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.
EDINBURGH FROM WARRISTON CEMETERY. 5'
What the capital of Scotland does lack is climate. That, no genius of
Scott and no engineering skill can 'procure for her. Her streets are swept
by cold north-east winds, and her skies are heavy with the rain-clouds that
alternately roll in from the ocean, or drift down upon her from the neighbouring
hills. Yet still, in the hundred changeful effects of light and shade,
she has a beauty more effective and appropriate than if she stood out in the
bold relief of perfect and unclouded sunshine, Far to the southward
drenching showers are sweeping along, and they obliterate the half-circle of
the Moorfoot Hills, but in the slant rays of the afternoon sun all the spires
and towers catch a pale splendour, and round their feet the city's smoke
drifts away with the light westerly wind.
How striking from here, rising above all the hazy wreaths, is the crowned
belfry of old St. Giles's 1 It takes us
back to the Edinburgh of Queen Mary and of John Knox, and we seem to
live again in that time of fierce theolo@cal strife. On the one side, we see
' the scarlet prelates' insolently maintaining ]he rights of tradition and the
unity of a Church that they would fain keep as indivisible as was the seamless
garment of Christ. On the other-side, are the black-robed preachers of the
Geneva school, boldly claiming the liberty of the human conscience, and
declaring the equality of priest and laic before the laws, and before Almighty
God I
These Reformers developed, through spiritual liberty, the progress of the
Scottish nation: nor must it be forgotten that they helped to form the
language of their country; what Calvin and Bonnivard did for the French
language, Knox and Wishart and Henderson did for the vulgar tongue of
Scotland. Through it they appealed to the heart of the people, and they
used it as a weapon to combat tradition. Latin at that epoch was being
exquisitely handled by George Buchanan, but the Reformers discarded it,
and substituted for it the homely vernacular of their native land. Native
eloquence, once planted, did not fail to grow, and the language, then first
turned to noble uses, has since become history in the hands of Hume,
philosophy in those of Dugald Stewart and of the elder Mill, criticism in
those of Jeffrey, theology from the pulpits of Chalmers, MZeod, and Tulloch,
and unequalled and undying fiction under the magic wand of Walter Scott.
How close the great buildings seem to press on one another, as banks,
colleges, hotels, churches, and galleries rise on either side of the valley of the
old ' Nor' Loch ' 1
From the spot where we now stand, the horizontal l i e of the houses is
Of how much does it not remind us I
