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of our survey, while none of the grouped or dispersed localities were known to us, the view was like the spectacle of a fairy land. On reviewing them with the faculty of being enabled to assign their names, the double enchantment of the prospect in itself, and of the associations of history, tradition, or poetry, which each name revives, impart an enthusiasm, which I should have thought till now exclusively reserved for a natal soil.

To the east, the vast extent of the ocean blends with the azure of the sky, and farther to the north contracts itself gradually towards the mouth of the Forth, between the variegated coasts of Lothian and the county of Fife. The eye agreeably reposes on the islands with which the gulf is gemmed, and when the sun mingles the rich tints of its radiance with their verdure, they may be compared, in concurrence with the poet's expression in Marmion, " to emeralds chased in gold."

On one side is Inch-Keith, with its lofty lighthouse; the Isle of May, formerly consecrated to St. Adrian, and on which another pharos offers protection to pilots; Inch-Colm, famous for its ancient convent, founded under the auspices of Saint Colomba; and Inch-Garvie, formerly fortified; if I turn my head, or lower my line of view from the coast, without depressing it so much as to embrace the town, I perceive to the south, the mountains of Braid and the chain of Pentland; to the west, the elegant eminence of Corstorphine; immediately beneath me the demi-circular escarpement of Salisbury's Craig, resembling a mu

ral crown. All these heights, and that of Arthur's Seat, compose a picturesque amphitheatre, in the midst of which Edinburgh arises, with its castle seated on a central rock of 350 feet in height, and with a terminating hill to the east, called Calton Hill, surmounted by the observatory, and the monumental turret erected to the memory of Nelson.

The first time that I climbed the summit of Arthur's Seat, a cloud of smoke covered the roofs of the houses; the slant rays of the sun only pervaded a portion of it, which they began to render transparent, when suddenly a gust from the sea at first divided and finally dispersed the whole of this dome of vapours. The double city appeared, with all its contrasts, like the scene of an opera; to the left developed themselves the mass of the dark battlements of the old town, which beginning at the gothic castle of Holyrood is crowned by the species of tiara which the belfry of St. Giles' composes, and terminated by the feudal citadel; to the right appeared the new town, entirely regular, and of dazzling whiteness; the one, as befitted the austere and sombre daughter of the middle age; the other, as became the elegant daughter of civilization. So appeared the unpolished Roderic Dhu, and the elegant Fitzjames unmistrustfully reposing beneath the shelter of the same tented canopy.

Let us awhile admire Edinburgh from this favourable distance. When re-descending into her rectangular streets, or the windings of her ancient

alleys, we shall probably be obliged to criticise in detail, both her ancient monuments and her new erections. But from Arthur's Mount, or even nearer, from Nelson's monument, all is picturesque grand, and sublime. The squares of the new town, the cupola of St. George's church, the Trajan column, erected to the memory of Lord Melville, the brilliant terrace of Princes street, the porticos of the North Bridge, that magnificent street which extends to the Piræus (I designate the port of Leith by that name); in short, every thing which the eye embraces is worthy of the Athens of the north; nor have the sombre mansions of the old town any appearance of exaggeration in their height, although some of them reach twelve stories in height. The fancy delights in indulging in the belief that they were constructed by giants, and that the dark colour of their walls is the evidence of a date as ancient as the rocks in which their foundations are embedded. It would seem as if the architects of the city, having before their eyes the eternal monuments of Arthur's throne, and the battlements celebrated as Salisbury's Craig, aspired at vying with those edifices of nature. The audacity of their structure astonishes, but pleases the eye, and poetry seizes on them as its own domain.

We shall return to plain

prose, as I have intimated, on a nearer survey of the houses of Edinburgh.

LETTER LXXVIII.

TO M. G.

I HAVE hitherto attempted to sketch a poetic, but incomplete, rather than flattering panorama of Edinburgh, such as it appears to the eye of those who survey it from the basaltic seat of Arthur, or from the observatory of Calton Hill. We are now about to descend into the town; but I surmise that more than one impatient reader will be tempted to interrupt me with the enquiry, if we are to meet there with the personage who has restored its ancient lustre to the royal crown of his romantic country,

My own romantic town:"

MARMION.

he who has discovered in the midst of the prosaic discussions of too civilized an age, the poetic titles of its origin and importance in other ages. I am impatient to speak, at length, of Sir Walter Scott, and of making him speak; but it appears to me that I ought first to complete the picture, of which he will shortly become the principal figure; we shall arrive at that main object in time, and I could do no less than advert to it in the meanwhile. I have promised to adhere to the truth; and to convey my impressions with fidelity. I will confess, therefore, that it is the

great poet of Scotland himself, such as I have seen him this afternoon, who has recalled me to that prosaic domain with which I menaced you from the sublime eminences of Arthur's Seat.

There was a horse race celebrated to-day. I was not aware of it till I observed equestrian and pedestrian passengers returning to town in the same equally dusty condition. A west wind, which is rather frequent at Edinburgh at all seasons of the year, occasionally conveyed light clouds of it into the streets. In the meanwhile we walked up and down Princes-street with M. Duryer, the secretary to the consulate, for an acquaintance with whom I am indebted to a friendly letter of M. Arm., Bertin. I had myself led the conversation to the subject of the bard of Marmion, when M. Duryer directed my eye towards three individuals who were approaching us along the pavement. "Sir Walter Scott," said he, "is one of them; it is he who will presently be at your left hand." In fact, we should have elbowed him if I had not stood a little aside. I had thus full time for a minute survey; and although sufficiently apprized that there was nothing remarkable in his exterior, my imagination had invested him till that moment with so many poetical attributes, that I felt disappointed, and quite chagrined at finding him dissimilar to the ideal portrait I had depicted. We grow attached to our least substantiated illusions.

The person who thus approached us had reached the middle age; he was of a stature which would

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