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diff --git a/382-h/382-h.htm b/382-h/382-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e05912 --- /dev/null +++ b/382-h/382-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2697 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Edinburgh, by Robert Louis Stevenson</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 30%; } + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Edinburgh, by Robert Louis Stevenson + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Edinburgh + Picturesque Notes + + +Author: Robert Louis Stevenson + + + +Release Date: November 5, 2010 [eBook #382] +[This file was first posted on February 12, 1995] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDINBURGH*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1903 Seeley & Co. Ltd. edition by +David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>EDINBURGH</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Picturesque Notes</i><br /> +<i>by</i><br /> +Robert Louis Stevenson</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>People’s Edition</i>.</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">london</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">SEELEY & CO. Ltd.</span>, 38 <span +class="smcap">Great Russell Street</span><br /> +1903</p> +<h2>CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.</h2> +<p>The ancient and famous metropolis of the North sits +overlooking a windy estuary from the slope and summit of three +hills. No situation could be more commanding for the head +city of a kingdom; none better chosen for noble prospects. +From her tall precipice and terraced gardens she looks far and +wide on the sea and broad champaigns. To the east you may +catch at sunset the spark of the May lighthouse, where the Firth +expands into the German Ocean; and away to the west, over all the +carse of Stirling, you can see the first snows upon Ben Ledi.</p> +<p>But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the +vilest climates under heaven. She is liable to be beaten +upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be +buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the +snow as it comes flying southward from the Highland hills. +The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial +in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory in the +spring. The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among +bleak winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to +envy them their fate. For all who love shelter and the +blessings of the sun, who hate dark weather and perpetual tilting +against squalls, there could scarcely be found a more unhomely +and harassing place of residence. Many such aspire angrily +after that Somewhere-else of the imagination, where all troubles +are supposed to end. They lean over the great bridge which +joins the New Town with the Old—that windiest spot, or high +altar, in this northern temple of the winds—and watch the +trains smoking out from under them and vanishing into the tunnel +on a voyage to brighter skies. Happy the passengers who +shake off the dust of Edinburgh, and have heard for the last time +the cry of the east wind among her chimney-tops! And yet +the place establishes an interest in people’s hearts; go +where they will, they find no city of the same distinction; go +where they will, they take a pride in their old home.</p> +<p> +<a href="images/p4b.jpg"> +<img class='floatright' alt= +"Gate of Holyrood" +title= +"Gate of Holyrood" +src="images/p4s.jpg" /> +</a>Venice, it has been said, differs from another cities in the +sentiment which she inspires. The rest may have admirers; +she only, a famous fair one, counts lovers in her train. +And, indeed, even by her kindest friends, Edinburgh is not +considered in a similar sense. These like her for many +reasons, not any one of which is satisfactory in itself. +They like her whimsically, if you will, and somewhat as a +virtuoso dotes upon his cabinet. Her attraction is romantic +in the narrowest meaning of the term. Beautiful as she is, +she is not so much beautiful as interesting. She is +pre-eminently Gothic, and all the more so since she has set +herself off with some Greek airs, and erected classic temples on +her crags. In a word, and above all, she is a +curiosity. The Palace of Holyrood has been left aside in +the growth of Edinburgh, and stands grey and silent in a +workman’s quarter and among breweries and gas works. +It is a house of many memories. Great people of yore, kings +and queens, buffoons and grave ambassadors, played their stately +farce for centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, +dancing has lasted deep into the night,—murder has been +done in its chambers. There Prince Charlie held his phantom +levees, and in a very gallant manner represented a fallen dynasty +for some hours. Now, all these things of clay are mingled +with the dust, the king’s crown itself is shown for +sixpence to the vulgar; but the stone palace has outlived these +charges. For fifty weeks together, it is no more than a +show for tourists and a museum of old furniture; but on the +fifty-first, behold the palace reawakened and mimicking its +past. The Lord Commissioner, a kind of stage sovereign, +sits among stage courtiers; a coach and six and clattering escort +come and go before the gate; at night, the windows are lighted +up, and its near neighbours, the workmen, may dance in their own +houses to the palace music. And in this the palace is +typical. There is a spark among the embers; from time to +time the old volcano smokes. Edinburgh has but partly +abdicated, and still wears, in parody, her metropolitan +trappings. Half a capital and half a country town, the +whole city leads a double existence; it has long trances of the +one and flashes of the other; like the king of the Black Isles, +it is half alive and half a monumental marble. There are +armed men and cannon in the citadel overhead; you may see the +troops marshalled on the high parade; and at night after the +early winter even-fall, and in the morning before the laggard +winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the sound of +drums and bugles. Grave judges sit bewigged in what was +once the scene of imperial deliberations. Close by in the +High Street perhaps the trumpets may sound about the stroke of +noon; and you see a troop of citizens in tawdry masquerade; +tabard above, heather-mixture trowser below, and the men +themselves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic +by-standers. The grooms of a well-appointed circus tread +the streets with a better presence. And yet these are the +Heralds and Pursuivants of Scotland, who are about to proclaim a +new law of the United Kingdom before two-score boys, and thieves, +and hackney-coachmen. Meanwhile every hour the bell of the +University rings out over the hum of the streets, and every hour +a double tide of students, coming and going, fills the deep +archways. And lastly, one night in the springtime—or +say one morning rather, at the peep of day—late folk may +hear voices of many men singing a psalm in unison from a church +on one side of the old High Street; and a little after, or +perhaps a little before, the sound of many men singing a psalm in +unison from another church on the opposite side of the way. +There will be something in the words above the dew of Hermon, and +how goodly it is to see brethren dwelling together in +unity. And the late folk will tell themselves that all this +singing denotes the conclusion of two yearly ecclesiastical +parliaments—the parliaments of Churches which are brothers +in many admirable virtues, but not specially like brothers in +this particular of a tolerant and peaceful life.</p> +<p>Again, meditative people will find a charm in a certain +consonancy between the aspect of the city and its odd and +stirring history. Few places, if any, offer a more barbaric +display of contrasts to the eye. In the very midst stands +one of the most satisfactory crags in nature—a Bass Rock +upon dry land, rooted in a garden shaken by passing trains, +carrying a crown of battlements and turrets, and describing its +war-like shadow over the liveliest and brightest thoroughfare of +the new town. From their smoky beehives, ten stories high, +the unwashed look down upon the open squares and gardens of the +wealthy; and gay people sunning themselves along Princes Street, +with its mile of commercial palaces all beflagged upon some great +occasion, see, across a gardened valley set with statues, where +the washings of the Old Town flutter in the breeze at its high +windows. And then, upon all sides, what a clashing of +architecture! In this one valley, where the life of the +town goes most busily forward, there may be seen, shown one above +and behind another by the accidents of the ground, buildings in +almost every style upon the globe. Egyptian and Greek +temples, Venetian palaces and Gothic spires, are huddled one over +another in a most admired disorder; while, above all, the brute +mass of the Castle and the summit of Arthur’s Seat look +down upon these imitations with a becoming dignity, as the works +of Nature may look down the monuments of Art. But Nature is +a more indiscriminate patroness than we imagine, and in no way +frightened of a strong effect. The birds roost as willingly +among the Corinthian capitals as in the crannies of the crag; the +same atmosphere and daylight clothe the eternal rock and +yesterday’s imitation portico; and as the soft northern +sunshine throws out everything into a glorified +distinctness—or easterly mists, coming up with the blue +evening, fuse all these incongruous features into one, and the +lamps begin to glitter along the street, and faint lights to burn +in the high windows across the valley—the feeling grows +upon you that this also is a piece of nature in the most intimate +sense; that this profusion of eccentricities, this dream in +masonry and living rock, is not a drop-scene in a theatre, but a +city in the world of every-day reality, connected by railway and +telegraph-wire with all the capitals of Europe, and inhabited by +citizens of the familiar type, who keep ledgers, and attend +church, and have sold their immortal portion to a daily +paper. By all the canons of romance, the place demands to +be half deserted and leaning towards decay; birds we might admit +in profusion, the play of the sun and winds, and a few gipsies +encamped in the chief thoroughfare; but these citizens with their +cabs and tramways, their trains and posters, are altogether out +of key. Chartered tourists, they make free with historic +localities, and rear their young among the most picturesque sites +with a grand human indifference. To see them thronging by, +in their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a +little air of possession that verges on the absurd, is not the +least striking feature of the place. <a name="citation10"></a><a +href="#footnote10" class="citation">[10]</a></p> +<p>And the story of the town is as eccentric as its +appearance. For centuries it was a capital thatched with +heather, and more than once, in the evil days of English +invasion, it has gone up in flame to heaven, a beacon to ships at +sea. It was the jousting-ground of jealous nobles, not only +on Greenside, or by the King’s Stables, where set +tournaments were fought to the sound of trumpets and under the +authority of the royal presence, but in every alley where there +was room to cross swords, and in the main street, where popular +tumult under the Blue Blanket alternated with the brawls of +outlandish clansmen and retainers. Down in the palace John +Knox reproved his queen in the accents of modern democracy. +In the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so many +swallows’ nests among the buttresses of the old Cathedral, +that familiar autocrat, James VI., would gladly share a bottle of +wine with George Heriot the goldsmith. Up on the Pentland +Hills, that so quietly look down on the Castle with the city +lying in waves around it, those mad and dismal fanatics, the +Sweet Singers, haggard from long exposure on the moors, sat day +and night with ‘tearful psalmns’ to see Edinburgh +consumed with fire from heaven, like another Sodom or +Gomorrah. There, in the Grass-market, stiff-necked, +covenanting heroes, offered up the often unnecessary, but not +less honourable, sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent +farewell to sun, moon, and stars, and earthly friendships, or +died silent to the roll of drums. Down by yon outlet rode +Grahame of Claverhouse and his thirty dragoons, with the town +beating to arms behind their horses’ tails—a sorry +handful thus riding for their lives, but with a man at the head +who was to return in a different temper, make a dash that +staggered Scotland to the heart, and die happily in the thick of +fight. There Aikenhead was hanged for a piece of boyish +incredulity; there, a few years afterwards, David Hume ruined +Philosophy and Faith, an undisturbed and well-reputed citizen; +and thither, in yet a few years more, Burns came from the +plough-tail, as to an academy of gilt unbelief and artificial +letters. There, when the great exodus was made across the +valley, and the New Town began to spread abroad its draughty +parallelograms, and rear its long frontage on the opposing hill, +there was such a flitting, such a change of domicile and dweller, +as was never excelled in the history of cities: the cobbler +succeeded the earl; the beggar ensconced himself by the +judge’s chimney; what had been a palace was used as a +pauper refuge; and great mansions were so parcelled out among the +least and lowest in society, that the hearthstone of the old +proprietor was thought large enough to be partitioned off into a +bedroom by the new.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II. OLD TOWN—THE LANDS.</h2> +<p>The Old Town, it is pretended, is the chief characteristic, +and, from a picturesque point of view, the liver-wing of +Edinburgh. It is one of the most common forms of +depreciation to throw cold water on the whole by adroit +over-commendation of a part, since everything worth judging, +whether it be a man, a work of art, or only a fine city, must be +judged upon its merits as a whole. The Old Town depends for +much of its effect on the new quarters that lie around it, on the +sufficiency of its situation, and on the hills that back it +up. If you were to set it somewhere else by itself, it +would look remarkably like Stirling in a bolder and loftier +edition. The point is to see this embellished Stirling +planted in the midst of a large, active, and fantastic modern +city; for there the two re-act in a picturesque sense, and the +one is the making of the other.</p> +<p>The Old Town occupies a sloping ridge or tail of diluvial +matter, protected, in some subsidence of the waters, by the +Castle cliffs which fortify it to the west. On the one side +of it and the other the new towns of the south and of the north +occupy their lower, broader, and more gentle hill-tops. +Thus, the quarter of the Castle over-tops the whole city and +keeps an open view to sea and land. It dominates for miles +on every side; and people on the decks of ships, or ploughing in +quiet country places over in Fife, can see the banner on the +Castle battlements, and the smoke of the Old Town blowing abroad +over the subjacent country. A city that is set upon a +hill. It was, I suppose, from this distant aspect that she +got her nickname of <i>Auld Reekie</i>. Perhaps it was +given her by people who had never crossed her doors: day after +day, from their various rustic Pisgahs, they had seen the pile of +building on the hill-top, and the long plume of smoke over the +plain; so it appeared to them; so it had appeared to their +fathers tilling the same field; and as that was all they knew of +the place, it could be all expressed in these two words.