48 FRESH FIELDS 



suggestive of Burns than of Carlyle, was briefly 

 summarized in an item of statistics which I used to 

 read in one of the Edinburgh papers every Monday 

 morning, namely, that of the births registered dur- 

 ing the previous week, invariably from ten to twelve 

 per cent, were illegitimate. The Scotch — all classes 

 of them — love Burns deep down in their hearts, 

 because he has expressed them, from the roots up, 

 as none other has. 



When I think of Edinburgh the vision that 

 comes before my mind's eye is of a city presided 

 over, and shone upon as it were, by two green tree- 

 less heights. Arthur's Seat is like a great irregular 

 orb or half-orb, rising above the near horizon there 

 in the southeast, and dominating city and country 

 with its unbroken verdancy. Its greenness seems 

 almost to pervade the air itself — a slight radiance 

 of grass, there in the eastern skies. No description 

 of Edinburgh I had read had prepared me for the 

 striking hill features that look down upon it. 

 There is a series of three hills which culminate in 

 Arthur's Seat, 800 feet high. Upon the first and 

 smaller hill stands the Castle. This is a craggy, 

 precipitous rock, on three sides, but sloping down 

 into a broad gentle expanse toward the east, where 

 the old city of Edinburgh is mainly built, — as if 

 it had flowed out of the Castle as out of a fountain, 

 and spread over the adjacent ground. Just beyond 

 the point where it ceases rise Salisbury Crags to a 

 height of 570 feet, turning to the city a sheer wall 

 of rocks like the Palisades of the Hudson. From 



