THE WATER OF LEITH FROM DEAN BRIDGE We are looking west up stream, towards the sun setting behind Corstorphine Hill. Above the waterfall is a distillery with its chimney pointing to the Dean U.F. Church. On the right of the picture are the two towers of the Orphan Hospital.THE WATER OF LEITH FROM DEAN BRIDGEWe are looking west up stream, towards the sun setting behind Corstorphine Hill. Above the waterfall is a distillery with its chimney pointing to the Dean U.F. Church. On the right of the picture are the two towers of the Orphan Hospital.
We are looking west up stream, towards the sun setting behind Corstorphine Hill. Above the waterfall is a distillery with its chimney pointing to the Dean U.F. Church. On the right of the picture are the two towers of the Orphan Hospital.
Life holds not an hour that is better to live in: the past is a tale that is told,The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep, with a blessing in store.Swinburne.
Life holds not an hour that is better to live in: the past is a tale that is told,The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep, with a blessing in store.Swinburne.
Life holds not an hour that is better to live in: the past is a tale that is told,The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep, with a blessing in store.Swinburne.
INEdinburgh, at whatever other hour of the day the resident or tourist may let his mind dwell in the past, at one o’clock he will always be brought back to the present moment; for at one o’clock the gun goes off at the Castle, and horses and men and women that are gun-shy are greatly startled, and every one pulls out his watch. But, except precisely at one o’clock, it is as impossible to exist in Edinburgh without living in the past as it would be to walk along Princes Street without seeing the Castle. We are a little archaic in Edinburgh. Yet there are other things of the present that you may notice after you have set your watch to Greenwich time by the one-o’clock gun. Princes Street is gay with shop windows under awnings, with the big bow-windows of the Clubs, with many hotels; and nowthere are bigger and newer hotels to east and to west, at the railway stations. And Princes Street is full of a constant stream of traffic, plying in the wide street between the one broad pavement on the north side and the row of statues along the green sward and the blazing flower-beds in the beautiful gardens opposite: cable cars with noisy bells, motor cars, carriages, bicycles, electric broughams, station lorries, hansom cabs, and the crawling “char-a-bancs,” with their scarlet-coated drivers, picking up passengers for the Forth Bridge or Roslin. But still the north-east wind takes the liberty of blowing from the Forth among all these modern innovations, and whirling an unwary hat or a too-lightly-held newspaper high into the air.
As the wind is unchanged in temper, so are the natural features unchanged in beauty; and the views of the city, “from a’ the airts the wind can blaw,” are pictures to gladden the artist or the poet. There is the “Marmion view” from the south,—the view that Scott loved and Turner painted,—but with a denser massing of suburb than they saw, reaching right up to the furzy knoll where Marmion stood. Here is the Castle in all its majesty, with the Grassmarket and Cowgate huddled picturesquely under its precipices, and the old dark descending spine of the High Street, with St. Giles’s open crown over the roofs, and then all the maze and glitter of a newer world, with its many domes and steeples, and the Forth beyond.
This is from the south; but, seen from the western roads and heights, the city is even more striking. Asyou drive to the Forth Bridge along the fine old coach road to Queensferry,—the very road along which Jonathan Oldbuck and his companion drove in their journey inThe Antiquary—you pass an occasional farm-house with mellow stacks about it and a smoky throat, and you must remember you are “within a mile of Edinburgh toun,” where “Bonny Jockie, blythe and gay, kissed sweet Jenny making hay.” Here, turn your head and you will see the dark mass of Arthur’s Seat lifted up in the air, and upon its western wall the fretted outline of the city and the Castle Rock, seeming not painted but actually engraven like some old hieroglyphic.