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p15b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Cowfeeder Row and Head of West Port" +title= +"Cowfeeder Row and Head of West Port" +src="images/p15s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Indeed, even on a nearer view, the Old Town is properly +smoked; and though it is well washed with rain all the year +round, it has a grim and sooty aspect among its younger +suburbs. It grew, under the law that regulates the growth +of walled cities in precarious situations, not in extent, but in +height and density. Public buildings were forced, wherever +there was room for them, into the midst of thoroughfares; +thorough—fares were diminished into lanes; houses sprang up +story after story, neighbour mounting upon neighbour’s +shoulder, as in some Black Hole of Calcutta, until the population +slept fourteen or fifteen deep in a vertical direction. The +tallest of these <i>lands</i>, as they are locally termed, have +long since been burnt out; but to this day it is not uncommon to +see eight or ten windows at a flight; and the cliff of building +which hangs imminent over Waverley Bridge would still put many +natural precipices to shame. The cellars are already high +above the gazer’s head, planted on the steep hill-side; as +for the garret, all the furniture may be in the pawn-shop, but it +commands a famous prospect to the Highland hills. The poor +man may roost up there in the centre of Edinburgh, and yet have a +peep of the green country from his window; he shall see the +quarters of the well-to-do fathoms underneath, with their broad +squares and gardens; he shall have nothing overhead but a few +spires, the stone top-gallants of the city; and perhaps the wind +may reach him with a rustic pureness, and bring a smack of the +sea or of flowering lilacs in the spring.</p> +<p>It is almost the correct literary sentiment to deplore the +revolutionary improvements of Mr. Chambers and his +following. It is easy to be a conservator of the +discomforts of others; indeed, it is only our good qualities we +find it irksome to conserve. Assuredly, in driving streets +through the black labyrinth, a few curious old corners have been +swept away, and some associations turned out of house and +home. But what slices of sunlight, what breaths of clean +air, have been let in! And what a picturesque world remains +untouched! You go under dark arches, and down dark stairs +and alleys. The way is so narrow that you can lay a hand on +either wall; so steep that, in greasy winter weather, the +pavement is almost as treacherous as ice. Washing dangles +above washing from the windows; the houses bulge outwards upon +flimsy brackets; you see a bit of sculpture in a dark corner; at +the top of all, a gable and a few crowsteps are printed on the +sky. Here, you come into a court where the children are at +play and the grown people sit upon their doorsteps, and perhaps a +church spire shows itself above the roofs. Here, in the +narrowest of the entry, you find a great old mansion still erect, +with some insignia of its former state—some scutcheon, some +holy or courageous motto, on the lintel. The local +antiquary points out where famous and well-born people had their +lodging; and as you look up, out pops the head of a slatternly +woman from the countess’s window. The Bedouins camp +within Pharaoh’s palace walls, and the old war-ship is +given over to the rats. We are already a far way from the +days when powdered heads were plentiful in these alleys, with +jolly, port-wine faces underneath. Even in the chief +thoroughfares Irish washings flutter at the windows, and the +pavements are encumbered with loiterers.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p19b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Old Bow-Head, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh" +title= +"Old Bow-Head, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh" +src="images/p19s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>These loiterers are a true character of the scene. Some +shrewd Scotch workmen may have paused on their way to a job, +debating Church affairs and politics with their tools upon their +arm. But the most part are of a different +order—skulking jail-birds; unkempt, bare-foot children; +big-mouthed, robust women, in a sort of uniform of striped +flannel petticoat and short tartan shawl; among these, a few +surpervising constables and a dismal sprinkling of mutineers and +broken men from higher ranks in society, with some mark of better +days upon them, like a brand. In a place no larger than +Edinburgh, and where the traffic is mostly centred in five or six +chief streets, the same face comes often under the notice of an +idle stroller. In fact, from this point of view, Edinburgh +is not so much a small city as the largest of small towns. +It is scarce possible to avoid observing your neighbours; and I +never yet heard of any one who tried. It has been my +fortune, in this anonymous accidental way, to watch more than one +of these downward travellers for some stages on the road to +ruin. One man must have been upwards of sixty before I +first observed him, and he made then a decent, personable figure +in broad-cloth of the best. For three years he kept +falling—grease coming and buttons going from the +square-skirted coat, the face puffing and pimpling, the shoulders +growing bowed, the hair falling scant and grey upon his head; and +the last that ever I saw of him, he was standing at the mouth of +an entry with several men in moleskin, three parts drunk, and his +old black raiment daubed with mud. I fancy that I still can +hear him laugh. There was something heart-breaking in this +gradual declension at so advanced an age; you would have thought +a man of sixty out of the reach of these calamities; you would +have thought that he was niched by that time into a safe place in +life, whence he could pass quietly and honourably into the +grave.</p> +<p>One of the earliest marks of these <i>dégringolades</i> +is, that the victim begins to disappear from the New Town +thoroughfares, and takes to the High Street, like a wounded +animal to the woods. And such an one is the type of the +quarter. It also has fallen socially. A scutcheon +over the door somewhat jars in sentiment where there is a washing +at every window. The old man, when I saw him last, wore the +coat in which he had played the gentleman three years before; and +that was just what gave him so pre-eminent an air of +wretchedness.</p> +<p> +<a href="images/p22b.jpg"> +<img class='floatright' alt= +"High Street" +title= +"High Street" +src="images/p22s.jpg" /> +</a>It is true that the over-population was at least as dense in +the epoch of lords and ladies, and that now-a-days some customs +which made Edinburgh notorious of yore have been fortunately +pretermitted. But an aggregation of comfort is not +distasteful like an aggregation of the reverse. Nobody +cares how many lords and ladies, and divines and lawyers, may +have been crowded into these houses in the past—perhaps the +more the merrier. The glasses clink around the china +punch-bowl, some one touches the virginals, there are +peacocks’ feathers on the chimney, and the tapers burn +clear and pale in the red firelight. That is not an ugly +picture in itself, nor will it become ugly upon repetition. +All the better if the like were going on in every second room; +the <i>land</i> would only look the more inviting. Times +are changed. In one house, perhaps, two-score families herd +together; and, perhaps, not one of them is wholly out of the +reach of want. The great hotel is given over to discomfort +from the foundation to the chimney-tops; everywhere a pinching, +narrow habit, scanty meals, and an air of sluttishness and +dirt. In the first room there is a birth, in another a +death, in a third a sordid drinking-bout, and the detective and +the Bible-reader cross upon the stairs. High words are +audible from dwelling to dwelling, and children have a strange +experience from the first; only a robust soul, you would think, +could grow up in such conditions without hurt. And even if +God tempers His dispensations to the young, and all the ill does +not arise that our apprehensions may forecast, the sight of such +a way of living is disquieting to people who are more happily +circumstanced. Social inequality is nowhere more +ostentatious than at Edinburgh. I have mentioned already +how, to the stroller along Princes Street, the High Street +callously exhibits its back garrets. It is true, there is a +garden between. And although nothing could be more glaring +by way of contrast, sometimes the opposition is more immediate; +sometimes the thing lies in a nutshell, and there is not so much +as a blade of grass between the rich and poor. To look over +the South Bridge and see the Cowgate below full of crying +hawkers, is to view one rank of society from another in the +twinkling of an eye.</p> +<p>One night I went along the Cowgate after every one was a-bed +but the policeman, and stopped by hazard before a tall +<i>land</i>. The moon touched upon its chimneys, and shone +blankly on the upper windows; there was no light anywhere in the +great bulk of building; but as I stood there it seemed to me that +I could hear quite a body of quiet sounds from the interior; +doubtless there were many clocks ticking, and people snoring on +their backs. And thus, as I fancied, the dense life within +made itself faintly audible in my ears, family after family +contributing its quota to the general hum, and the whole pile +beating in tune to its timepieces, like a great disordered +heart. Perhaps it was little more than a fancy altogether, +but it was strangely impressive at the time, and gave me an +imaginative measure of the disproportion between the quantity of +living flesh and the trifling walls that separated and contained +it.</p> +<p>There was nothing fanciful, at least, but every circumstance +of terror and reality, in the fall of the <i>land</i> in the High +Street. The building had grown rotten to the core; the +entry underneath had suddenly closed up so that the +scavenger’s barrow could not pass; cracks and +reverberations sounded through the house at night; the +inhabitants of the huge old human bee-hive discussed their peril +when they encountered on the stair; some had even left their +dwellings in a panic of fear, and returned to them again in a fit +of economy or self-respect; when, in the black hours of a Sunday +morning, the whole structure ran together with a hideous uproar +and tumbled story upon story to the ground. The physical +shock was felt far and near; and the moral shock travelled with +the morning milkmaid into all the suburbs. The church-bells +never sounded more dismally over Edinburgh than that grey +forenoon. Death had made a brave harvest, and, like Samson, +by pulling down one roof, destroyed many a home. None who +saw it can have forgotten the aspect of the gable; here it was +plastered, there papered, according to the rooms; here the kettle +still stood on the hob, high overhead; and there a cheap picture +of the Queen was pasted over the chimney. So, by this +disaster, you had a glimpse into the life of thirty families, all +suddenly cut off from the revolving years. The <i>land</i> +had fallen; and with the <i>land</i> how much! Far in the +country, people saw a gap in the city ranks, and the sun looked +through between the chimneys in an unwonted place. And all +over the world, in London, in Canada, in New Zealand, fancy what +a multitude of people could exclaim with truth: ‘The house +that I was born in fell last night!’</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III. THE PARLIAMENT CLOSE.</h2> +<p>Time has wrought its changes most notably around the precincts +of St. Giles’s Church. The church itself, if it were +not for the spire, would be unrecognisable; the <i>Krames</i> are +all gone, not a shop is left to shelter in its buttresses; and +zealous magistrates and a misguided architect have shorn the +design of manhood, and left it poor, naked, and pitifully +pretentious. As St. Giles’s must have had in former +days a rich and quaint appearance now forgotten, so the +neighbourhood was bustling, sunless, and romantic. It was +here that the town was most overbuilt; but the overbuilding has +been all rooted out, and not only a free fair-way left along the +High Street with an open space on either side of the church, but +a great porthole, knocked in the main line of the <i>lands</i>, +gives an outlook to the north and the New Town.</p> +<p> +<a href="images/p28b.jpg"> +<img class='floatleft' alt= +"The Spire of St. Giles’s" +title= +"The Spire of St. Giles’s" +src="images/p28s.jpg" /> +</a>There is a silly story of a subterranean passage between the +Castle and Holyrood, and a bold Highland piper who volunteered to +explore its windings. He made his entrance by the upper +end, playing a strathspey; the curious footed it after him down +the street, following his descent by the sound of the chanter +from below; until all of a sudden, about the level of St. +Giles’s, the music came abruptly to an end, and the people +in the street stood at fault with hands uplifted. Whether +he was choked with gases, or perished in a quag, or was removed +bodily by the Evil One, remains a point of doubt; but the piper +has never again been seen or heard of from that day to +this. Perhaps he wandered down into the land of Thomas the +Rhymer, and some day, when it is least expected, may take a +thought to revisit the sunlit upper world. That will be a +strange moment for the cabmen on the stance besides St. +Giles’s, when they hear the drone of his pipes reascending +from the bowels of the earth below their horses’ feet.</p> +<p>But it is not only pipers who have vanished, many a solid bulk +of masonry has been likewise spirited into the air. Here, +for example, is the shape of a heart let into the causeway. +This was the site of the Tolbooth, the Heart of Midlothian, a +place old in story and namefather to a noble book. The +walls are now down in the dust; there is no more <i>squalor +carceris</i> for merry debtors, no more cage for the old, +acknowledged prison-breaker; but the sun and the wind play freely +over the foundations of the jail. Nor is this the only +memorial that the pavement keeps of former days. The +ancient burying-ground of Edinburgh lay behind St. Giles’s +Church, running downhill to the Cowgate and covering the site of +the present Parliament House. It has disappeared as utterly +as the prison or the Luckenbooths; and for those ignorant of its +history, I know only one token that remains. In the +Parliament Close, trodden daily underfoot by advocates, two +letters and a date mark the resting-place of the man who made +Scotland over again in his own image, the indefatigable, +undissuadable John Knox. He sleeps within call of the +church that so often echoed to his preaching.</p> +<p>Hard by the reformer, a bandy-legged and garlanded Charles +Second, made of lead, bestrides a tun-bellied charger. The +King has his backed turned, and, as you look, seems to be +trotting clumsily away from such a dangerous neighbour. +Often, for hours together, these two will be alone in the Close, +for it lies out of the way of all but legal traffic. On one +side the south wall of the church, on the other the arcades of +the Parliament House, enclose this irregular bight of causeway +and describe their shadows on it in the sun. At either end, +from round St. Giles’s buttresses, you command a look into +the High Street with its motley passengers; but the stream goes +by, east and west, and leaves the Parliament Close to Charles the +Second and the birds. Once in a while, a patient crowd may +be seen loitering there all day, some eating fruit, some reading +a newspaper; and to judge by their quiet demeanour, you would +think they were waiting for a distribution of soup-tickets. +The fact is far otherwise; within in the Justiciary Court a man +is upon trial for his life, and these are some of the curious for +whom the gallery was found too narrow. Towards afternoon, +if the prisoner is unpopular, there will be a round of hisses +when he is brought forth. Once in a while, too, an advocate +in wig and gown, hand upon mouth, full of pregnant nods, sweeps +to and fro in the arcade listening to an agent; and at certain +regular hours a whole tide of lawyers hurries across the +space.