prince Regent, afterwards I Covered with glass and secured in a strong iron,
