— 392 — . 



Times are brought face to face, yet separated by a 

 thousand years. Wonderful on winter nights, when the 

 gully is rilled with darkness, and out of it rises against 

 the sombre, blue and frosty stars, that undistinguishable 

 mass or bulwark of gloom, pierced and quivering with 

 innumerable lights. There is nothing in Europe to 

 match that, I think. Could you but roll a river down 

 the valley, it would be sublime, finer still, to place 

 oneself a little beyond the Burns Monument, and look 

 towards the Castle. It is more astonishing than an 

 eastern dream. A city rises up before you, painted by 

 Fire on Night ; high in air, a bridge of lights leaps the 

 chasm ; a few emerald lamps, like glow-worms, are 

 moving silently about in the railway station beneath; 

 a solitary crimson one is at rest. 



That ridged and chimneyed mass of blackness with 

 splendor bursting out at every pore is the wonderful 

 Old Town, where Scottish history mainly transacted 

 itself, while on the other side the modern Princes street 

 is blazing through all its length. During the day the 

 Castle looks down upon the street as if out of another 

 world, stern, with all its peacefulness, its garniture of 

 trees, its slope of grass. The rock is dingy enough in 

 color, but after a shower its lichens laugh out green in 

 the returning sun, while the rainbow is brightening on 

 the lowering sky beyond. How deep the shadow of the 

 Castle at noon over the gardens at its feet, where the 

 children play ! How grand when its giant bulk and 

 towery crown blacken against the sunset ! Fyir, too, 

 the New Town, sloping to the sea. From George street, 

 which crowns the ridge, the eye is led down sweeping 

 streets of cold, stately architecture, to the white 

 gleaming villas and woods that fill the lower ground 

 and fringe the shore ; to the bright azure belt of the 

 Forth, with its smoking steamer or its creeping sail ; 

 beyond, to the Lomonds of Fife, soft, blue, and flecked 

 with fleeting shadows in the keen, clear light of spring, 



