108 OLD -4ND NEW EDINBURGH. [Calton Hill.
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sea or land, with all its defects it makes a magnificent
termination to the vista along Princes Street
from the west. The base is a battlemented edifice,
divided into small apartments and occupied as a
restaurant Above its entrance is the crest of
Nelson, with a sculpture representing the stern of
the Son ?jGosep/l, and underneath an inscription,
~-
of which the monument rises possesses an
outline which, by a curious coincidence, presents
a profile of Nelson, when viewed from Holyrood.
The time-ball, which is in electric communication
with the time-gun at the Castle, falls every day
at one o?clock simultaneously with the discharge of
THE CALTON BURYING-GROUND : HUME?S GRAVE.
recording that the grateful citizens of Edinburgh
?- have erected this monument, not to express their
unavailing sorrow for his death, nor yet to celebrate
the matchless glories of his life, but by his noble
example to teach their sons to emulate what they
admire, and like him, when duty requires it, to die
for their country.?
From this pentangular base rises, to the height
of more than IOO feet, a circular tower, battlemented
at the top, surmounted by the time-ball and a flagstaff,
where a standard is always hoisted on the
anniversary of Trafalgar, and used also to be run
up on the 1st of August in memory of the battle of
Abouku. Around the edifice are a garden and plots
of shrubbery, from amid ,which, peeping grimly
foith, are three Russian trophies-two cannon
from Sebastopol and one from Bomarsund, placed
r?nere in 1857. The precipice from the edge
the gun which is fired from Greenwich. A common
joke of the High School boys is that the Duke
of Wellington gets off his horse in front of the
Register House 7uhen he hears the gun, lunches, and
re-mounts his statuesque steed at two o?clock !
A little to the north of it, on a flat portion ot
the hill, stand twelve magnificent Grecian Doric
columns, the fragment of the projected national
monument to the memory of all Scottish soldiers
and sailors who fell by land and sex in the long
war with France ; and, with a splendour of design
corresponding to the grandeur of the object, it was
meant to be a literal restoration of the Parthenon
at Athens. The contributors were incorporated by
Act of Parliament.
The foundation stone was laid on the 27th
August, 1822, the day on which George IV. visited
Melville Castle. Under the Duke of Hamilton,
