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 