</p> +<p>The Parliament Close has been the scene of marking incidents +in Scottish history. Thus, when the Bishops were ejected +from the Convention in 1688, ‘all fourteen of them gathered +together with pale faces and stood in a cloud in the Parliament +Close:’ poor episcopal personages who were done with fair +weather for life! Some of the west-country Societarians +standing by, who would have ‘rejoiced more than in great +sums’ to be at their hanging, hustled them so rudely that +they knocked their heads together. It was not magnanimous +behaviour to dethroned enemies; but one, at least, of the +Societarians had groaned in the <i>boots</i>, and they had all +seen their dear friends upon the scaffold. Again, at the +‘woeful Union,’ it was here that people crowded to +escort their favourite from the last of Scottish parliaments: +people flushed with nationality, as Boswell would have said, +ready for riotous acts, and fresh from throwing stones at the +author of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ as he looked out of +window.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p32b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"John Knox’s House in the High Street" +title= +"John Knox’s House in the High Street" +src="images/p32s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>One of the pious in the seventeenth century, going to pass his +<i>trials</i> (examinations as we now say) for the Scottish Bar, +beheld the Parliament Close open and had a vision of the mouth of +Hell. This, and small wonder, was the means of his +conversion. Nor was the vision unsuitable to the locality; +for after an hospital, what uglier piece is there in civilisation +than a court of law? Hither come envy, malice, and all +uncharitableness to wrestle it out in public tourney; crimes, +broken fortunes, severed households, the knave and his victim, +gravitate to this low building with the arcade. To how many +has not St. Giles’s bell told the first hour after +ruin? I think I see them pause to count the strokes, and +wander on again into the moving High Street, stunned and sick at +heart.</p> +<p>A pair of swing doors gives admittance to a hall with a carved +roof, hung with legal portraits, adorned with legal statuary, +lighted by windows of painted glass, and warmed by three vast +fires. This is the <i>Salle des pas perdus</i> of the +Scottish Bar. Here, by a ferocious custom, idle youths must +promenade from ten till two. From end to end, singly or in +pairs or trios, the gowns and wigs go back and forward. +Through a hum of talk and footfalls, the piping tones of a Macer +announce a fresh cause and call upon the names of those +concerned. Intelligent men have been walking here daily for +ten or twenty years without a rag of business or a shilling of +reward. In process of time, they may perhaps be made the +Sheriff-Substitute and Fountain of Justice at Lerwick or +Tobermory. There is nothing required, you would say, but a +little patience and a taste for exercise and bad air. To +breathe dust and bombazine, to feed the mind on cackling gossip, +to hear three parts of a case and drink a glass of sherry, to +long with indescribable longings for the hour when a man may slip +out of his travesty and devote himself to golf for the rest of +the afternoon, and to do this day by day and year after year, may +seem so small a thing to the inexperienced! But those who +have made the experiment are of a different way of thinking, and +count it the most arduous form of idleness.</p> +<p>More swing doors open into pigeon-holes where judges of the +First Appeal sit singly, and halls of audience where the supreme +Lords sit by three or four. Here, you may see Scott’s +place within the bar, where he wrote many a page of Waverley +novels to the drone of judicial proceeding. You will hear a +good deal of shrewdness, and, as their Lordships do not +altogether disdain pleasantry, a fair proportion of dry +fun. The broadest of broad Scotch is now banished from the +bench; but the courts still retain a certain national +flavour. We have a solemn enjoyable way of lingering on a +case. We treat law as a fine art, and relish and digest a +good distinction. There is no hurry: point after point must +be rightly examined and reduced to principle; judge after judge +must utter forth his <i>obiter dicta</i> to delighted +brethren.</p> +<p>Besides the courts, there are installed under the same roof no +less than three libraries: two of no mean order; confused and +semi-subterranean, full of stairs and galleries; where you may +see the most studious-looking wigs fishing out novels by lanthorn +light, in the very place where the old Privy Council tortured +Covenanters. As the Parliament House is built upon a slope, +although it presents only one story to the north, it measures +half-a-dozen at least upon the south; and range after range of +vaults extend below the libraries. Few places are more +characteristic of this hilly capital. You descend one stone +stair after another, and wander, by the flicker of a match, in a +labyrinth of stone cellars. Now, you pass below the Outer +Hall and hear overhead, brisk but ghostly, the interminable +pattering of legal feet. Now, you come upon a strong door +with a wicket: on the other side are the cells of the police +office and the trap-stair that gives admittance to the dock in +the Justiciary Court. Many a foot that has gone up there +lightly enough, has been dead-heavy in the descent. Many a +man’s life has been argued away from him during long hours +in the court above. But just now that tragic stage is empty +and silent like a church on a week-day, with the bench all +sheeted up and nothing moving but the sunbeams on the wall. +A little farther and you strike upon a room, not empty like the +rest, but crowded with <i>productions</i> from bygone criminal +cases: a grim lumber: lethal weapons, poisoned organs in a jar, a +door with a shot-hole through the panel, behind which a man fell +dead. I cannot fancy why they should preserve them unless +it were against the Judgment Day. At length, as you +continue to descend, you see a peep of yellow gaslight and hear a +jostling, whispering noise ahead; next moment you turn a corner, +and there, in a whitewashed passage, is a machinery belt +industriously turning on its wheels. You would think the +engine had grown there of its own accord, like a cellar fungus, +and would soon spin itself out and fill the vaults from end to +end with its mysterious labours. In truth, it is only some +gear of the steam ventilator; and you will find the engineers at +hand, and may step out of their door into the sunlight. For +all this while, you have not been descending towards the +earth’s centre, but only to the bottom of the hill and the +foundations of the Parliament House; low down, to be sure, but +still under the open heaven and in a field of grass. The +daylight shines garishly on the back windows of the Irish +quarter; on broken shutters, wry gables, old palsied houses on +the brink of ruin, a crumbling human pig-sty fit for human +pigs. There are few signs of life, besides a scanty washing +or a face at a window: the dwellers are abroad, but they will +return at night and stagger to their pallets.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV. LEGENDS.</h2> +<p>The character of a place is often most perfectly expressed in +its associations. An event strikes root and grows into a +legend, when it has happened amongst congenial +surroundings. Ugly actions, above all in ugly places, have +the true romantic quality, and become an undying property of +their scene. To a man like Scott, the different appearances +of nature seemed each to contain its own legend ready made, which +it was his to call forth: in such or such a place, only such or +such events ought with propriety to happen; and in this spirit he +made the <i>Lady of the Lake</i> for Ben Venue, the <i>Heart of +Midlothian</i> for Edinburgh, and the <i>Pirate</i>, so +indifferently written but so romantically conceived, for the +desolate islands and roaring tideways of the North. The +common run of mankind have, from generation to generation, an +instinct almost as delicate as that of Scott; but where he +created new things, they only forget what is unsuitable among the +old; and by survival of the fittest, a body of tradition becomes +a work of art. So, in the low dens and high-flying garrets +of Edinburgh, people may go back upon dark passages in the +town’s adventures, and chill their marrow with +winter’s tales about the fire: tales that are singularly +apposite and characteristic, not only of the old life, but of the +very constitution of built nature in that part, and singularly +well qualified to add horror to horror, when the wind pipes +around the tall <i>lands</i>, and hoots adown arched passages, +and the far-spread wilderness of city lamps keeps quavering and +flaring in the gusts.</p> +<p> +<a href="images/p41b.jpg"> +<img class='floatright' alt= +"The Canongate" +title= +"The Canongate" +src="images/p41s.jpg" /> +</a>Here, it is the tale of Begbie the bank-porter, stricken to +the heart at a blow and left in his blood within a step or two of +the crowded High Street. There, people hush their voices +over Burke and Hare; over drugs and violated graves, and the +resurrection-men smothering their victims with their knees. +Here, again, the fame of Deacon Brodie is kept piously +fresh. A great man in his day was the Deacon; well seen in +good society, crafty with his hands as a cabinet-maker, and one +who could sing a song with taste. Many a citizen was proud +to welcome the Deacon to supper, and dismissed him with regret at +a timeous hour, who would have been vastly disconcerted had he +known how soon, and in what guise, his visitor returned. +Many stories are told of this redoubtable Edinburgh burglar, but +the one I have in my mind most vividly gives the key of all the +rest. A friend of Brodie’s, nested some way towards +heaven in one of these great <i>lands</i>, had told him of a +projected visit to the country, and afterwards, detained by some +affairs, put it off and stayed the night in town. The good +man had lain some time awake; it was far on in the small hours by +the Tron bell; when suddenly there came a creak, a jar, a faint +light. Softly he clambered out of bed and up to a false +window which looked upon another room, and there, by the glimmer +of a thieves’ lantern, was his good friend the Deacon in a +mask. It is characteristic of the town and the town’s +manners that this little episode should have been quietly tided +over, and quite a good time elapsed before a great robbery, an +escape, a Bow Street runner, a cock-fight, an apprehension in a +cupboard in Amsterdam, and a last step into the air off his own +greatly-improved gallows drop, brought the career of Deacon +William Brodie to an end. But still, by the mind’s +eye, he may be seen, a man harassed below a mountain of +duplicity, slinking from a magistrate’s supper-room to a +thieves’ ken, and pickeering among the closes by the +flicker of a dark lamp.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p43b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Planestones Close, Canongate" +title= +"Planestones Close, Canongate" +src="images/p43s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Or where the Deacon is out of favour, perhaps some memory +lingers of the great plagues, and of fatal houses still unsafe to +enter within the memory of man. For in time of pestilence +the discipline had been sharp and sudden, and what we now call +‘stamping out contagion’ was carried on with deadly +rigour. The officials, in their gowns of grey, with a white +St. Andrew’s cross on back and breast, and a white cloth +carried before them on a staff, perambulated the city, adding the +terror of man’s justice to the fear of God’s +visitation. The dead they buried on the Borough Muir; the +living who had concealed the sickness were drowned, if they were +women, in the Quarry Holes, and if they were men, were hanged and +gibbeted at their own doors; and wherever the evil had passed, +furniture was destroyed and houses closed. And the most +bogeyish part of the story is about such houses. Two +generations back they still stood dark and empty; people avoided +them as they passed by; the boldest schoolboy only shouted +through the keyhole and made off; for within, it was supposed, +the plague lay ambushed like a basilisk, ready to flow forth and +spread blain and pustule through the city. What a terrible +next-door neighbour for superstitious citizens! A rat +scampering within would send a shudder through the stoutest +heart. Here, if you like, was a sanitary parable, addressed +by our uncleanly forefathers to their own neglect.</p> +<p>And then we have Major Weir; for although even his house is +now demolished, old Edinburgh cannot clear herself of his unholy +memory. He and his sister lived together in an odour of +sour piety. She was a marvellous spinster; he had a rare +gift of supplication, and was known among devout admirers by the +name of Angelical Thomas. ‘He was a tall, black man, +and ordinarily looked down to the ground; a grim countenance, and +a big nose. His garb was still a cloak, and somewhat dark, +and he never went without his staff.’ How it came +about that Angelical Thomas was burned in company with his staff, +and his sister in gentler manner hanged, and whether these two +were simply religious maniacs of the more furious order, or had +real as well as imaginary sins upon their old-world shoulders, +are points happily beyond the reach of our intention. At +least, it is suitable enough that out of this superstitious city +some such example should have been put forth: the outcome and +fine flower of dark and vehement religion. And at least the +facts struck the public fancy and brought forth a remarkable +family of myths. It would appear that the Major’s +staff went upon his errands, and even ran before him with a +lantern on dark nights. Gigantic females, +‘stentoriously laughing and gaping with tehees of +laughter’ at unseasonable hours of night and morning, +haunted the purlieus of his abode. His house fell under +such a load of infamy that no one dared to sleep in it, until +municipal improvement levelled the structure to the ground. +And my father has often been told in the nursery how the +devil’s coach, drawn by six coal-black horses with fiery +eyes, would drive at night into the West Bow, and belated people +might see the dead Major through the glasses.</p> +<p>Another legend is that of the two maiden sisters. A +legend I am afraid it may be, in the most discreditable meaning +of the term; or perhaps something worse—a mere +yesterday’s fiction. But it is a story of some +vitality, and is worthy of a place in the Edinburgh +kalendar. This pair inhabited a single room; from the +facts, it must have been double-bedded; and it may have been of +some dimensions: but when all is said, it was a single +room. Here our two spinsters fell out—on some point +of controversial divinity belike: but fell out so bitterly that +there was never a word spoken between them, black or white, from +that day forward. You would have thought they would +separate: but no; whether from lack of means, or the Scottish +fear of scandal, they continued to keep house together where they +were. A chalk line drawn upon the floor separated their two +domains; it bisected the doorway and the fireplace, so that each +could go out and in, and do her cooking, without violating the +territory of the other. So, for years, they coexisted in a +hateful silence; their meals, their ablutions, their friendly +visitors, exposed to an unfriendly scrutiny; and at night, in the +dark watches, each could hear the breathing of her enemy. +Never did four walls look down upon an uglier spectacle than +these sisters rivalling in unsisterliness. Here is a canvas +for Hawthorne to have turned into a cabinet picture—he had +a Puritanic vein, which would have fitted him to treat this +Puritanic horror; he could have shown them to us in their +sicknesses and at their hideous twin devotions, thumbing a pair +of great Bibles, or praying aloud for each other’s +penitence with marrowy emphasis; now each, with kilted petticoat, +at her own corner of the fire on some tempestuous evening; now +sitting each at her window, looking out upon the summer landscape +sloping far below them towards the firth, and the field-paths +where they had wandered hand in hand; or, as age and infirmity +grew upon them and prolonged their toilettes, and their hands +began to tremble and their heads to nod involuntarily, growing +only the more steeled in enmity with years; until one fine day, +at a word, a look, a visit, or the approach of death, their +hearts would melt and the chalk boundary be overstepped for +ever.