hills of Braid to the sandy shores of the Firth of
Forth.
Edinburgh, now within a few hours? journey from
London, was long the capital of a land that was
almost a ferra incogniia, not only to England, but
to the greater part of Europe, and remained so till
nearly the era of the Scott novels. Spreading over
many swelling hills and deep ravines, that in some
instances are spanned by enormous bridges of stone,
it exhibits a striking peculiarity and boldness in its
features that render it totally unlike any other city
in the world, unless we admit its supposed resemblance
to Athens.
Its lofty and commanding site ascends gradually
from the shore of the great estuary, till it terminates
in the stupendous rock of the Castle, 500
feet above the level of the sea, and is surrounded
on the southward, east, and west, by an amphitheatre
of beautiful hills, covered either with purple
heath or the richest copse-wood; while almost from
amid its very streets there starts up the lionshaped
mountain named Arthur?s Seat, the bare and
rocky cone of which has an altitude of 822 feet.
In Edinburgh every step is historical; the
memories of a remote and romantic past confront
us at every turn and corner, and on every side
.arise the shades of the dead. Most marked, indeed,
is the difference between the old and the
new city-the former being sa strikingly picturesque
in its broken masses and the disorder of its architecture,
and the latter so symmetrical and almost
severe in the Grecian and Tuscan beauty of its
streets and squares ; and this perhaps, combined
with its natural situation quite as much as its
literary character, may have won for it the fanciful
name of ? the Modem Athens.?
On one hand we have, almost unchanged in
general aspect, yet changing in detail at the
xuthless demands of improvement, the Edinburgh
of the Middle Ages-?the Queen of the
North upon her hilly throne?-the city of the
Pavids and of five gallant Jameses-her massive
mansions of stone, weather-beaten, old, dark, and
time-worn, teeming with historical recollections oi
many generations of men ; many painful and man)
pitiful memories, some of woe, but more of wai
and wanton cruelty; of fierce combats and feudal
battles ; of rancorous quarrels and foreign invasions,
and of loyal and noble hearts that were wasted and
often broken in their passionate faith to religion
and a regal race that is now no more.
On the bther hand, and all unlike the warrioi
city of the middle ages, beyond the deep ravint
overlooked by Princes Street-that most beautifu
of European terraces-and by that noble pinnaclec
xoss which seems the very shrine of Scott, we
iave the modern Edinburgh of the days of peace
ind prosperity, with all its spacious squares and
ir-stretching streets, adorned by the statues of
those great men who but lately trod them. And
50 the Past and the Present stand face to face,
by.the valley where of old the waters of the North
Loch lay.
Ih these pages, accordingly, we intend to summon
back, like the dissolving views in the magic
mirror of Cornelius Agrippa, the Edinburgh of the
past, with all the stirring, brilliant, and terrible
events of which it has been the arena.
The ghosts of kings and queens, of knights and
nobles, shall walk its old streets again, and the
brave, or sad, or startling, story of every time-worn
tenement will be told ; nor shall those buildings that
have passed away be forgotten. Again the beacon
fires shall seem to blaze on the grassy summits of
Soltra and Dunpender, announcing that southern
hosts have crossed the Tweed, and summoning
the sturdy burgesses, from every echoing close and
wynd, in all the array of war, to man their gates
and walls, as all were bound, under pain of death,
to do when the Deacon Convener of the Trades
unfurled ?the Blue Blanket ? of famous memory.
In the ancient High Street we shall meet King
David riding forth with hound and horn to hunt in
his forest of Drumsheugh, as he did on that Roodday
in harvest when he had the alleged wondrous
escape which led to the founding of Holyrood ; or
we may see him seated at the Castle gdte, dispensing
justice to his people-especially to the poor
-in that simple fashion which won for him the
proud title of the Scottish Justinian.
