53 EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT.
broken at the east end of Princes Street by the tall column of the Melville
Monument. Comparatively modern as this is, it has also a tale to tell. It
is a tale of civic changes, and of the influence of a great legal and political
house over Scotland and over India, until the passing of the first Reform
Bill put power and patronage into other hands.
At the opposite end of the perspective we have St. John’s Chapel, invested,
through Dean Ramsay’s name, with a peculiarly national interest. Few
figures were for half a century better known in Edinburgh than that of the
kindly Scotsman who understood his country-folk so well. The mind of
Dean Ramsay was as a link between the present and the past, and being a
stranger to all party-spirit, his long ministrations were powerfully effective for
the purposes of kindliness and holiness, piety and peace.
It is but just that the most beautiful object in a beautiful city should be
the monument of Sir Walter Scott, for in his head and heart Edinburgh truly
might be said to live. He saw, as in a vision, her kings, her fair women, her
heroes and. her fanatics, her burghers and her nobles, and over her his fancy
has flung all the charm of his marvellous genius, until it has become impossible
for the cultivated traveller to see Edinburgh except through the medium
which he has created. When we approach it we are ready with Marmion
to stand’and call it the fairest scene we e’er surveyed j when we leave it we
almost look for the coach that conveyed the Antiquary and his companion
to Queensfeny, and if our walk is by the ruins of St. Anthony’s Chapel
we find that Scott has been there before us, and returning cityward, it is to
confess that on the Heart of Midlothian his name is engraved for evermore.
. And now, as the writer of these lines closes the ramble which brings this
panorama before his eyes, a few red leaves suddenly rustle to the ground at
his feet. With the mention
of his name we pass from the worlds of history and poetry into the walks of
domestic lie, and awaken regrets and memories which can never be dispelled.
Great in his art and peerless in resource, he had qualities which so attached
and endeared him that the world is a colder and a sadder place since he left
it. The man who fought with the dragon of physical pain and put his foot
upon its neck was one of the most unassuming of the children of genius,
9nd his grave is in keeping with his life. At his own request he was buried
here beside the children whom he had lost and mourned, and in sight of
the town where his name, his fame, his very manners and gestures, will be
remembered with a loving and lasting regret.
Called to the art of healing,.he conceived of it as of the highest of human
They have fallen on Sir James Simpson’s grave.