</p> +<p>Alas! to those who know the ecclesiastical history of the +race—the most perverse and melancholy in man’s +annals—this will seem only a figure of much that is typical +of Scotland and her high-seated capital above the Forth—a +figure so grimly realistic that it may pass with strangers for a +caricature. We are wonderful patient haters for conscience +sake up here in the North. I spoke, in the first of these +papers, of the Parliaments of the Established and Free Churches, +and how they can hear each other singing psalms across the +street. There is but a street between them in space, but a +shadow between them in principle; and yet there they sit, +enchanted, and in damnatory accents pray for each other’s +growth in grace. It would be well if there were no more +than two; but the sects in Scotland form a large family of +sisters, and the chalk lines are thickly drawn, and run through +the midst of many private homes. Edinburgh is a city of +churches, as though it were a place of pilgrimage. You will +see four within a stone-cast at the head of the West Bow. +Some are crowded to the doors; some are empty like monuments; and +yet you will ever find new ones in the building. Hence that +surprising clamour of church bells that suddenly breaks out upon +the Sabbath morning from Trinity and the sea-skirts to +Morningside on the borders of the hills. I have heard the +chimes of Oxford playing their symphony in a golden autumn +morning, and beautiful it was to hear. But in Edinburgh all +manner of loud bells join, or rather disjoin, in one swelling, +brutal babblement of noise. Now one overtakes another, and +now lags behind it; now five or six all strike on the pained +tympanum at the same punctual instant of time, and make together +a dismal chord of discord; and now for a second all seem to have +conspired to hold their peace. Indeed, there are not many +uproars in this world more dismal than that of the Sabbath bells +in Edinburgh: a harsh ecclesiastical tocsin; the outcry of +incongruous orthodoxies, calling on every separate conventicler +to put up a protest, each in his own synagogue, against +‘right-hand extremes and left-hand defections.’ +And surely there are few worse extremes than this extremity of +zeal; and few more deplorable defections than this disloyalty to +Christian love. Shakespeare wrote a comedy of ‘Much +Ado about Nothing.’ The Scottish nation made a +fantastic tragedy on the same subject. And it is for the +success of this remarkable piece that these bells are sounded +every Sabbath morning on the hills above the Forth. How +many of them might rest silent in the steeple, how many of these +ugly churches might be demolished and turned once more into +useful building material, if people who think almost exactly the +same thoughts about religion would condescend to worship God +under the same roof! But there are the chalk lines. +And which is to pocket pride, and speak the foremost word?</p> +<h2>CHAPTER V. GREYFRIARS.</h2> +<p>It was Queen Mary who threw open the gardens of the Grey +Friars: a new and semi-rural cemetery in those days, although it +has grown an antiquity in its turn and been superseded by +half-a-dozen others. The Friars must have had a pleasant +time on summer evenings; for their gardens were situated to a +wish, with the tall castle and the tallest of the castle crags in +front. Even now, it is one of our famous Edinburgh points +of view; and strangers are led thither to see, by yet another +instance, how strangely the city lies upon her hills. The +enclosure is of an irregular shape; the double church of Old and +New Greyfriars stands on the level at the top; a few thorns are +dotted here and there, and the ground falls by terrace and steep +slope towards the north. The open shows many slabs and +table tombstones; and all round the margin, the place is girt by +an array of aristocratic mausoleums appallingly adorned.</p> +<p>Setting aside the tombs of Roubiliac, which belong to the +heroic order of graveyard art, we Scotch stand, to my fancy, +highest among nations in the matter of grimly illustrating +death. We seem to love for their own sake the emblems of +time and the great change; and even around country churches you +will find a wonderful exhibition of skulls, and crossbones, and +noseless angels, and trumpets pealing for the Judgment Day. +Every mason was a pedestrian Holbein: he had a deep consciousness +of death, and loved to put its terrors pithily before the +churchyard loiterer; he was brimful of rough hints upon +mortality, and any dead farmer was seized upon to be a +text. The classical examples of this art are in +Greyfriars. In their time, these were doubtless costly +monuments, and reckoned of a very elegant proportion by +contemporaries; and now, when the elegance is not so apparent, +the significance remains. You may perhaps look with a smile +on the profusion of Latin mottoes—some crawling endwise up +the shaft of a pillar, some issuing on a scroll from +angels’ trumpets—on the emblematic horrors, the +figures rising headless from the grave, and all the traditional +ingenuities in which it pleased our fathers to set forth their +sorrow for the dead and their sense of earthly mutability. +But it is not a hearty sort of mirth. Each ornament may +have been executed by the merriest apprentice, whistling as he +plied the mallet; but the original meaning of each, and the +combined effect of so many of them in this quiet enclosure, is +serious to the point of melancholy.</p> +<p>Round a great part of the circuit, houses of a low class +present their backs to the churchyard. Only a few inches +separate the living from the dead. Here, a window is partly +blocked up by the pediment of a tomb; there, where the street +falls far below the level of the graves, a chimney has been +trained up the back of a monument, and a red pot looks vulgarly +over from behind. A damp smell of the graveyard finds its +way into houses where workmen sit at meat. Domestic life on +a small scale goes forward visibly at the windows. The very +solitude and stillness of the enclosure, which lies apart from +the town’s traffic, serves to accentuate the +contrast. As you walk upon the graves, you see children +scattering crumbs to feed the sparrows; you hear people singing +or washing dishes, or the sound of tears and castigation; the +linen on a clothes-pole flaps against funereal sculpture; or +perhaps the cat slips over the lintel and descends on a memorial +urn. And as there is nothing else astir, these incongruous +sights and noises take hold on the attention and exaggerate the +sadness of the place.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p55b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Greyfriars" +title= +"Greyfriars" +src="images/p55s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Greyfriars is continually overrun by cats. I have seen +one afternoon, as many as thirteen of them seated on the grass +beside old Milne, the Master Builder, all sleek and fat, and +complacently blinking, as if they had fed upon strange +meats. Old Milne was chaunting with the saints, as we may +hope, and cared little for the company about his grave; but I +confess the spectacle had an ugly side for me; and I was glad to +step forward and raise my eyes to where the Castle and the roofs +of the Old Town, and the spire of the Assembly Hall, stood +deployed against the sky with the colourless precision of +engraving. An open outlook is to be desired from a +churchyard, and a sight of the sky and some of the world’s +beauty relieves a mind from morbid thoughts.</p> +<p>I shall never forget one visit. It was a grey, dropping +day; the grass was strung with rain-drops; and the people in the +houses kept hanging out their shirts and petticoats and angrily +taking them in again, as the weather turned from wet to fair and +back again. A grave-digger, and a friend of his, a gardener +from the country, accompanied me into one after another of the +cells and little courtyards in which it gratified the wealthy of +old days to enclose their old bones from neighbourhood. In +one, under a sort of shrine, we found a forlorn human effigy, +very realistically executed down to the detail of his ribbed +stockings, and holding in his hand a ticket with the date of his +demise. He looked most pitiful and ridiculous, shut up by +himself in his aristocratic precinct, like a bad old boy or an +inferior forgotten deity under a new dispensation; the burdocks +grew familiarly about his feet, the rain dripped all round him; +and the world maintained the most entire indifference as to who +he was or whither he had gone. In another, a vaulted tomb, +handsome externally but horrible inside with damp and cobwebs, +there were three mounds of black earth and an uncovered thigh +bone. This was the place of interment, it appeared, of a +family with whom the gardener had been long in service. He +was among old acquaintances. ‘This’ll be Miss +Marg’et’s,’ said he, giving the bone a friendly +kick. ‘The auld ---!’ I have always an +uncomfortable feeling in a graveyard, at sight of so many tombs +to perpetuate memories best forgotten; but I never had the +impression so strongly as that day. People had been at some +expense in both these cases: to provoke a melancholy feeling of +derision in the one, and an insulting epithet in the other. +The proper inscription for the most part of mankind, I began to +think, is the cynical jeer, <i>cras tibi</i>. That, if +anything, will stop the mouth of a carper; since it both admits +the worst and carries the war triumphantly into the enemy’s +camp.</p> +<p>Greyfriars is a place of many associations. There was +one window in a house at the lower end, now demolished, which was +pointed out to me by the gravedigger as a spot of legendary +interest. Burke, the resurrection man, infamous for so many +murders at five shillings a-head, used to sit thereat, with pipe +and nightcap, to watch burials going forward on the green. +In a tomb higher up, which must then have been but newly +finished, John Knox, according to the same informant, had taken +refuge in a turmoil of the Reformation. Behind the church +is the haunted mausoleum of Sir George Mackenzie: Bloody +Mackenzie, Lord Advocate in the Covenanting troubles and author +of some pleasing sentiments on toleration. Here, in the +last century, an old Heriot’s Hospital boy once harboured +from the pursuit of the police. The Hospital is next door +to Greyfriars—a courtly building among lawns, where, on +Founder’s Day, you may see a multitude of children playing +Kiss-in-the-Ring and Round the Mulberry-bush. Thus, when +the fugitive had managed to conceal himself in the tomb, his old +schoolmates had a hundred opportunities to bring him food; and +there he lay in safety till a ship was found to smuggle him +abroad. But his must have been indeed a heart of brass, to +lie all day and night alone with the dead persecutor; and other +lads were far from emulating him in courage. When a +man’s soul is certainly in hell, his body will scarce lie +quiet in a tomb however costly; some time or other the door must +open, and the reprobate come forth in the abhorred garments of +the grave. It was thought a high piece of prowess to knock +at the Lord Advocate’s mausoleum and challenge him to +appear. ‘Bluidy Mackingie, come oot if ye +dar’!’ sang the fool-hardy urchins. But Sir +George had other affairs on hand; and the author of an essay on +toleration continues to sleep peacefully among the many whom he +so intolerantly helped to slay.</p> +<p> +<a href="images/p60b.jpg"> +<img class='floatright' alt= +"The Grassmarket" +title= +"The Grassmarket" +src="images/p60s.jpg" /> +</a>For this <i>infelix campus</i>, as it is dubbed in one of its +own inscriptions—an inscription over which Dr. Johnson +passed a critical eye—is in many ways sacred to the memory +of the men whom Mackenzie persecuted. It was here, on the +flat tombstones, that the Covenant was signed by an enthusiastic +people. In the long arm of the church-yard that extends to +Lauriston, the prisoners from Bothwell Bridge—fed on bread +and water and guarded, life for life, by vigilant +marksmen—lay five months looking for the scaffold or the +plantations. And while the good work was going forward in +the Grassmarket, idlers in Greyfriars might have heard the throb +of the military drums that drowned the voices of the +martyrs. Nor is this all: for down in the corner farthest +from Sir George, there stands a monument dedicated, in uncouth +Covenanting verse, to all who lost their lives in that +contention. There is no moorsman shot in a snow shower +beside Irongray or Co’monell; there is not one of the two +hundred who were drowned off the Orkneys; nor so much as a poor, +over-driven, Covenanting slave in the American plantations; but +can lay claim to a share in that memorial, and, if such things +interest just men among the shades, can boast he has a monument +on earth as well as Julius Cæsar or the Pharaohs. +Where they may all lie, I know not. Far-scattered bones, +indeed! But if the reader cares to learn how some of +them—or some part of some of them—found their way at +length to such honourable sepulture, let him listen to the words +of one who was their comrade in life and their apologist when +they were dead. Some of the insane controversial matter I +omit, as well as some digressions, but leave the rest in Patrick +Walker’s language and orthography:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The never to be forgotten Mr. <i>James +Renwick</i> told me, that he was Witness to their Public Murder +at the <i>Gallowlee</i>, between <i>Leith</i> and +<i>Edinburgh</i>, when he saw the Hangman hash and hagg off all +their Five Heads, with <i>Patrick Foreman’s</i> Right Hand: +Their Bodies were all buried at the Gallows Foot; their Heads, +with <i>Patrick’s</i> Hand, were brought and put upon five +Pikes on the <i>Pleasaunce-Port</i>. . . . Mr. <i>Renwick</i> +told me also that it was the first public Action that his Hand +was at, to conveen Friends, and lift their murthered Bodies, and +carried them to the West Churchyard of +<i>Edinburgh</i>,’—not Greyfriars, this +time,—‘and buried them there. Then they came +about the City . . . . and took down these Five Heads and that +Hand; and Day being come, they went quickly up the +<i>Pleasaunce</i>; and when they came to <i>Lauristoun</i> Yards, +upon the South-side of the City, they durst not venture, being so +light, to go and bury their Heads with their Bodies, which they +designed; it being present Death, if any of them had been +found. <i>Alexander Tweedie</i>, a Friend, being with them, +who at that Time was Gardner in these Yards, concluded to bury +them in his Yard, being in a Box (wrapped in Linen), where they +lay 45 Years except 3 Days, being executed upon the 10th of +<i>October</i> 1681, and found the 7th Day of October 1726. +That Piece of Ground lay for some Years unlaboured; and trenching +it, the Gardner found them, which affrighted him the Box was +consumed. Mr. <i>Schaw</i>, the Owner of these Yards, +caused lift them, and lay them upon a Table in his Summer-house: +Mr. <i>Schaw’s</i> mother was so kind, as to cut out a +Linen-cloth, and cover them. They lay Twelve Days there, +where all had Access to see them. <i>Alexander Tweedie</i>, +the foresaid Gardner, said, when dying, There was a Treasure hid +in his Yard, but neither Gold nor Silver. <i>Daniel +Tweedie</i>, his Son, came along with me to that Yard, and told +me that his Father planted a white Rose-bush above them, and +farther down the Yard a red Rose-bush, which were more fruitful +than any other Bush in the Yard. . . . Many came’—to +see the heads—‘out of Curiosity; yet I rejoiced to +see so many concerned grave Men and Women favouring the Dust of +our Martyrs. There were Six of us concluded to bury them +upon the Nineteenth Day of <i>October</i> 1726, and every One of +us to acquaint Friends of the Day and Hour, being +<i>Wednesday</i>, the Day of the Week on which most of them were +executed, and at 4 of the Clock at Night, being the Hour that +most of them went to their resting Graves. We caused make a +compleat Coffin for them in Black, with four Yards of fine Linen, +the way that our Martyrs Corps were managed. . . . Accordingly we +kept the aforesaid Day and Hour, and doubled the Linen, and laid +the Half of it below them, their nether jaws being parted from +their Heads; but being young Men, their Teeth remained. All +were Witness to the Holes in each of their Heads, which the +Hangman broke with his Hammer; and according to the Bigness of +their Sculls, we laid the Jaws to them, and drew the other Half +of the Linen above them, and stufft the Coffin with +Shavings. Some prest hard to go thorow the chief Parts of +the City as was done at the Revolution; but this we refused, +considering that it looked airy and frothy, to make such Show of +them, and inconsistent with the solid serious Observing of such +an affecting, surprizing unheard-of Dispensation: But took the +ordinary Way of other Burials from that Place, to wit, we went +east the Back of the Wall, and in at <i>Bristo-Port</i>, and down +the Way to the Head of the <i>Cowgate</i>, and turned up to the +Church-yard, where they were interred closs to the Martyrs Tomb, +with the greatest Multitude of People Old and Young, Men and +Women, Ministers and others, that ever I saw together.