In the same street we shall see the mail-clad
Douglases and Hamiltons carrying out their
mortal feud with horse and spear, axe and sword ;
and anon meet him ?who never feared the face of
man,? John Knox, grown old and tottering, whitebearded
and wan, leaning on the arm of sweet
young Margaret Stewart of Ochiltree, as he proceeds
to preach for the last time in St. Giles?s;
and we shall also see the sorrowing group that
gathered around his grave in the old churchyard
that lay thereby, and where still that grave is
marked by bronzes let into the pavement.
Again the trumpets that breathed war and defiance
shall ring at the Market Cross, and we may
hear the mysterious voice that at midnight called
aloud the death-roll of those who were doomed to
fall on Flodden field,. and the wail of?woe that
went through the startled city when tidings of the
fatal battle ca?me.
We shall see the countless windows of those
towering mansions again filled with wondering, exulting,
or sorrowing faces, as the wily Earl of BIorton
lays his head under the axe of the ? Maiden,?
and the splendid Montrose, as he is dragged to a
felon?s doom, with the George sparkling on his
breast and the Latin history of his battles tied in
mockery to his neck; again, we shall see Jenny
Geddes hurl her fauldstool at the dean?s head as
he gives out the obnoxious liturgy ; and, anon, the
resolute and sombre Covenanters, grasping their
swords in defence of ?? an oppressed Kirk and a
broken Covenant.?
In the Cowgate-whilom a pleasant country
when the dissolute Darnley was done to death I
in the lonely Kirk-of-field. -
Again we shall see her, when she is led in from
Carberry Hill, a helpless captive in the midst of
her rebel nobles, and thrust-pale, dishevelled,
in tears, and covered with dust-into the gloomy
stone chambers of the famous Black Turnpike,
while the fierce and coarse revilings of the inflamed
multitude made her woman?s heart seem to die
within her.
Turning into the High School Wynd, under the
shadow of its quaint, abutting, and timber-fronted
mansions, we shall meet the Princess-for such she
was-Elizabeth St. Clair of Roslin, surrounded
by the state which Hay records ; for he tells us
that she ?was served (in the days of James 11.)
by seventy-five gentlewomen, whereof fifty-three
were daughters of noblemen, clothed in velvet and
silks, with their chains of gold .and other ornaments,
and was attended by 200 riding gentlemen
in all journeys; and if it happened to be
dark when she went to Edinburgh, where her
lodgings were at the foot of the Blackfriars Wynd,
eighty lighted torches were carried before her.?
Here, in later years, was often seen one who.
was to write of all these things as no man ever
wrote before or since-a little lame boy, fair-haired
and blue-eyed, named Walter Scott, limping to.
school with satchel on back, and playing, it might
be, ? the truant,? with Skene,.by seventy-five gentlewomen, whereof fifty-three
were daughters of noblemen, clothed in velvet and
silks, with their chains of gold .and other ornaments,
and was attended by 200 riding gentlemen
in all journeys; and if it happened to be
dark when she went to Edinburgh, where her
lodgings were at the foot of the Blackfriars Wynd,
eighty lighted torches were carried before her.?
Here, in later years, was often seen one who.
was to write of all these things as no man ever
wrote before or since-a little lame boy, fair-haired
and blue-eyed, named Walter Scott, limping to.
school with satchel on back, and playing, it might
be, ? the truant,? with Skene,.
Again shall be seen the city girt by its loftywalls
and those embattled gates, which were seldom
without a row of human heads on iron spikes-the
grisly relics of those who were too often the victims.
of dire misrule-with the black kites, then thechief
scavengers in the streets, hovering about
them.
In the steep and quaint West Bow-now nearly
all removed-dwelt the Wizard, Weir of Kirkton,
who perished at the stake in 1670, togetherwith
his sister and the wonderful walking-stick, which
was surmounted by a carved head, and performed
his errands. His lofty mansion, long the alleged
abode of spectres, and a source of terror to the
neighbourhood, was demolished only in the spring
of 1878.