To view Edinburgh from the north, you must journey over the Forth Bridge and look across from the Fife coast opposite. From the wooded “haughs” between Aberdour and Burntisland, Edinburgh, seen through a veil of green summer leaves across six miles of rough bright blue, seems painted in air, a scene of magic loveliness not to be excelled in all the idyllic world of romance or dream. In the nearest foreground the little island of Inchcolm with its tiny golden strand and ruined monastery; farther out to sea Inchkeith’s lighthouse ringed with a fringe of foam; and, beyond, a world of heights and hollows: Arthur’s Seat and the rigid uncurved slant of the Salisbury Crags, and the gabled intricacy of the Old Town, stretching from the hollow up to the black mass of rock on which the Castle glooms in mid-air, and then the New Town fantastically domed and steepled in the low foreground, and thewhite-columned summit of Calton Hill. Down at the water’s edge, between the Forth and this fairy show, are the dusky roofs and docks and shipping of Granton and Leith. Away to the west, the dwindling Forth is spanned by the arches of the monster bridge; and beyond it stretch the woods of Dalmeny and Abercorn. In the far east, where the Forth has widened to the sea, are the outjutting headlands, and on one of them is the curious cone called Berwick Law; while, behind all, for a background, the distant Pentlands slope to the south in softest purple.
Dear to the heart of the resident is the view seen as one comes down the Mound on a winter’s afternoon at sunset, when the Castle stands dark against the glorious red of the western sky, and Princes Street, her lamps and her windows all alight, looks like a jewelled necklace.
But of all views of Edinburgh the most mystically beautiful is that seen from the Calton Hill by night. The city is close about you; but in the darkness there is isolation. Across a gulf of impenetrable gloom there is spread a panorama of heights and depths, beaded by a myriad of lights, with those in the depths seeming to be reflected from those in the heights, like a starry sky seen in a deep pool. And, as you encircle the hill, you find always some new phantasy of light and gloom, until on the side towards the Firth there seems to be a stretch of flat black country garlanded with lights that dip and rise with every bend of the land down to the lip of the sea; and all round the coast every
THE NATIONAL MONUMENT ON CALTON HILL This noble monument represents a partial reproduction of the Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens. In the picture the spectator is supposed to be looking at the north-west angle of the Temple, showing the eight columns of the west front and two on the north side. On the left of the picture is a glimpse of the Firth of Forth, while to the right, behind the columns, rises Arthur’s Seat.THE NATIONAL MONUMENT ON CALTON HILLThis noble monument represents a partial reproduction of the Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens. In the picture the spectator is supposed to be looking at the north-west angle of the Temple, showing the eight columns of the west front and two on the north side. On the left of the picture is a glimpse of the Firth of Forth, while to the right, behind the columns, rises Arthur’s Seat.
This noble monument represents a partial reproduction of the Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens. In the picture the spectator is supposed to be looking at the north-west angle of the Temple, showing the eight columns of the west front and two on the north side. On the left of the picture is a glimpse of the Firth of Forth, while to the right, behind the columns, rises Arthur’s Seat.
point and pier and headland is studded with coloured sea-lights; and far out in the measureless mid-Firth flashes the great Eye of the revolving light of Inchkeith.
Brave the “sharp sops of sleet and snipand snaw,” and come to Edinburgh in winter, and you will find all the residents at home and busy: the Law Courts sitting; the University at work; a regiment, with khaki coverings to their kilts, quartered at the Castle, and tramping through the town in rhythm to the tune of the pipes; and all the gaiety of balls and dinners and theatres in the evening hours. Risk the keen blast of the east wind, and come to Edinburgh in April, and you will be able to attend the Graduation in Arts at the M‘Ewan Hall,—in the character of an honorary graduate if you deserve it. Come in May, and you will find the streets thronged with black-coated ministers and elders from every parish in Scotland; for the Assemblies will be sitting, and the Lord High Commissioner will be holding semi-royal state at Holyrood. Come in autumn, as you always will; and it will be to find the long rows of stately stone dwellings left tenantless, and their appalling regularity and monotony rendered even more appalling by the brown paper that fills the windows, and by the boarding that is up before the doors. But the shop windows will be full of tartans for your edification, and you will find your cabman able to tell you all you want to know. At any other season Edinburgh is a hospitable city, and it is growing every day a more cosmopolitan one. English residents have alterednational ways; ruthless hands are tearing down our beautiful old stone houses, and building tenements in their places; and soon—too soon—all Scottish traits will be lost.
But the Castle Rock cannot be levelled. It was there, in the mist and the rain, before Edinburgh began; and it will be there, in the mist and the rain, when Edinburgh has ceased to be.
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