242 The Library. made much of, he is, as usual, not complimentary, but remarks on the reticence of speech of the Professors who cannie Aber- donians knowing the Doctor's eagerness for dispute, did not tempt him to growl. On his visiting Aberdeen in 1773, Burns called it " a lazy town near Stonehive " ; by which one is reminded of the parson of two little rocky islands in the Firth of Clyde the Cumbraes whose weekly prayer was " God bless the mickle and lesser Cumbraes, with the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland." If Aberdeen which had been quietly but very energetically improving itself for nearly fifty years was first brought into modern notice by the proposed introduction of a railway to it in 1846, the real merit of the re-discovery of the city is due to Her Most Gracious Majesty and her Consort, Prince Albert, who in their yacht, and accompanied by a fleet of warships, visited it in 1848, on their way to Balmoral, which had been placed at their disposal by Sir Robert Gordon, the brother of Lord Aberdeen. By Her Majesty's purchase of this property, and by the erection of a palace thereon, the glories of dark Lochnagar once crowned in immortal poetry by Lord Byron were again materially crowned by Her Majesty acquiring it as her own pro- perty. One hundred and thirty-three years previous to this, the rebel and the rival standard to Her Majesty's dynasty had been uplifted on the Braes of Mar, and now the Royal Family locates itself in the rebel place, and not by the force of arms, but by a loving familiarity and a generous confidence entirely unprece- dented, captures every heart, and turns the rankest rebel Jacobites into devoted followers and trusted body-servants, who serve with a devotion which is characteristically faithful unto death, and was freely, frankly, and fearlessly appreciated and acknowledged as such. After this royal recognition of Aberdeenshire, its capital the entrance to Strathdee and the principal gateway to the Highland Palace suddenly sprang into recognition as a new discovery by the fashionable world. Crowds flocked into it and swarmed in the surrounding district ; in which the humble hostelries where the service was formerly given by Highland lassies, who though unadorned, were adorned thus most, and so would have delighted Wordsworth and all such true poets had to give place to flunkeyfied male waiters in regulation full-dress and white neckties ; with an entire absence of the comfortable
