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Stirling Castle, Scotland
Artist: Campion, Engraver: Appleton
Published by James S. Virtue Co., London in 1836
Size: Size of the image: 4 3/4 x 7 ; overall, including margins: 8 x 10 1/2 inches. 
Stirling and its castle are of great, but unknown antiquity. The latter was an important fortress in the days of Bruce, when it was besieged by Edward I. in person, and reduced with great difficulty. During the reigns of "the Jameses," it was the favorite seat of Scottish royalty. In a room which still exists, James II., in 1452, stabbed the Earl of Douglas with his own hand, from rage at his refusing to give up a league which he had formed against the government. James III. erected a parliament-hall, and a chapel-royal, the former of which still survives. James V. was reared in this castle, under the care of Sir David Lyndsoy, and, in mature life, added to the former building the palace above alluded to. Queen Mary also spent a portion of her youthful years in Stirling castle. Her son, James VI., who was baptized here, resided in the same palace, with his preceptor, Buchanan, during the whole of his minority. Prince Henry was also born, baptized, and reared in Stirling castle. The palace of James V - The general style of the architecture is heavy, and that of the decorative parts purely whimsical and grotesque. All round the building there is a series of oddly twisted buttresses or pilasters, bearing ungainly statues, chiefly of mythological personages, with much fantastic ornament besides. here is not, as far as we are aware, anywhere in Scotland, any specimen of architecture in the same peculiar taste. Its inferiority is the more remarkable, as the parts of Holyroodhouse and Linlithgow erected by the same monarch, are very elegant. The historical and antiquarian interest of Stirling Castle, great as it is, bears no proportion, in the eyes of most strangers, to the beauty of the views commanded from its battlements.
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