with statues, where the washings of the old town flutter in the breeze
at its high windows. And then, upon all sides, what a clashing of
architecture! In this one valley, where the life of the town goes most
busily forward, there may be seen, shown one above and behind another by
the accidents of the ground, buildings in almost every style upon the
globe. Egyptian and Greek temples, Venetian palaces and Gothic spires,
are huddled one over another in a most admired disorder; while, above
all, the brute mass of the Castle and the summit of Arthur's Seat look
down upon these imitations with a becoming dignity, as the works of
Nature may look down upon the monuments of Art. But Nature is a more
indiscriminate patroness than we imagine, and in no way frightened of a
strong effect. The birds roost as willingly among the Corinthian
capitals as in the crannies of the crag; the same atmosphere and
daylight close the eternal rock and yesterday's imitation portico; and
as the soft northern sunshine throws out everything into a glorified
distinctness--or easterly mists, coming up with the blue evening, fuse
all these incongruous features into one, and the lamps begin to glitter
along the street, and faint lights to burn in the high windows across
the valley--the feeling grows upon you that this also is a piece of
nature in the most intimate sense; that this profusion of
eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock, is not a
drop-scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of every-day reality,
connected by railway and telegraph-wire with all the capitals of Europe,
and inhabited by citizens of the familiar type, who keep ledgers, and
attend church, and have sold their immortal portion to a daily paper. By
all the canons of romance, the place demands to be half deserted and
leaning towards decay; birds we might admit in profusion, the play of
the sun and winds, and a few gypsies encamped in the chief thoroughfare;
but these citizens, with their cabs and tramways, their trains and
posters, are altogether out of key. Chartered tourists, they make free
with historic localities, and rear their young among the most
picturesque sites with a grand human indifference. To see them thronging
by, in their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a
little air of possession that verges on the absurd, is not the least
striking feature of the place.[1]

And the story of the town is as eccentric as its appearance. For
centurie