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