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And so there they were at last, in ‘their resting +graves.’ So long as men do their duty, even if it be +greatly in a misapprehension, they will be leading pattern lives; +and whether or not they come to lie beside a martyrs’ +monument, we may be sure they will find a safe haven somewhere in +the providence of God. It is not well to think of death, +unless we temper the thought with that of heroes who despised +it. Upon what ground, is of small account; if it be only +the bishop who was burned for his faith in the antipodes, his +memory lightens the heart and makes us walk undisturbed among +graves. And so the martyrs’ monument is a wholesome, +heartsome spot in the field of the dead; and as we look upon it, +a brave influence comes to us from the land of those who have won +their discharge and, in another phrase of Patrick Walker’s, +got ‘cleanly off the stage.’</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI. NEW TOWN—TOWN AND COUNTRY.</h2> +<p>It is as much a matter of course to decry the New Town as to +exalt the Old; and the most celebrated authorities have picked +out this quarter as the very emblem of what is condemnable in +architecture. Much may be said, much indeed has been said, +upon the text; but to the unsophisticated, who call anything +pleasing if it only pleases them, the New Town of Edinburgh +seems, in itself, not only gay and airy, but highly +picturesque. An old skipper, invincibly ignorant of all +theories of the sublime and beautiful, once propounded as his +most radiant notion for Paradise: ‘The new town of +Edinburgh, with the wind a matter of a point free.’ +He has now gone to that sphere where all good tars are promised +pleasant weather in the song, and perhaps his thoughts fly +somewhat higher. But there are bright and temperate +days—with soft air coming from the inland hills, military +music sounding bravely from the hollow of the gardens, the flags +all waving on the palaces of Princes Street—when I have +seen the town through a sort of glory, and shaken hands in +sentiment with the old sailor. And indeed, for a man who +has been much tumbled round Orcadian skerries, what scene could +be more agreeable to witness? On such a day, the valley +wears a surprising air of festival. It seems (I do not know +how else to put my meaning) as if it were a trifle too good to be +true. It is what Paris ought to be. It has the scenic +quality that would best set off a life of unthinking, open-air +diversion. It was meant by nature for the realisation of +the society of comic operas. And you can imagine, if the +climate were but towardly, how all the world and his wife would +flock into these gardens in the cool of the evening, to hear +cheerful music, to sip pleasant drinks, to see the moon rise from +behind Arthur’s Seat and shine upon the spires and +monuments and the green tree-tops in the valley. Alas! and +the next morning the rain is splashing on the windows, and the +passengers flee along Princes Street before the galloping +squalls.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p67b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Royal Institution" +title= +"The Royal Institution" +src="images/p67s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>It cannot be denied that the original design was faulty and +short-sighted, and did not fully profit by the capabilities of +the situation. The architect was essentially a town bird, +and he laid out the modern city with a view to street scenery, +and to street scenery alone. The country did not enter into +his plan; he had never lifted his eyes to the hills. If he +had so chosen, every street upon the northern slope might have +been a noble terrace and commanded an extensive and beautiful +view. But the space has been too closely built; many of the +houses front the wrong way, intent, like the Man with the +Muck-Rake, on what is not worth observation, and standing +discourteously back-foremost in the ranks; and, in a word, it is +too often only from attic-windows, or here and there at a +crossing, that you can get a look beyond the city upon its +diversified surroundings. But perhaps it is all the more +surprising, to come suddenly on a corner, and see a perspective +of a mile or more of falling street, and beyond that woods and +villas, and a blue arm of sea, and the hills upon the farther +side.</p> +<p>Fergusson, our Edinburgh poet, Burns’s model, once saw a +butterfly at the Town Cross; and the sight inspired him with a +worthless little ode. This painted country man, the dandy +of the rose garden, looked far abroad in such a humming +neighbourhood; and you can fancy what moral considerations a +youthful poet would supply. But the incident, in a fanciful +sort of way, is characteristic of the place. Into no other +city does the sight of the country enter so far; if you do not +meet a butterfly, you shall certainly catch a glimpse of far-away +trees upon your walk; and the place is full of theatre tricks in +the way of scenery. You peep under an arch, you descend +stairs that look as if they would land you in a cellar, you turn +to the back-window of a grimy tenement in a lane:—and +behold! you are face-to-face with distant and bright +prospects. You turn a corner, and there is the sun going +down into the Highland hills. You look down an alley, and +see ships tacking for the Baltic.</p> +<p>For the country people to see Edinburgh on her hill-tops, is +one thing; it is another for the citizen, from the thick of his +affairs, to overlook the country. It should be a genial and +ameliorating influence in life; it should prompt good thoughts +and remind him of Nature’s unconcern: that he can watch +from day to day, as he trots officeward, how the Spring green +brightens in the wood or the field grows black under a moving +ploughshare. I have been tempted, in this connexion, to +deplore the slender faculties of the human race, with its +penny-whistle of a voice, its dull cars, and its narrow range of +sight. If you could see as people are to see in heaven, if +you had eyes such as you can fancy for a superior race, if you +could take clear note of the objects of vision, not only a few +yards, but a few miles from where you stand:—think how +agreeably your sight would be entertained, how pleasantly your +thoughts would be diversified, as you walked the Edinburgh +streets! For you might pause, in some business perplexity, +in the midst of the city traffic, and perhaps catch the eye of a +shepherd as he sat down to breathe upon a heathery shoulder of +the Pentlands; or perhaps some urchin, clambering in a country +elm, would put aside the leaves and show you his flushed and +rustic visage; or a fisher racing seawards, with the tiller under +his elbow, and the sail sounding in the wind, would fling you a +salutation from between Anst’er and the May.</p> +<p>To be old is not the same thing as to be picturesque; nor +because the Old Town bears a strange physiognomy, does it at all +follow that the New Town shall look commonplace. Indeed, +apart from antique houses, it is curious how much description +would apply commonly to either. The same sudden accidents +of ground, a similar dominating site above the plain, and the +same superposition of one rank of society over another, are to be +observed in both. Thus, the broad and comely approach to +Princes Street from the east, lined with hotels and public +offices, makes a leap over the gorge of the Low Calton; if you +cast a glance over the parapet, you look direct into that sunless +and disreputable confluent of Leith Street; and the same tall +houses open upon both thoroughfares. This is only the New +Town passing overhead above its own cellars; walking, so to +speak, over its own children, as is the way of cities and the +human race. But at the Dean Bridge, you may behold a +spectacle of a more novel order. The river runs at the +bottom of a deep valley, among rocks and between gardens; the +crest of either bank is occupied by some of the most commodious +streets and crescents in the modern city; and a handsome bridge +unites the two summits. Over this, every afternoon, private +carriages go spinning by, and ladies with card-cases pass to and +fro about the duties of society. And yet down below, you +may still see, with its mills and foaming weir, the little rural +village of Dean. Modern improvement has gone overhead on +its high-level viaduct; and the extended city has cleanly +overleapt, and left unaltered, what was once the summer retreat +of its comfortable citizens. Every town embraces hamlets in +its growth; Edinburgh herself has embraced a good few; but it is +strange to see one still surviving—and to see it some +hundreds of feet below your path. Is it Torre del Greco +that is built above buried Herculaneum? Herculaneum was +dead at least; but the sun still shines upon the roofs of Dean; +the smoke still rises thriftily from its chimneys; the dusty +miller comes to his door, looks at the gurgling water, hearkens +to the turning wheel and the birds about the shed, and perhaps +whistles an air of his own to enrich the symphony—for all +the world as if Edinburgh were still the old Edinburgh on the +Castle Hill, and Dean were still the quietest of hamlets buried a +mile or so in the green country.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p73b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"In the Village of Dean" +title= +"In the Village of Dean" +src="images/p73s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>It is not so long ago since magisterial David Hume lent the +authority of his example to the exodus from the Old Town, and +took up his new abode in a street which is still (so oddly may a +jest become perpetuated) known as Saint David Street. Nor +is the town so large but a holiday schoolboy may harry a +bird’s nest within half a mile of his own door. There +are places that still smell of the plough in memory’s +nostrils. Here, one had heard a blackbird on a hawthorn; +there, another was taken on summer evenings to eat strawberries +and cream; and you have seen a waving wheatfield on the site of +your present residence. The memories of an Edinburgh boy +are but partly memories of the town. I look back with +delight on many an escalade of garden walls; many a ramble among +lilacs full of piping birds; many an exploration in obscure +quarters that were neither town nor country; and I think that +both for my companions and myself, there was a special interest, +a point of romance, and a sentiment as of foreign travel, when we +hit in our excursions on the butt-end of some former hamlet, and +found a few rustic cottages embedded among streets and +squares. The tunnel to the Scotland Street Station, the +sight of the trains shooting out of its dark maw with the two +guards upon the brake, the thought of its length and the many +ponderous edifices and open thoroughfares above, were certainly +things of paramount impressiveness to a young mind. It was +a subterranean passage, although of a larger bore than we were +accustomed to in Ainsworth’s novels; and these two words, +‘subterreanean passage,’ were in themselves an +irresistible attraction, and seemed to bring us nearer in spirit +to the heroes we loved and the black rascals we secretly aspired +to imitate. To scale the Castle Rock from West Princes +Street Gardens, and lay a triumphal hand against the rampart +itself, was to taste a high order of romantic pleasure. And +there are other sights and exploits which crowd back upon my mind +under a very strong illumination of remembered pleasure. +But the effect of not one of them all will compare with the +discoverer’s joy, and the sense of old Time and his slow +changes on the face of this earth, with which I explored such +corners as Cannonmills or Water Lane, or the nugget of cottages +at Broughton Market. They were more rural than the open +country, and gave a greater impression of antiquity than the +oldest <i>land</i> upon the High Street. They too, like +Fergusson’s butterfly, had a quaint air of having wandered +far from their own place; they looked abashed and homely, with +their gables and their creeping plants, their outside stairs and +running mill-streams; there were corners that smelt like the end +of the country garden where I spent my Aprils; and the people +stood to gossip at their doors, as they might have done in +Colinton or Cramond.</p> +<p>In a great measure we may, and shall, eradicate this haunting +flavour of the country. The last elm is dead in Elm Row; +and the villas and the workmen’s quarters spread apace on +all the borders of the city. We can cut down the trees; we +can bury the grass under dead paving-stones; we can drive brisk +streets through all our sleepy quarters; and we may forget the +stories and the playgrounds of our boyhood. But we have +some possessions that not even the infuriate zeal of builders can +utterly abolish and destroy. Nothing can abolish the hills, +unless it be a cataclysm of nature which shall subvert Edinburgh +Castle itself and lay all her florid structures in the +dust. And as long as we have the hills and the Firth, we +have a famous heritage to leave our children. Our windows, +at no expense to us, are most artfully stained to represent a +landscape. And when the Spring comes round, and the +hawthorns begin to flower, and the meadows to smell of young +grass, even in the thickest of our streets, the country hilltops +find out a young man’s eyes, and set his heart beating for +travel and pure air.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII. THE VILLA QUARTERS.</h2> +<p>Mr. Ruskin’s denunciation of the New Town of Edinburgh +includes, as I have heard it repeated, nearly all the stone and +lime we have to show. Many however find a grand air and +something settled and imposing in the better parts; and upon +many, as I have said, the confusion of styles induces an +agreeable stimulation of the mind. But upon the subject of +our recent villa architecture, I am frankly ready to mingle my +tears with Mr. Ruskin’s, and it is a subject which makes +one envious of his large declamatory and controversial +eloquence.