They Have Been
Till Very Lately So Much Neglected, That Every Man Carried Away The
Stones Who Fancied That He Wanted Them.
The cathedral, of which the foundations may be still traced, and a
small part of the wall is standing, appears to have been a spacious
and majestick building, not unsuitable to the primacy of the
kingdom.
Of the architecture, the poor remains can hardly exhibit,
even to an artist, a sufficient specimen. It was demolished, as is
well known, in the tumult and violence of Knox's reformation.
Not far from the cathedral, on the margin of the water, stands a
fragment of the castle, in which the archbishop anciently resided.
It was never very large, and was built with more attention to
security than pleasure. Cardinal Beatoun is said to have had
workmen employed in improving its fortifications at the time when
he was murdered by the ruffians of reformation, in the manner of
which Knox has given what he himself calls a merry narrative.
The change of religion in Scotland, eager and vehement as it was,
raised an epidemical enthusiasm, compounded of sullen
scrupulousness and warlike ferocity, which, in a people whom
idleness resigned to their own thoughts, and who, conversing only
with each other, suffered no dilution of their zeal from the
gradual influx of new opinions, was long transmitted in its full
strength from the old to the young, but by trade and intercourse
with England, is now visibly abating, and giving way too fast to
that laxity of practice and indifference of opinion, in which men,
not sufficiently instructed to find the middle point, too easily
shelter themselves from rigour and constraint.
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