1'4 EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT.
melancholy west beyond them, makes all the broken labyrinth of towers,
batteries, and house-tops paint their heavy breadth in tenfold sable magnitude
upon that lurid canvas. At break of day, how beautiful is the freshness with
which the venerable pile appears to rouse itself from its sleep, and look up
once more withya bright eye into the sharp and dewy air f At the grim and
sultry hour of noon, with what languid grandeur the broad flag seems to flap
its long weight of folds above the glowing battlements 1 When the daylight
goes down in purpIe glory, what lines of gold creep along the hoary brow of
its antique strength ! When the whole heaven is deluged, and the winds are
roaring fiercely, and snow and hail and stormy vapour are let loose to make
war upon his front, with what an air of pride does the veteran citadel brave all
their well-known wrath-"cased in the unfeeling armour of old time." The
capital itself is but a pigmy to this giant.'-From Peter's Letfen, vol. i. p. 330.
Lockhart, by the way, informs us that Wilson had a hand in the composition
of Pefds fitters, and we suspect we find it in the above as well as in
the description in the last letters of a Sacramental Country Service.
In our first paper we spoke of having seen her Majesty, along with
MONS YEC.
Prince Albert, riding up from Holyrood to the Castle. Let us reverse the
route, arid conduct our readers from the Castle to Holyrood. And here,
instead of marking individual buildings, which were alike an endless and
a needless task, let us follow the grand and graceful outline which the street
pursues.-First from the esplanade of the Castle, commanding the double view
of the New Town-with its trim streets, its gay gardens, its pillars, steeples,
and monuments-and of the southern region of the city, with the Grassmarket,
the Grange, Meadows, and Newington, bounded on one side by the Pentlands
and on the other by Arthur's Seat,-a view rendered exceedingly noble, partly
by the multitude of objects which are at once and easily seen together, and