</p> +<p>Day by day, one new villa, one new object of offence, is added +to another; all around Newington and Morningside, the dismallest +structures keep springing up like mushrooms; the pleasant hills +are loaded with them, each impudently squatted in its garden, +each roofed and carrying chimneys like a house. And yet a +glance of an eye discovers their true character. They are +not houses; for they were not designed with a view to human +habitation, and the internal arrangements are, as they tell me, +fantastically unsuited to the needs of man. They are not +buildings; for you can scarcely say a thing is built where every +measurement is in clamant disproportion with its neighbour. +They belong to no style of art, only to a form of business much +to be regretted.</p> +<p>Why should it be cheaper to erect a structure where the size +of the windows bears no rational relation to the size of the +front? Is there any profit in a misplaced +chimney-stalk? Does a hard-working, greedy builder gain +more on a monstrosity than on a decent cottage of equal +plainness? Frankly, we should say, No. Bricks may be +omitted, and green timber employed, in the construction of even a +very elegant design; and there is no reason why a chimney should +be made to vent, because it is so situated as to look comely from +without. On the other hand, there is a noble way of being +ugly: a high-aspiring fiasco like the fall of Lucifer. +There are daring and gaudy buildings that manage to be offensive, +without being contemptible; and we know that ‘fools rush in +where angels fear to tread.’ But to aim at making a +common-place villa, and to make it insufferably ugly in each +particular; to attempt the homeliest achievement, and to attain +the bottom of derided failure; not to have any theory but profit +and yet, at an equal expense, to outstrip all competitors in the +art of conceiving and rendering permanent deformity; and to do +all this in what is, by nature, one of the most agreeable +neighbourhoods in Britain:—what are we to say, but that +this also is a distinction, hard to earn although not greatly +worshipful?</p> +<p>Indifferent buildings give pain to the sensitive; but these +things offend the plainest taste. It is a danger which +threatens the amenity of the town; and as this eruption keeps +spreading on our borders, we have ever the farther to walk among +unpleasant sights, before we gain the country air. If the +population of Edinburgh were a living, autonomous body, it would +arise like one man and make night hideous with arson; the +builders and their accomplices would be driven to work, like the +Jews of yore, with the trowel in one hand and the defensive +cutlass in the other; and as soon as one of these masonic wonders +had been consummated, right-minded iconoclasts should fall +thereon and make an end of it at once.</p> +<p>Possibly these words may meet the eye of a builder or +two. It is no use asking them to employ an architect; for +that would be to touch them in a delicate quarter, and its use +would largely depend on what architect they were minded to call +in. But let them get any architect in the world to point +out any reasonably well-proportioned villa, not his own design; +and let them reproduce that model to satiety.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII. THE CALTON HILL.</h2> +<p>The east of new Edinburgh is guarded by a craggy hill, of no +great elevation, which the town embraces. The old London +road runs on one side of it; while the New Approach, leaving it +on the other hand, completes the circuit. You mount by +stairs in a cutting of the rock to find yourself in a field of +monuments. Dugald Stewart has the honours of situation and +architecture; Burns is memorialised lower down upon a spur; Lord +Nelson, as befits a sailor, gives his name to the top-gallant of +the Calton Hill. This latter erection has been differently +and yet, in both cases, aptly compared to a telescope and a +butter-churn; comparisons apart, it ranks among the vilest of +men’s handiworks. But the chief feature is an +unfinished range of columns, ‘the Modern Ruin’ as it +has been called, an imposing object from far and near, and giving +Edinburgh, even from the sea, that false air; of a Modern Athens +which has earned for her so many slighting speeches. It was +meant to be a National Monument; and its present state is a very +suitable monument to certain national characteristics. The +old Observatory—a quaint brown building on the edge of the +steep—and the new Observatory—a classical edifice +with a dome—occupy the central portion of the summit. +All these are scattered on a green turf, browsed over by some +sheep.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p82b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Calton Hill" +title= +"The Calton Hill" +src="images/p82s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The scene suggests reflections on fame and on man’s +injustice to the dead. You see Dugald Stewart rather more +handsomely commemorated than Burns. Immediately below, in +the Canongate churchyard, lies Robert Fergusson, Burns’s +master in his art, who died insane while yet a stripling; and if +Dugald Stewart has been somewhat too boisterously acclaimed, the +Edinburgh poet, on the other hand, is most unrighteously +forgotten. The votaries of Burns, a crew too common in all +ranks in Scotland and more remarkable for number than discretion, +eagerly suppress all mention of the lad who handed to him the +poetic impulse and, up to the time when he grew famous, continued +to influence him in his manner and the choice of subjects. +Burns himself not only acknowledged his debt in a fragment of +autobiography, but erected a tomb over the grave in Canongate +churchyard. This was worthy of an artist, but it was done +in vain; and although I think I have read nearly all the +biographies of Burns, I cannot remember one in which the modesty +of nature was not violated, or where Fergusson was not sacrificed +to the credit of his follower’s originality. There is +a kind of gaping admiration that would fain roll Shakespeare and +Bacon into one, to have a bigger thing to gape at; and a class of +men who cannot edit one author without disparaging all +others. They are indeed mistaken if they think to please +the great originals; and whoever puts Fergusson right with fame, +cannot do better than dedicate his labours to the memory of +Burns, who will be the best delighted of the dead.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p85b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Queen Mary’s Bath" +title= +"Queen Mary’s Bath" +src="images/p85s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Of all places for a view, this Calton Hill is perhaps the +best; since you can see the Castle, which you lose from the +Castle, and Arthur’s Seat, which you cannot see from +Arthur’s Seat. It is the place to stroll on one of +those days of sunshine and east wind which are so common in our +more than temperate summer. The breeze comes off the sea, +with a little of the freshness, and that touch of chill, peculiar +to the quarter, which is delightful to certain very ruddy +organizations and greatly the reverse to the majority of +mankind. It brings with it a faint, floating haze, a +cunning decolourizer, although not thick enough to obscure +outlines near at hand. But the haze lies more thickly to +windward at the far end of Musselburgh Bay; and over the Links of +Aberlady and Berwick Law and the hump of the Bass Rock it assumes +the aspect of a bank of thin sea fog.</p> +<p> +<a href="images/p87.jpg"> +<img class='floatleft' alt= +"Arthur’s Seat" +title= +"Arthur’s Seat" +src="images/p87.jpg" /> +</a>Immediately underneath upon the south, you command the yards +of the High School, and the towers and courts of the new +Jail—a large place, castellated to the extent of folly, +standing by itself on the edge of a steep cliff, and often +joyfully hailed by tourists as the Castle. In the one, you +may perhaps see female prisoners taking exercise like a string of +nuns; in the other, schoolboys running at play and their shadows +keeping step with them. From the bottom of the valley, a +gigantic chimney rises almost to the level of the eye, a taller +and a shapelier edifice than Nelson’s Monument. Look +a little farther, and there is Holyrood Palace, with its Gothic +frontal and ruined abbey, and the red sentry pacing smartly too +and fro before the door like a mechanical figure in a +panorama. By way of an outpost, you can single out the +little peak-roofed lodge, over which Rizzio’s murderers +made their escape and where Queen Mary herself, according to +gossip, bathed in white wine to entertain her loveliness. +Behind and overhead, lie the Queen’s Park, from +Muschat’s Cairn to Dumbiedykes, St. Margaret’s Loch, +and the long wall of Salisbury Crags: and thence, by knoll and +rocky bulwark and precipitous slope, the eye rises to the top of +Arthur’s Seat, a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue +of its bold design. This upon your left. Upon the +right, the roofs and spires of the Old Town climb one above +another to where the citadel prints its broad bulk and jagged +crown of bastions on the western sky.—Perhaps it is now one +in the afternoon; and at the same instant of time, a ball rises +to the summit of Nelson’s flagstaff close at hand, and, far +away, a puff of smoke followed by a report bursts from the +half-moon battery at the Castle. This is the time-gun by +which people set their watches, as far as the sea coast or in +hill farms upon the Pentlands.—To complete the view, the +eye enfilades Princes Street, black with traffic, and has a broad +look over the valley between the Old Town and the New: here, full +of railway trains and stepped over by the high North Bridge upon +its many columns, and there, green with trees and gardens.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p89b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Back of Greenside" +title= +"Back of Greenside" +src="images/p89s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>On the north, the Calton Hill is neither so abrupt in itself +nor has it so exceptional an outlook; and yet even here it +commands a striking prospect. A gully separates it from the +New Town. This is Greenside, where witches were burned and +tournaments held in former days. Down that almost +precipitous bank, Bothwell launched his horse, and so first, as +they say, attracted the bright eyes of Mary. It is now +tesselated with sheets and blankets out to dry, and the sound of +people beating carpets is rarely absent. Beyond all this, +the suburbs run out to Leith; Leith camps on the seaside with her +forest of masts; Leith roads are full of ships at anchor; the sun +picks out the white pharos upon Inchkeith Island; the Firth +extends on either hand from the Ferry to the May; the towns of +Fifeshire sit, each in its bank of blowing smoke, along the +opposite coast; and the hills enclose the view, except to the +farthest east, where the haze of the horizon rests upon the open +sea. There lies the road to Norway: a dear road for Sir +Patrick Spens and his Scots Lords; and yonder smoke on the hither +side of Largo Law is Aberdour, from whence they sailed to seek a +queen for Scotland.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘O lang, lang, may the ladies sit,<br /> + Wi’ their fans into their hand,<br /> +Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spens<br /> + Come sailing to the land!’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The sight of the sea, even from a city, will bring thoughts of +storm and sea disaster. The sailors’ wives of Leith +and the fisherwomen of Cockenzie, not sitting languorously with +fans, but crowding to the tail of the harbour with a shawl about +their ears, may still look vainly for brave Scotsmen who will +return no more, or boats that have gone on their last +fishing. Since Sir Patrick sailed from Aberdour, what a +multitude have gone down in the North Sea! Yonder is +Auldhame, where the London smack went ashore and wreckers cut the +rings from ladies’ fingers; and a few miles round Fife Ness +is the fatal Inchcape, now a star of guidance; and the lee shore +to the east of the Inchcape, is that Forfarshire coast where +Mucklebackit sorrowed for his son.</p> +<p>These are the main features of the scene roughly +sketched. How they are all tilted by the inclination of the +ground, how each stands out in delicate relief against the rest, +what manifold detail, and play of sun and shadow, animate and +accentuate the picture, is a matter for a person on the spot, and +turning swiftly on his heels, to grasp and bind together in one +comprehensive look. It is the character of such a prospect, +to be full of change and of things moving. The multiplicity +embarrasses the eye; and the mind, among so much, suffers itself +to grow absorbed with single points. You remark a tree in a +hedgerow, or follow a cart along a country road. You turn +to the city, and see children, dwarfed by distance into pigmies, +at play about suburban doorsteps; you have a glimpse upon a +thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you note ridge +after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind +another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of +roofs. At one of the innumerable windows, you watch a +figure moving; on one of the multitude of roofs, you watch +clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes a run and +scatters the smoke; bells are heard, far and near, faint and +loud, to tell the hour; or perhaps a bird goes dipping evenly +over the housetops, like a gull across the waves. And here +you are in the meantime, on this pastoral hillside, among +nibbling sheep and looked upon by monumental buildings.</p> +<p>Return thither on some clear, dark, moonless night, with a +ring of frost in the air, and only a star or two set sparsedly in +the vault of heaven; and you will find a sight as stimulating as +the hoariest summit of the Alps. The solitude seems +perfect; the patient astronomer, flat on his back under the +Observatory dome and spying heaven’s secrets, is your only +neighbour; and yet from all round you there come up the dull hum +of the city, the tramp of countless people marching out of time, +the rattle of carriages and the continuous keen jingle of the +tramway bells. An hour or so before, the gas was turned on; +lamplighters scoured the city; in every house, from kitchen to +attic, the windows kindled and gleamed forth into the dusk. +And so now, although the town lies blue and darkling on her +hills, innumerable spots of the bright element shine far and near +along the pavements and upon the high facades. Moving +lights of the railway pass and repass below the stationary lights +upon the bridge. Lights burn in the jail. Lights burn +high up in the tall <i>lands</i> and on the Castle turrets, they +burn low down in Greenside or along the Park. They run out +one beyond the other into the dark country. They walk in a +procession down to Leith, and shine singly far along Leith +Pier. Thus, the plan of the city and her suburbs is mapped +out upon the ground of blackness, as when a child pricks a +drawing full of pinholes and exposes it before a candle; not the +darkest night of winter can conceal her high station and fanciful +design; every evening in the year she proceeds to illuminate +herself in honour of her own beauty; and as if to complete the +scheme—or rather as if some prodigal Pharaoh were beginning +to extend to the adjacent sea and country—half-way over to +Fife, there is an outpost of light upon Inchkeith, and far to +seaward, yet another on the May.</p> +<p>And while you are looking, across upon the Castle Hill, the +drums and bugles begin to recall the scattered garrison; the air +thrills with the sound; the bugles sing aloud; and the last +rising flourish mounts and melts into the darkness like a star: a +martial swan-song, fitly rounding in the labours of the day.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IX. WINTER AND NEW YEAR.