44 EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT.
Well might Christopher thus describe Greyfriars in his Nocfes:-‘An impre?
sive place,-huge auld red gloomy church, a countless multitude 0’ grass graves,
a’ touchin’ ane anither ; a’ round the kirkyard wa’s marble and freestane monuments
without end, and 0’ a’ shapes and sizes and ages,-some quaint, some
queer, some simple, some ornate-for genius likes to work upon grief; and
here tombs are like towers and temples, partakin’ not 0’ the noise 0’ die city,
but standing aloof frae the stir of life, aneath the sombre shadow of the
Castle cliff, that heaves its battlements furth into the sky.’
OLD WELI. WEST mUT.
The best approach to the Grassmarket was down the ancient suburb of
Portsburgh. There too you get one of the grandest views of the Castle,
frowning overhead, as represented in the Engraving, like the brow of some
colossal Gorgon. The Grassmarket itself owes its chief charm to the past, to the
memories of the Covenanters who ‘glorified God’ there (at the east end of the
square, opposite No. 100), and of Captain Porteous, who was hung on a dyester’s
pole on the south side, over the entrance to Hunter’s Close. We remember
too with special interest being present here in the close of the year 1834 at a
great meeting against the Tory Ministry, and of hearing eloquent speeches
from the lips of James Aytoun, James Browne, Advocate, and above all of
