Mackilligen of Alness, Hogg of
Kiltearn, and the Rosses of Tain and Kincardine, had been incarcerated
in its dungeons; and, when labouring in the Cromarty quarries in early
spring, I used to know that it was time to gather up my tools for the
evening, when I saw the sun resting over the high-lying farm which
formed the patrimony of another of its better-known victims--young
Fraser of Brea. And so I looked with a double interest on the bold
sea-girt rock, and the sun-gilt cloud that rose over its scared
forehead, like that still brighter halo which glorifies it in the
memories of the Scottish people. Many a long-cherished association drew
my thoughts to Edinburgh. I was acquainted with Ramsay, and Fergusson,
and the "Humphrey Clinker" of Smollett, and had read a description of
the place in the "Marmion" and the earlier novels of Scott; and I was
not yet too old to feel as if I were approaching a great magical
city--like some of those in the "Arabian Nights"--that was even more
intensely poetical than Nature itself. I did somewhat chide the
tantalizing mist, that, like a capricious showman, now raised one corner
of its curtain, and anon another, and showed me the place at once very
indistinctly, and only by bits at a time; and yet I know not that I
could in reality have seen it to greater advantage, or after a mode
more in harmony with my previous conceptions. The water in the harbour
was too low, during the first hour or two after our arrival, to float
our vessel, and we remained tacking in the roadstead, watching for the
signal from the pier-head which was to intimate to us when the tide had
risen high enough for our admission; and so I had sufficient time given
me to con over the features of the scene, as presented in detail. At one
time a flat reach of the New Town came full into view, along which, in
the general dimness, the multitudinous chimneys stood up like stacks of
corn in a field newly reaped; at another, the Castle loomed out dark in
the cloud; then, as if suspended over the earth, the rugged summit of
Arthur's Seat came strongly out, while its base still remained invisible
in the wreath; and anon I caught a glimpse of the distant Pentlands,
enveloped by a clear blue sky, and lighted up by the sun. Leith, with
its thicket of masts, and its tall round Tower, lay deep in shade in the
foreground--a cold, dingy, ragged town, but so strongly relieved against
the pale smoky grey of the background, that it seemed ano