</h2> +<p>The Scotch dialect is singularly rich in terms of reproach +against the winter wind. <i>Snell</i>, <i>blae</i>, +<i>nirly</i>, and <i>scowthering</i>, are four of these +significant vocables; they are all words that carry a shiver with +them; and for my part, as I see them aligned before me on the +page, I am persuaded that a big wind comes tearing over the Firth +from Burntisland and the northern hills; I think I can hear it +howl in the chimney, and as I set my face northwards, feel its +smarting kisses on my cheek. Even in the names of places +there is often a desolate, inhospitable sound; and I remember two +from the near neighbourhood of Edinburgh, Cauldhame and +Blaw-weary, that would promise but starving comfort to their +inhabitants. The inclemency of heaven, which has thus +endowed the language of Scotland with words, has also largely +modified the spirit of its poetry. Both poverty and a +northern climate teach men the love of the hearth and the +sentiment of the family; and the latter, in its own right, +inclines a poet to the praise of strong waters. In +Scotland, all our singers have a stave or two for blazing fires +and stout potations:—to get indoors out of the wind and to +swallow something hot to the stomach, are benefits so easily +appreciated where they dwelt!</p> +<p>And this is not only so in country districts where the +shepherd must wade in the snow all day after his flock, but in +Edinburgh itself, and nowhere more apparently stated than in the +works of our Edinburgh poet, Fergusson. He was a delicate +youth, I take it, and willingly slunk from the robustious winter +to an inn fire-side. Love was absent from his life, or only +present, if you prefer, in such a form that even the least +serious of Burns’s amourettes was ennobling by comparison; +and so there is nothing to temper the sentiment of indoor revelry +which pervades the poor boy’s verses. Although it is +characteristic of his native town, and the manners of its youth +to the present day, this spirit has perhaps done something to +restrict his popularity. He recalls a supper-party +pleasantry with something akin to tenderness; and sounds the +praises of the act of drinking as if it were virtuous, or at +least witty, in itself. The kindly jar, the warm atmosphere +of tavern parlours, and the revelry of lawyers’ clerks, do +not offer by themselves the materials of a rich existence. +It was not choice, so much as an external fate, that kept +Fergusson in this round of sordid pleasures. A Scot of +poetic temperament, and without religious exaltation, drops as if +by nature into the public-house. The picture may not be +pleasing; but what else is a man to do in this dog’s +weather?</p> +<p>To none but those who have themselves suffered the thing in +the body, can the gloom and depression of our Edinburgh winter be +brought home. For some constitutions there is something +almost physically disgusting in the bleak ugliness of easterly +weather; the wind wearies, the sickly sky depresses them; and +they turn back from their walk to avoid the aspect of the +unrefulgent sun going down among perturbed and pallid +mists. The days are so short that a man does much of his +business, and certainly all his pleasure, by the haggard glare of +gas lamps. The roads are as heavy as a fallow. People +go by, so drenched and draggle-tailed that I have often wondered +how they found the heart to undress. And meantime the wind +whistles through the town as if it were an open meadow; and if +you lie awake all night, you hear it shrieking and raving +overhead with a noise of shipwrecks and of falling houses. +In a word, life is so unsightly that there are times when the +heart turns sick in a man’s inside; and the look of a +tavern, or the thought of the warm, fire-lit study, is like the +touch of land to one who has been long struggling with the +seas.</p> +<p>As the weather hardens towards frost, the world begins to +improve for Edinburgh people. We enjoy superb, sub-arctic +sunsets, with the profile of the city stamped in indigo upon a +sky of luminous green. The wind may still be cold, but +there is a briskness in the air that stirs good blood. +People do not all look equally sour and downcast. They fall +into two divisions: one, the knight of the blue face and hollow +paunch, whom Winter has gotten by the vitals; the other well +lined with New-year’s fare, conscious of the touch of cold +on his periphery, but stepping through it by the glow of his +internal fires. Such an one I remember, triply cased in +grease, whom no extremity of temperature could vanquish. +‘Well,’ would be his jovial salutation, +‘here’s a sneezer!’ And the look of these +warm fellows is tonic, and upholds their drooping +fellow-townsmen. There is yet another class who do not +depend on corporal advantages, but support the winter in virtue +of a brave and merry heart. One shivering evening, cold +enough for frost but with too high a wind, and a little past +sundown, when the lamps were beginning to enlarge their circles +in the growing dusk, a brace of barefoot lassies were seen coming +eastward in the teeth of the wind. If the one was as much +as nine, the other was certainly not more than seven. They +were miserably clad; and the pavement was so cold, you would have +thought no one could lay a naked foot on it unflinching. +Yet they came along waltzing, if you please, while the elder sang +a tune to give them music. The person who saw this, and +whose heart was full of bitterness at the moment, pocketed a +reproof which has been of use to him ever since, and which he now +hands on, with his good wishes, to the reader.</p> +<p>At length, Edinburgh, with her satellite hills and all the +sloping country, are sheeted up in white. If it has +happened in the dark hours, nurses pluck their children out of +bed and run with them to some commanding window, whence they may +see the change that has been worked upon earth’s +face. ‘A’ the hills are covered wi’ +snaw,’ they sing, ‘and Winter’s noo come +fairly!’ And the children, marvelling at the silence +and the white landscape, find a spell appropriate to the season +in the words. The reverberation of the snow increases the +pale daylight, and brings all objects nearer the eye. The +Pentlands are smooth and glittering, with here and there the +black ribbon of a dry-stone dyke, and here and there, if there be +wind, a cloud of blowing snow upon a shoulder. The Firth +seems a leaden creek, that a man might almost jump across, +between well-powdered Lothian and well-powdered Fife. And +the effect is not, as in other cities, a thing of half a day; the +streets are soon trodden black, but the country keeps its virgin +white; and you have only to lift your eyes and look over miles of +country snow. An indescribable cheerfulness breathes about +the city; and the well-fed heart sits lightly and beats gaily in +the—bosom. It is New-year’s weather.</p> +<p>New-year’s Day, the great national festival, is a time +of family expansions and of deep carousal. Sometimes, by a +sore stoke of fate for this Calvinistic people, the year’s +anniversary fails upon a Sunday, when the public-houses are +inexorably closed, when singing and even whistling is banished +from our homes and highways, and the oldest toper feels called +upon to go to church. Thus pulled about, as if between two +loyalties, the Scotch have to decide many nice cases of +conscience, and ride the marches narrowly between the weekly and +the annual observance. A party of convivial musicians, next +door to a friend of mine, hung suspended in this manner on the +brink of their diversions. From ten o’clock on Sunday +night, my friend heard them tuning their instruments: and as the +hour of liberty drew near, each must have had his music open, his +bow in readiness across the fiddle, his foot already raised to +mark the time, and his nerves braced for execution; for hardly +had the twelfth stroke sounded from the earliest steeple, before +they had launced forth into a secular bravura.</p> +<p>Currant-loaf is now popular eating in all house-holds. +For weeks before the great morning, confectioners display stacks +of Scotch bun—a dense, black substance, inimical to +life—and full moons of shortbread adorned with mottoes of +peel or sugar-plum, in honour of the season and the family +affections. ‘Frae Auld Reekie,’ ‘A guid +New Year to ye a’,’ ‘For the Auld Folk at +Hame,’ are among the most favoured of these devices. +Can you not see the carrier, after half-a-day’s journey on +pinching hill-roads, draw up before a cottage in Teviotdale, or +perhaps in Manor Glen among the rowans, and the old people +receiving the parcel with moist eyes and a prayer for Jock or +Jean in the city? For at this season, on the threshold of +another year of calamity and stubborn conflict, men feel a need +to draw closer the links that unite them; they reckon the number +of their friends, like allies before a war; and the prayers grow +longer in the morning as the absent are recommended by name into +God’s keeping.</p> +<p>On the day itself, the shops are all shut as on a Sunday; only +taverns, toyshops, and other holiday magazines, keep open +doors. Every one looks for his handsel. The postman +and the lamplighters have left, at every house in their +districts, a copy of vernacular verses, asking and thanking in a +breath; and it is characteristic of Scotland that these verses +may have sometimes a touch of reality in detail or sentiment and +a measure of strength in the handling. All over the town, +you may see comforter’d schoolboys hasting to squander +their half-crowns. There are an infinity of visits to be +paid; all the world is in the street, except the daintier +classes; the sacramental greeting is heard upon all sides; Auld +Lang Syne is much in people’s mouths; and whisky and +shortbread are staple articles of consumption. From an +early hour a stranger will be impressed by the number of drunken +men; and by afternoon drunkenness has spread to the women. +With some classes of society, it is as much a matter of duty to +drink hard on New-year’s Day as to go to church on +Sunday. Some have been saving their wages for perhaps a +month to do the season honour. Many carry a whisky-bottle +in their pocket, which they will press with embarrassing effusion +on a perfect stranger. It is inexpedient to risk +one’s body in a cab, or not, at least, until after a +prolonged study of the driver. The streets, which are +thronged from end to end, become a place for delicate +pilotage. Singly or arm-in-arm, some speechless, others +noisy and quarrelsome, the votaries of the New Year go meandering +in and out and cannoning one against another; and now and again, +one falls and lies as he has fallen. Before night, so many +have gone to bed or the police office, that the streets seem +almost clearer. And as <i>guisards</i> and +<i>first-footers</i> are now not much seen except in country +places, when once the New Year has been rung in and proclaimed at +the Tron railings, the festivities begin to find their way +indoors and something like quiet returns upon the town. But +think, in these piled <i>lands</i>, of all the senseless snorers, +all the broken heads and empty pockets!</p> +<p>Of old, Edinburgh University was the scene of heroic +snowballing; and one riot obtained the epic honours of military +intervention. But the great generation, I am afraid, is at +an end; and even during my own college days, the spirit +appreciably declined. Skating and sliding, on the other +hand, are honoured more and more; and curling, being a creature +of the national genius, is little likely to be disregarded. +The patriotism that leads a man to eat Scotch bun will scarce +desert him at the curling-pond. Edinburgh, with its long, +steep pavements, is the proper home of sliders; many a happy +urchin can slide the whole way to school; and the profession of +errand-boy is transformed into a holiday amusement. As for +skating, there is scarce any city so handsomely provided. +Duddingstone Loch lies under the abrupt southern side of +Arthur’s Seat; in summer a shield of blue, with swans +sailing from the reeds; in winter, a field of ringing ice. +The village church sits above it on a green promontory; and the +village smoke rises from among goodly trees. At the church +gates, is the historical <i>joug</i>; a place of penance for the +neck of detected sinners, and the historical <i>louping-on +stane</i>, from which Dutch-built lairds and farmers climbed into +the saddle. Here Prince Charlie slept before the battle of +Prestonpans; and here Deacon Brodie, or one of his gang, stole a +plough coulter before the burglary in Chessel’s +Court. On the opposite side of the loch, the ground rises +to Craigmillar Castle, a place friendly to Stuart +Mariolaters. It is worth a climb, even in summer, to look +down upon the loch from Arthur’s Seat; but it is tenfold +more so on a day of skating. The surface is thick with +people moving easily and swiftly and leaning over at a thousand +graceful inclinations; the crowd opens and closes, and keeps +moving through itself like water; and the ice rings to half a +mile away, with the flying steel. As night draws on, the +single figures melt into the dusk, until only an obscure stir, +and coming and going of black clusters, is visible upon the +loch. A little longer, and the first torch is kindled and +begins to flit rapidly across the ice in a ring of yellow +reflection, and this is followed by another and another, until +the whole field is full of skimming lights.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER X. TO THE PENTLAND HILLS.</h2> +<p>On three sides of Edinburgh, the country slopes downward from +the city, here to the sea, there to the fat farms of Haddington, +there to the mineral fields of Linlithgow. On the south +alone, it keeps rising until it not only out-tops the Castle but +looks down on Arthur’s Seat. The character of the +neighbourhood is pretty strongly marked by a scarcity of hedges; +by many stone walls of varying height; by a fair amount of +timber, some of it well grown, but apt to be of a bushy, northern +profile and poor in foliage; by here and there a little river, +Esk or Leith or Almond, busily journeying in the bottom of its +glen; and from almost every point, by a peep of the sea or the +hills. There is no lack of variety, and yet most of the +elements are common to all parts; and the southern district is +alone distinguished by considerable summits and a wide view.</p> +<p>From Boroughmuirhead, where the Scottish army encamped before +Flodden, the road descends a long hill, at the bottom of which +and just as it is preparing to mount upon the other side, it +passes a toll-bar and issues at once into the open country. +Even as I write these words, they are being antiquated in the +progress of events, and the chisels are tinkling on a new row of +houses. The builders have at length adventured beyond the +toll which held them in respect so long, and proceed to career in +these fresh pastures like a herd of colts turned loose. As +Lord Beaconsfield proposed to hang an architect by way of +stimulation, a man, looking on these doomed meads, imagines a +similar example to deter the builders; for it seems as if it must +come to an open fight at last to preserve a corner of green +country unbedevilled. And here, appropriately enough, there +stood in old days a crow-haunted gibbet, with two bodies hanged +in chains. I used to be shown, when a child, a flat stone +in the roadway to which the gibbet had been fixed. People +of a willing fancy were persuaded, and sought to persuade others, +that this stone was never dry. And no wonder, they would +add, for the two men had only stolen fourpence between them.</p> +<p>For about two miles the road climbs upwards, a long hot walk +in summer time. You reach the summit at a place where four +ways meet, beside the toll of Fairmilehead. The spot is +breezy and agreeable both in name and aspect. The hills are +close by across a valley: Kirk Yetton, with its long, upright +scars visible as far as Fife, and Allermuir the tallest on this +side with wood and tilled field running high upon their borders, +and haunches all moulded into innumerable glens and shelvings and +variegated with heather and fern. The air comes briskly and +sweetly off the hills, pure from the elevation and rustically +scented by the upland plants; and even at the toll, you may hear +the curlew calling on its mate. At certain seasons, when +the gulls desert their surfy forelands, the birds of sea and +mountain hunt and scream together in the same field by +Fairmilehead. The winged, wild things intermix their +wheelings, the sea-birds skim the tree-tops and fish among the +furrows of the plough. These little craft of air are at +home in all the world, so long as they cruise in their own +element; and, like sailors, ask but food and water from the +shores they coast.