6 EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT.
most massive Architecture of the past, which all pronounce wonderful, and
many consider unrivalled.
On the other hand, there are those who are far more deeply in love with
the’ prospect from the Castlehill, and can render reasons for their partiality.
The view, id the first place, is much freer, higher, and more expansive. Half
Scotland stretches around j on the south, the blue bulk of the Pentlands ; on the
north, the green, gnarled, round-headed Ochils, with the Firth flowing between,
as if to soothe the wound which made these ridges twain j and on the extreme
far north-west, the hills of Rob Roy’s country, Ben Lomond, Ben Ledi, Ben
Voirlich, and the rest, lifting up their kingly foreheads. Fife, less bold and
ambitious, yet attracts and fixes the gaze by the loveliness of its low and
leaning shores. Seaward, every picturesque point and coigne of vantage,
Inchkeith, the Bass and North Berwick Law, is strongly protruded, as well
as clearly seen, and Leith and its neighbourhood come out so distinctly that
you can feel as well as pronounce the words-
‘ The boat rocks at the pier-o’ Leith,
Fo’ loud the wind blaws frae the Ferry.‘
Eastward, the Lion of Arthur’s Seat looks most leonine-assuming here
too a peculiarly proud, self-conscious, watchful look, as if he were Spenser‘s
lion guarding Edinburgh as his favourite ward, his Una, and Salisbury Crag
seems a promontory overhanging an unseen and ideal ocean. Nowhere else
can you see so well the cpntrast between the character of the two townsthe
Old and the New,-the latter gay, glittering, like a section of Paris as
seen from Notre Dame, smiling as if there were no such things as Death
and Change in the universe-saying, ‘I sit a Queen, and am no widow j’
the other with the shadow of a thousand sad memories, mingling with the
light of other days upon it, sombre, sublime, silent in its age-truly what
Wordsworth calls it-
‘ Stately Edinburgh, throned 011 crags.’
And the valley which separates the one from the other is different from and
superior to both,-a gulf fixed, but a glorious one, with the Bridges and the
Mound crossing and cheering and peopling the chasm ! In the very centre
of it rises Scott’s Monument, an emblem of his wide and catholic genius,
binding together present and perished ages. Beautifiil exceedingly this in
the grey morning, in the garish noonday, and in the ‘golden evening, but it
reaches the character of sublimity when seen in the summer afternoon, as a
GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 7
great thunderstorm is advancing from the west, to steep it in darkness and
in fire, and by the eye of the young enthusiast which turns to it from the
volcanic pages of the RmoZt of IsZam he is reading on the Half-moon Battery,
where occur the lines-
‘As when some great Painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.’
Often have attempts been made to picture the Bridge by night, with those
enormous masses of building on the south-illuminated by countless
THE OLD TOWN.
twinkling lamps, which only make the darkness visible,-and with that great
gulf already alluded to, between two cities, or worlds, beaming with lights, as
with shining stepping-stones across,-lights which at once enliven and measure
its tremendous depth, and which might remind a fancifd imagination of those
