ixteenth. And picturesque as Edinburgh still continues to be in spite
of many modern disadvantages, it was no doubt infinitely more
picturesque then, crowning the rocky ridge, with straggling lanes and
wynds dropping steeply down into the valley--opening here and there a
glimpse of the green country and the shimmer of the Firth--while on the
edge of the hill, from all the high windows, the wide landscape softened
into distance on every side, into the far-off broken ranges of mountains
and cloudy rolling vapours, and the far-retiring sweep of a horizon
traversed by all the lights and all the storms--a wide world of air and
space and infinite variety. The life of our busy modern world had
scarcely yet invaded that city on the hill. It stood isolated on the
height of its rock, reigning from that domination over all the tranquil
country: while within its lines still thronged and clamoured an active
noisy population cooped up and packed together as if it were still
unsafe to stray away out of shelter of the walls, all the faculties and
trades, all the wit and the wealth, one above another, with the
concentration, the picturesqueness, the universal acquaintance and
familiarity of a mediaeval town. And beautiful as the prospect must have
been from those high-built houses, it could scarcely have exceeded the
sight of the old Edinburgh of the kings from without, standing high
above the level of the soil, with the open crown of St. Giles's rising
over its grey heights, its walls broken down by careless peace and
wellbeing, its tall tenements standing up like a line of castles. And in
the night with its glimmer of household lights at every window hanging
high in mid air, repeated with a gleam in the waters beneath and in the
stars above, which sparkled keen out of the northern blue, and the mist
of habitation, the smoke of the fires and the lamps hanging over
all--confusing outlines, yet revealing all the more brightly a higher
and a higher altitude of human lights--what a wonderful sight rising
sheer out of the green and silent champaign below!

Such was royal Edinburgh still, when the shopkeeper-poet, with his jokes
and his quips, and his good-humoured self-esteem, and certainty of his
own power, settled down in Ramsay Lodge. It would be well if all poets
had as prosperous and as fair a retirement for their old age. He lived
for some time in his quaint self-contained (according to the equally
quaint Scotch phraseology) birdcage u