purple glory over the distant mountain
tops of Dumbartonshire and Stirlingshire
as we approach the pier of Leith, and
setting foot on shore with our not very
cumbrous impedimenta, whirl rapidly up
Leith Walk into Edinburgh, the Edina of
the poets, the Dunedin of the Gael, the
Modern Athens, the Auld Reekie of its
inhabitants, and one of the most beautiful
cities in the world. We drive to comfortable
and hospitable quarters at the hotel
(well, I shall not name it, lest I should be
accused of a puff, which my good friend,
the landlord, does not need, and which no
good thing or good man ever does), and
sally forth next morning to survey Auld
Reekie, to find it not a tenth part so reekie
as London, or a fiftieth part so reekie as
Manchester or Glasgow. Standing at the
door of our hostelry, from the roof of which
floats the royal standard of Great Britain,
and another flag, that of the once royal
clan Alpine, now the clan MacGregor, we
look up and down Princes-street, the glory
of the New Town, and one of the most
picturesque streets in Europe, and across to
the Old Town, separated from the New by
what was once a pond or lake, and now
forms the substratum of the Edinburgh and
Glasgow Railway. And a noble view
presents itself. To the left is the Calton Hill,
crowned with monuments of such illustrious
Scotsmen as David Hume, Dugald
Stewart, and Robert Burns, and with an
unfinished Grecian monument, consisting
of twelve pillars; and a little beyond,
and further south, Arthur's Seat, a hill
almost worthy to be called a mountain,
with the steep precipices on its western
face, called Salisbury Crags. To the right
is the imposing rock on which stands the
ancient Castle, while between it and the
Calton Hill stretches the long irregular
outline of the old city, with its houses
of twelve and fourteen stories in height,
interspersed with towers and steeples,
among which are conspicuous St. Giles's,
with its central tower, the top of which is
encircled with open stonework in the shape
of an imperial crown; the elegant spire of
the Assembly Hall, and the Tron, or Market
Church, and banks and public edifices
innumerable.

Confining ourselves for the present to a
hasty glance at the Old Town, preparatory
to a study of its historical reminiscences
on the spots themselves, we walk leisurely
through Princes-street, which, unlike most
of the streets of the world, is built but on
one side—the north; having on the south
the public gardens, and deep down towards
the foundations of the Castle Rock, the
Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway. Here
almost in the centre, and overlooking both
the Old Town and the New, are the
Gothic shrine and statue of Sir Walter
Scott, without exception the finest and most
appropriately placed public monument in
Great Britain, or perhaps in the world.
The other public monuments in Princes-
street merit no praise for execution and
design, though, possibly, much for their
intention. That of Professor Wilson is squab
and ungainly, and placed on too high a
pedestal for proper effect; that of Allan
Ramsay, whose house, just as he built it,
stands a pistol-shot behind on the face of
the Castle Rock, is in better taste; while
that of the Duke of Wellington, in front
of the Register Office, at the eastern end
of the street, is simply detestable. It
represents a man with a body of six feet
high, and with legs in proportion to a body
of nine, astride upon a heavy charger, with
his hoofs in the air, supported on a crag by
his tail, without which support the frightful
structure would infallibly topple over
on the heads of the passers-by. It has
been the fate of the illustrious Wellington
to be more abominably caricatured by
sculptors than any other celebrity who
ever lived. "Why, oh why," as Artemus
Ward inquired, "should it be the penalty
of greatness to be sculpted?"

Princes-street is emphatically a street
of the nineteenth century; the Boulevard,
the Regent-street, the Prater, the Broadway
of modern Edinburgh; but the
High-street of the Old Town, whither we next
betake ourselves, with the Castle perched
upon the Rock, at one extremity, and
Holyrood Palace, nestling down among
the meadows at the foot of Arthur's Seat,
upon the other, is a street of three
centuries ago. If Sir Walter Scott be the
presiding spirit of the New, Queen Mary
is the genius of the Old Town. The place
is haunted by the remembrances of her
beauty, her fascination, her errors, and her
sorrows. Wherever we step we are
reminded of her. From the oldest part of
the Castle, partially built in. her reign in
1565, down to Holyrood, where her luckless
favourite Rizzio was brutally slain,
every stone in the pavement, if it could
speak, might tell a history either of her, or
of the rough nobles and ambitious statesmen
who made her life unhappy, and her
sovereign state a sovereignty of anguish.
It is said, that "a thing of beauty is a joy