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Edinburgh Past and Present

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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.
Volume 11 Page 80
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SIR WAI.TER SCOTT’S XONUMEST
Volume 11 Page 81
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