Royal Edinburgh: Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets

"Marching in this manner they speedily reached an eminence, from which they could view Edinburgh stretching along the ridgy hill which slopes eastward from the Castle. The latter, being in a state of siege, or rather of blockade, by the northern insurgents, who had already occupied the town for two or three days, fired at intervals upon such parties of Highlanders as exposed themselves, either on the main street, or elsewhere in the vicinity of the fortress. The morning being calm and fair, the effect of this dropping fire was to invest the Castle in wreaths of smoke, the edges of which dissipated slowly in the air, while the central veil was darkened ever and anon by fresh clouds poured forth from the battlements; the whole giving, by the partial concealment, an appearance of grandeur and gloom, rendered more terrific when Waverley reflected on the cause by which it was produced, and that each explosion might ring some brave man's knell."

The second introduces us to the interior of the city.

"Under the guidance of his trusty attendant, Colonel Mannering, after threading a dark lane or two, reached the High Street, then clanging with the voices of oyster-women and the bells of pie-men, for it had, as his guide assured him, just 'chappit eight upon the Tron.' It was long since Mannering had been in the street of a crowded metropolis, which, with its noise and clamour, its sounds of trade, of revelry and of license, its variety of lights, and the eternally changing bustle of its hundred groups, offers, by night especially, a spectacle which, though composed of the most vulgar materials when they are separately considered, has, when they are combined, a striking and powerful effect on the imagination. The extraordinary height of the houses was marked by lights, which, glimmering irregularly along their front, ascended so high among the attics, that they seemed at length to twinkle in the middle sky. This coup d'œil, which still subsists in a certain degree, was then more imposing, owing to the uninterrupted range of buildings on each side, which, broken only at the space where the North Bridge joins the main street, formed a superb and uniform Place, extending from the front of the Luckenbooths to the head of the Canongate, and corresponding in breadth and length to the uncommon height of the buildings on either side."

Since then this great Place has become more majestic, as well as more open, by the clearing away of the Luckenbooths: but nothing can be finer than the touch of the graphic yet reticent pencil which sets down before us the glimmering of the irregular lights which seemed at last to twinkle in the middle sky. This was how the main street of Edinburgh still appeared when Scott himself was a boy, and no doubt he must have caught the aspect of the previous sketch on some king's birthday or other public holiday, the 4th of June perhaps, that familiar festival in other regions, when the guns of the Castle were saluting and the smoke hanging about those heights like a veil.

It was one of the privations of Scott's life as it began to fall into its last subdued and suffering stage that he had to give up his Edinburgh house and the cheerful company which had so long made his winters pleasant. He loved the country and his home there at all seasons, as the readers of the poetical chapters of friendly dedication and communing addressed to different friends between the cantos of Marmion will well remember: but yet the yearly change, the natural transfer of life in the short days to the cheerful surroundings of town, the twinkling of those very lights, the assembling of bright faces, the meeting of old friends, were always dear to him, and this sacrifice was not one of the least which he made during the tremendous struggle of his waning years.

GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH

With no other name could we so fitly close the story of our ancient capital, a story fitfully told with many breaks and omissions, yet offering some thread of connection to link together the different eras of a picturesque and characteristic national life. Had space and knowledge permitted, there is, in the records of Scottish law alone, much that is interesting, along with a still larger contribution of wit and humour and individual character, to the elucidation of the period which passed between the end of the history of Edinburgh under her native kings and the beginning of her brilliant record under the modern reign of literature and poetry. This book, however, does not pretend to set forth the Edinburgh of the Kirk or the Parliament House, each of which has an existing record of its own. Seated on the rocks which are more old than any history, though those precipices are now veiled with verdure and softness, and the iron way of triumphant modern science runs at their feet; with her crown of sacred architecture hanging over her among the mists, and the little primeval shrine mounted upon her highest ridge; with her palace, all too small for the requirements of an enlarged and splendid royalty, and the great crouched and dormant sentinel of nature watching over her through all the centuries; with her partner, sober and ample, like a comely matron, attended by all the modern arts and comforts, seated at the old mother's feet,—Edinburgh can never be less than royal, one of the crowned and queenly cities of the world. It does not need for this distinction that there should be millions of inhabitants within her walls, or all the great threads of industry and wealth gathered in her hands. The pathos of much that is past and over for ever, the awe of many tragedies, a recollection almost more true than any reality of the present, of ages and glories gone—add a charm which the wealthiest and greatest interests of to-day cannot give, to the city, always living, always stirring, where she stands amid traditionary smoke and mist, the grey metropolis of the North, the Edinburgh of a thousand fond associations,