Bk. vLCh. IV. PALACES. ETC. 225 ever, when the English were usmg perpendicular tracery, and when the invention of fan-vaulting was beginning to be introduced, the Scotch, with the flamboyant tracery of the French, adopted also their weak and unconstructive modes of vaulting. It is not uncommon to find as poor a vault as that of the lately destroyed Trinity College Church, Edinburgh (Woodcut No. 661), erected contemporaneously with the elaborate vaulting of the royal chapels in England ; and not only in this but in every otlier respect it is to the Continent, and not to their nearest neighbors, that we must at this late period look for analogies with the architecture of the Scotch. Scotland is, generally speaking, very deficient in objects of civil or domestic architecture belonging to the Middle Ages. Of her palaces, Holyrood was almost rebuilt in the reign of Charles I., and Edinburgh Castle entirely remodelled. Stirling still retains some fragments of ancient art, and Falkland seems on the verge of the Renaissance. Linlithgow perhaps alone remains in its original state, a fine specimen of a fortified palace, with bold flanking towers externally, and a noble courtyard in the centre. There are, besides these, numberless square towers, and fortalices scattered over the country, which were the residences of the turbulent barons of Scotland during the Middle Ages, but none of these can properly be called objects of architecture. The baronial edifices of the succeeding age give the impression of belonging to an eai-lier style, which was retained in this wild country long after it had been laid aside elsewhere. They are as remarkable as any class of buildings erected after the Middle Ages, both for originality and picturesqueness. But they were, with scarcely an exceotion, built after the accession of Elizabeth to the throne of Eng- land, and all, when closely examined, display features belonging to the Renaissance style. Their description would therefore be more appropriate in a subsequent volume than in a chapter devoted to the Gothic architecture of Scotland.
