et Station,
the sight of the trains shooting out of its dark maw with the two guards
upon the brake, the thought of its length and the many ponderous
edifices and open thoroughfares above, were certainly things of
paramount impressiveness to a young mind. It was a subterranean passage,
although of a larger bore than we were accustomed to in Ainsworth's
novels; and these two words, "subterranean passage," were in themselves
an irresistible attraction, and seemed to bring us nearer in spirit to
the heroes we loved and the black rascals we secretly aspired to
imitate. To scale the Castle Rock from West Princes Street Gardens, and
lay a triumphal hand against the rampart itself, was to taste a high
order of romantic pleasure. And there are other sights and exploits
which crowd back upon my mind under a very strong illumination of
remembered pleasure. But the effect of not one of them all will compare
with the discoverer's joy, and the sense of old Time and his slow
changes on the face of this earth, with which I explored such corners as
Cannon-mills or Water Lane, or the nugget of cottages at Broughton
Market. They were more rural than the open country, and gave a greater
impression of antiquity than the oldest _land_ upon the High Street.
They too, like Fergusson's butterfly, had a quaint air of having
wandered far from their own place; they looked abashed and homely, with
their gables and their creeping plants, their outside stairs and running
null-streams; there were corners that smelt like the end of the country
garden where I spent my Aprils; and the people stood to gossip at their
doors, as they might have done in Colinton or Cramond.

In a great measure we may, and shall, eradicate this haunting flavour of
the country. The last elm is dead in Elm Row; and the villas and the
workmen's quarters spread apace on all the borders of the city. We can
cut down the trees; we can bury the grass under dead paving-stones; we
can drive brisk streets through all our sleepy quarters; and we may
forget the stories and the play-grounds of our boyhood. But we have some
possessions that not even the infuriate zeal of builders can utterly
abolish and destroy. Nothing can abolish the hills, unless it be a
cataclysm of nature, which shall subvert Edinburgh Castle itself and lay
all her florid structures in the dust. And as long as we have the hills
and the Firth, we have a famous heritage to leave our children. Our
windows, at no expense