NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 225 



On Monday the 9th, by the kind attentions of Mr. James Blackwood, 

 I was enabled to see some of the principle lions of Edinburgh — " The 

 modern Athens," as this seat of learning and philosophy is now called ; 

 which certainly sounds better to the ear than the " modern Babylon," 

 as our Metropolis is designated, chiefly by reason of its great extent. 

 Holyrood Palace (with which most of my readers are, no doubt, so well 

 acquainted, that a description of it would be to them " tedious as a 

 thrice-told tale,") was our first object ; from whence we proceeded to the 

 High-school, a splendid building on the Calton-hill, and thence to the 

 Reg-ister-ofSce, which is out and out the most elegant public building I 

 have ever yet seen in any country which I have visited ; and very unlike 

 some I could name, in which may be found 



" Windows and doors in nameless sculptures diest, 

 With order, symmetry, or taste unblest ; 

 Forms like some bedlam statuary's dream. 

 The craz'd creations of misguided whim." 



We then walked into the Parliament-house that was— the Court of 

 Session that is. In other words, we got amongst the lawyers, than 

 which, they say, there is only one worse place in which a man can find 

 himself. My chief object here was to have a sight of Lord Jeffreys, 

 who did so much honour, not to fox-hunting, but to sound learning as 

 well as the general literature of our country, when editor of the Edin- 

 burgh Review. And in truth he is well worth looking at, for a coun- 

 tenance or an eye more expressive of intellectual powers cannot I think 

 be imagined. I forgot to ask before which of the three or four 

 judicial big-wigs I saw this day sitting in the judgment-seat, Williamson 

 once appeared as a witness in a horse cause, as thereon hangs rather an 

 amusing tale. On being called on for his testimony, he put his spec- 

 tacles on his nose, and pulling a large book (his hunting- diary) out of 



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