</p> +<p>Below, over a stream, the road passes Bow Bridge, now a +dairy-farm, but once a distillery of whisky. It chanced, +some time in the past century, that the distiller was on terms of +good-fellowship with the visiting officer of excise. The +latter was of an easy, friendly disposition, and a master of +convivial arts. Now and again, he had to walk out of +Edinburgh to measure the distiller’s stock; and although it +was agreeable to find his business lead him in a friend’s +direction, it was unfortunate that the friend should be a loser +by his visits. Accordingly, when he got about the level of +Fairmilehead, the gauger would take his flute, without which he +never travelled, from his pocket, fit it together, and set +manfully to playing, as if for his own delectation and inspired +by the beauty of the scene. His favourite air, it seems, +was ‘Over the hills and far away.’ At the first +note, the distiller pricked his ears. A flute at +Fairmilehead? and playing ‘Over the hills and far +away?’ This must be his friendly enemy, the +gauger. Instantly horses were harnessed, and sundry barrels +of whisky were got upon a cart, driven at a gallop round Hill +End, and buried in the mossy glen behind Kirk Yetton. In +the same breath, you may be sure, a fat fowl was put to the fire, +and the whitest napery prepared for the back parlour. A +little after, the gauger, having had his fill of music for the +moment, came strolling down with the most innocent air +imaginable, and found the good people at Bow Bridge taken +entirely unawares by his arrival, but none the less glad to see +him. The distiller’s liquor and the gauger’s +flute would combine to speed the moments of digestion; and when +both were somewhat mellow, they would wind up the evening with +‘Over the hills and far away’ to an accompaniment of +knowing glances. And at least, there is a smuggling story, +with original and half-idyllic features.</p> +<p>A little further, the road to the right passes an upright +stone in a field. The country people call it General +Kay’s monument. According to them, an officer of that +name had perished there in battle at some indistinct period +before the beginning of history. The date is reassuring; +for I think cautious writers are silent on the General’s +exploits. But the stone is connected with one of those +remarkable tenures of land which linger on into the modern world +from Feudalism. Whenever the reigning sovereign passes by, +a certain landed proprietor is held bound to climb on to the top, +trumpet in hand, and sound a flourish according to the measure of +his knowledge in that art. Happily for a respectable +family, crowned heads have no great business in the Pentland +Hills. But the story lends a character of comicality to the +stone; and the passer-by will sometimes chuckle to himself.</p> +<p>The district is dear to the superstitious. Hard by, at +the back-gate of Comiston, a belated carter beheld a lady in +white, ‘with the most beautiful, clear shoes upon her +feet,’ who looked upon him in a very ghastly manner and +then vanished; and just in front is the Hunters’ Tryst, +once a roadside inn, and not so long ago haunted by the devil in +person. Satan led the inhabitants a pitiful +existence. He shook the four corners of the building with +lamentable outcries, beat at the doors and windows, overthrew +crockery in the dead hours of the morning, and danced unholy +dances on the roof. Every kind of spiritual disinfectant +was put in requisition; chosen ministers were summoned out of +Edinburgh and prayed by the hour; pious neighbours sat up all +night making a noise of psalmody; but Satan minded them no more +than the wind about the hill-tops; and it was only after years of +persecution, that he left the Hunters’ Tryst in peace to +occupy himself with the remainder of mankind. What with +General Kay, and the white lady, and this singular visitation, +the neighbourhood offers great facilities to the makers of +sun-myths; and without exactly casting in one’s lot with +that disenchanting school of writers, one cannot help hearing a +good deal of the winter wind in the last story. ‘That +nicht,’ says Burns, in one of his happiest +moments,—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘<i>That nicht a child might +understand</i><br /> +<i>The deil had business on his hand</i>.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And if people sit up all night in lone places on the hills, +with Bibles and tremulous psalms, they will be apt to hear some +of the most fiendish noises in the world; the wind will beat on +doors and dance upon roofs for them, and make the hills howl +around their cottage with a clamour like the judgment-day.</p> +<p>The road goes down through another valley, and then finally +begins to scale the main slope of the Pentlands. A bouquet +of old trees stands round a white farmhouse; and from a +neighbouring dell, you can see smoke rising and leaves ruffling +in the breeze. Straight above, the hills climb a thousand +feet into the air. The neighbourhood, about the time of +lambs, is clamorous with the bleating of flocks; and you will be +awakened, in the grey of early summer mornings, by the barking of +a dog or the voice of a shepherd shouting to the echoes. +This, with the hamlet lying behind unseen, is Swanston.</p> +<p>The place in the dell is immediately connected with the +city. Long ago, this sheltered field was purchased by the +Edinburgh magistrates for the sake of the springs that rise or +gather there. After they had built their water-house and +laid their pipes, it occurred to them that the place was suitable +for junketing. Once entertained, with jovial magistrates +and public funds, the idea led speedily to accomplishment; and +Edinburgh could soon boast of a municipal Pleasure House. +The dell was turned into a garden; and on the knoll that shelters +it from the plain and the sea winds, they built a cottage looking +to the hills. They brought crockets and gargoyles from old +St. Giles’s which they were then restoring, and disposed +them on the gables and over the door and about the garden; and +the quarry which had supplied them with building material, they +draped with clematis and carpeted with beds of roses. So +much for the pleasure of the eye; for creature comfort, they made +a capacious cellar in the hillside and fitted it with bins of the +hewn stone. In process of time, the trees grew higher and +gave shade to the cottage, and the evergreens sprang up and +turned the dell into a thicket. There, purple magistrates +relaxed themselves from the pursuit of municipal ambition; cocked +hats paraded soberly about the garden and in and out among the +hollies; authoritative canes drew ciphering upon the path; and at +night, from high upon the hills, a shepherd saw lighted windows +through the foliage and heard the voice of city dignitaries +raised in song.</p> +<p>The farm is older. It was first a grange of Whitekirk +Abbey, tilled and inhabited by rosy friars. Thence, after +the Reformation, it passed into the hands of a true-blue +Protestant family. During the covenanting troubles, when a +night conventicle was held upon the Pentlands, the farm doors +stood hospitably open till the morning; the dresser was laden +with cheese and bannocks, milk and brandy; and the worshippers +kept slipping down from the hill between two exercises, as +couples visit the supper-room between two dances of a modern +ball. In the Forty-Five, some foraging Highlanders from +Prince Charlie’s army fell upon Swanston in the dawn. +The great-grandfather of the late farmer was then a little child; +him they awakened by plucking the blankets from his bed, and he +remembered, when he was an old man, their truculent looks and +uncouth speech. The churn stood full of cream in the dairy, +and with this they made their brose in high delight. +‘It was braw brose,’ said one of them. At last +they made off, laden like camels with their booty; and Swanston +Farm has lain out of the way of history from that time +forward. I do not know what may be yet in store for +it. On dark days, when the mist runs low upon the hill, the +house has a gloomy air as if suitable for private tragedy. +But in hot July, you can fancy nothing more perfect than the +garden, laid out in alleys and arbours and bright, old-fashioned +flower-plots, and ending in a miniature ravine, all trellis-work +and moss and tinkling waterfall, and housed from the sun under +fathoms of broad foliage.</p> +<p>The hamlet behind is one of the least considerable of hamlets, +and consists of a few cottages on a green beside a burn. +Some of them (a strange thing in Scotland) are models of internal +neatness; the beds adorned with patchwork, the shelves arrayed +with willow-pattern plates, the floors and tables bright with +scrubbing or pipe-clay, and the very kettle polished like +silver. It is the sign of a contented old age in country +places, where there is little matter for gossip and no street +sights. Housework becomes an art; and at evening, when the +cottage interior shines and twinkles in the glow of the fire, the +housewife folds her hands and contemplates her finished picture; +the snow and the wind may do their worst, she has made herself a +pleasant corner in the world. The city might be a thousand +miles away, and yet it was from close by that Mr. Bough painted +the distant view of Edinburgh which has been engraved for this +collection; and you have only to look at the etching, <a +name="citation118"></a><a href="#footnote118" +class="citation">[118]</a> to see how near it is at hand. +But hills and hill people are not easily sophisticated; and if +you walk out here on a summer Sunday, it is as like as not the +shepherd may set his dogs upon you. But keep an unmoved +countenance; they look formidable at the charge, but their hearts +are in the right place, and they will only bark and sprawl about +you on the grass, unmindful of their master’s +excitations.</p> +<p>Kirk Yetton forms the north-eastern angle of the range; +thence, the Pentlands trend off to south and west. From the +summit you look over a great expanse of champaign sloping to the +sea, and behold a large variety of distant hills. There are +the hills of Fife, the hills of Peebles, the Lammermoors and the +Ochils, more or less mountainous in outline, more or less blue +with distance. Of the Pentlands themselves, you see a field +of wild heathery peaks with a pond gleaming in the midst; and to +that side the view is as desolate as if you were looking into +Galloway or Applecross. To turn to the other is like a +piece of travel. Far out in the lowlands Edinburgh shows +herself, making a great smoke on clear days and spreading her +suburbs about her for miles; the Castle rises darkly in the +midst, and close by, Arthur’s Seat makes a bold figure in +the landscape. All around, cultivated fields, and woods, +and smoking villages, and white country roads, diversify the +uneven surface of the land. Trains crawl slowly abroad upon +the railway lines; little ships are tacking in the Firth; the +shadow of a mountainous cloud, as large as a parish, travels +before the wind; the wind itself ruffles the wood and standing +corn, and sends pulses of varying colour across the +landscape. So you sit, like Jupiter upon Olympus, and look +down from afar upon men’s life. The city is as silent +as a city of the dead: from all its humming thoroughfares, not a +voice, not a footfall, reaches you upon the hill. The +sea-surf, the cries of ploughmen, the streams and the +mill-wheels, the birds and the wind, keep up an animated concert +through the plain; from farm to farm, dogs and crowing cocks +contend together in defiance; and yet from this Olympian station, +except for the whispering rumour of a train, the world has fallen +into a dead silence, and the business of town and country grown +voiceless in your ears. A crying hill-bird, the bleat of a +sheep, a wind singing in the dry grass, seem not so much to +interrupt, as to accompany, the stillness; but to the spiritual +ear, the whole scene makes a music at once human and rural, and +discourses pleasant reflections on the destiny of man. The +spiry habitable city, ships, the divided fields, and browsing +herds, and the straight highways, tell visibly of man’s +active and comfortable ways; and you may be never so laggard and +never so unimpressionable, but there is something in the view +that spirits up your blood and puts you in the vein for cheerful +labour.</p> +<p>Immediately below is Fairmilehead, a spot of roof and a +smoking chimney, where two roads, no thicker than packthread, +intersect beside a hanging wood. If you are fanciful, you +will be reminded of the gauger in the story. And the +thought of this old exciseman, who once lipped and fingered on +his pipe and uttered clear notes from it in the mountain air, and +the words of the song he affected, carry your mind ‘Over +the hills and far away’ to distant countries; and you have +a vision of Edinburgh not, as you see her, in the midst of a +little neighbourhood, but as a boss upon the round world with all +Europe and the deep sea for her surroundings. For every +place is a centre to the earth, whence highways radiate or ships +set sail for foreign ports; the limit of a parish is not more +imaginary than the frontier of an empire; and as a man sitting at +home in his cabinet and swiftly writing books, so a city sends +abroad an influence and a portrait of herself. There is no +Edinburgh emigrant, far or near, from China to Peru, but he or +she carries some lively pictures of the mind, some sunset behind +the Castle cliffs, some snow scene, some maze of city lamps, +indelible in the memory and delightful to study in the intervals +of toil. For any such, if this book fall in their way, here +are a few more home pictures. It would be pleasant, if they +should recognise a house where they had dwelt, or a walk that +they had taken.</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">london</span><br /> +Printed by <span class="smcap">Strangeways</span> and Sons, Tower +St. Cambridge Circus, W.C.</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote10"></a><a href="#citation10" +class="footnote">[10]</a> These sentences have, I hear, +given offence in my native town, and a proportionable pleasure to +our rivals of Glasgow. I confess the news caused me both +pain and merriment. May I remark, as a balm for wounded +fellow-townsmen, that there is nothing deadly in my +accusations? Small blame to them if they keep ledgers: +’tis an excellent business habit. Churchgoing is not, +that ever I heard, a subject of reproach; decency of linen is a +mark of prosperous affairs, and conscious moral rectitude one of +the tokens of good living. It is not their fault it the +city calls for something more specious by way of +inhabitants. A man in a frock-coat looks out of place upon +an Alp or Pyramid, although he has the virtues of a Peabody and +the talents of a Bentham. And let them console +themselves—they do as well as anybody else; the population +of (let us say) Chicago would cut quite as rueful a figure on the +same romantic stage. To the Glasgow people I would say only +one word, but that is of gold; <i>I have not yet written a book +about Glasgow</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote118"></a><a href="#citation118" +class="footnote">[118]</a> One of the illustrations of the +First Edition.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDINBURGH***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 382-h.htm or 382-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/8/382 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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