50 EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT.
never be really severed. It subsists after death. Even when all labour is
done, it is known whether the city watches faithfully over her illustrious dead,
or whether it is left to strangers to ‘keep his dust in Arqua, where he died.’
Our nineteenth century, which does so much to remove old landmarks, has
done its best to weaken those bonds of citizenship. Our great towns are
overgrown past all limits of acquaintance or sympathy, and of the lesser ones
many, nay most, have changed their fashion. London is not now to any
author what it was to Dr. Johnson, hardly to any artist what it was to Hogarth,
or even to Turner. Paris is too much the playground of all nations, though
Rome certainly is still the inheritance of the whole Christian world Venice
is deserted, and Athens has changed her classic language for a dialect, and
imports foreign princes, though the bees still hum about the slopes of
Hymettus as in the days of Harmodius and Aristogiton. In Florence,
stripped of her walls, they study war no more ; the haio of her artistic past
still glorifies her, but the children that are growing up in the streets of the
Gly-City are of all kindreds and tongues. They know nothing of Guelph or
Ghibelline. Among modem capitals, Geneva is perhaps the most careful of
her old prestige, and has lost the least of her old pretensions. Though the
fortifications that withstood the famous escalade have been levelled, the
Genevese are building new streets with the old d8n3, and under the names
of ‘les Grands Philosophea’ Thus the traveller still seems to see in Geneva
the shades of Calvin and of Rousseau, of Melanchthon and of Farel, and
perhaps even the ghost of unorthodox Servetus
Edinburgh keeps faith with the past, and still exercises an influence over
the men who are reared in her schools. Of all the cities of the modem world
this is perhaps the most beautiful. To-its beauty the strangest and the
happiest geological accidents have contributed. On every side the architectural
masses are relieved by natural forms which enhance them, and which
are of even greater beauty. Behind the city are the noble outlines of Arthuis
Seat and the exquisite profile of the Crags, while on her left hand are the
bold seaward escarpments of -the Calton Hill. And of the Castle as a natural
feature how is it possible to say too much! Thrust up between the dusky
ridges of the Old Town and the long rectangular vistas of the New, it stands
there, a citadel, a watch-tower and a landmark from’afar. It is true that as
the victories of Edinburgh are now all peaceful ones, it no longer threatens
or frowns ; for in Edinburgh, very markedly, q m s have given place to the
lawyer’s robe ; and only a b u g l e 4 at intervals startles the ear as it rings out
from the Maiden Castle that so often of old defied the invader.
