ing influences, and for the kind
friends and kindred whose affectionate hospitality has made each return
thither as happy as sadder and older years allowed--my blessing on every
stone of its streets!

I had the utmost liberty allowed me in my walks about the city, and at
early morning have often run up and round and round the Calton Hill,
delighting, from every point where I stopped to breathe, in the noble
panorama on every side. Not unfrequently I walked down to the sands at
Porto Bello and got a sea bath, and returned before breakfast; while on
the other side of the town my rambles extended to Newhaven and the rocks
and sands of Cramond Beach.

While Edinburgh had then more the social importance of a capital, it had
a much smaller extent; great portions of the present new town did not
then exist. Warriston and the Bridge of Dean were still out of town;
there was no Scott's monument in Princess Street, no railroad terminus
with its smoke and scream and steam scaring the echoes of the North
Bridge; no splendid Queen's Drive encircled Arthur's Seat. Windsor
Street, in which Mrs. Harry Siddons lived, was one of the most recently
finished, and broke off abruptly above gardens and bits of meadow land,
and small, irregular inclosures, and mean scattered houses, stretching
down toward Warriston Crescent; while from the balcony of the
drawing-room the eye, passing over all this untidy suburban district,
reached, without any intervening buildings, the blue waters of the Forth
and Inchkeith with its revolving light.

Standing on that balcony late one cold, clear night, watching the rising
and setting of that sea star that kept me fascinated out in the chill
air, I saw for the first time the sky illuminated with the aurora
borealis. It was a magnificent display of the phenomenon, and I feel
certain that my attention was first attracted to it by the crackling
sound which appeared to accompany the motion of the pale flames as they
streamed across the sky; indeed, _crackling_, is not the word that
properly describes the sound I heard, which was precisely that made by
the _flickering_ of blazing fire; and as I have often since read and
heard discussions upon the question whether the motion of the aurora is
or is not accompanied by an audible sound, I can only say that on this
occasion it was the sound that first induced me to observe the sheets of
white light that were leaping up the sky. At this time I knew nothing of
these phen