Imperial gazeteer of Scotland, or, Dictionary of Scottish topography > Volume 1

EDINBURGH.
512
EDINBURGH.
mit of buildings above, stretching off toward the
east, and with its lofty arches below, occasioning
an air of mystery to hang over the scenery beyond,
of which they allow only a narrow view ; and he
looks up on his right to the double ascent of Calton-
hill, overhung on its first precipitous acclivity by
the classic monument of Burns, and the bold castel-
lated forms of the county-jail and bridewell, — de-
corated, on the esplanade at the middle of its ascent,
with the fine Grecian structure of the Royal High
school, and the beautiful sweep of buildings called
Regent-terrace, — and crowned on its rounded ac-
clivitous summit with the towering pillar erected to
the memory of Nelson, and the naked antique-look-
ing colonnade of the National monument; and he
surveys, a little to his left, the whole of the elabor-
ated surface of the ancient city, struggling crowd-
edly upward from the point of the wedge-like hill,
stratum above stratum, or ridge above ridge, send-
ing aloft in its progress the picturesque steeple of the
Tron church, the high broad tower of St. Giles, with
its architectural crown, the grand Gothic tower of
Victoria Hall, with its mass of pinnacles and its
soaring spire, and terminating in the citadel works,
the lofty eminence, and the ragged but romantic
outline of Edinburgh castle.
Good views of the city from the south, both near
and distant, are numerous, yet all similar to one
another, commanding prime profiles of Arthur's Seat
and Salisbury Crags on the right and the Castle rock
on the left, together with expressive massings of
the intermediate romantic architecture of the Old
town. But much the finest are those from emi-
nences, particularly Braid hill and Blackford hill,
which at the same time command a background
prospect of the Forth and Fifeshire. Sir Walter
Scott has immortalized that from Blackford hill by
describing it as a landscape which rivetted the gaze
of his Lord Marmion, — " the fairest scene he e'er
surveyed." Said he,—
" The wandering eye could o'er it go,
And mark the distant city glow,
With gloomy splendour red; •
For. on the smoke- wreaths, huge and slow,
That round her sable turrets flow,
The morning beams were shed,
And tinged them with a lustre proud,
Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud,
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height
Where the huge castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky.
Piled deep and massy, close and high,
Mine own romantic town!
But northward far, with purer blaze,
On Ochil mountains fell the rays,
And as each heathy top they kissed,
It gleamed a purple amethyst
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;
Here Preston-Bay and Berwick-Law;
And, broad, between them rolled,
The gallant Frith the eye might note,
Whose islands on its bosom float
Like emeralds chased in gold."
In all the great exterior views of the city, from
all sides, a prominent feature, or rather great group
of features, is the castle. " From whatever side you
approach the city," remarks an eloquent writer,
" whether by water or by land, whether your fore-
ground consist of height or of plain, of heath, of
trees, or of the buildings of the city itself, this gigan-
tic rock lifts itself high above all that surrounds it,
and breaks upon the sky with the same command-
ing blackness of mingled crags, cliffs, buttresses, and
battlements. These, indeed, shift and vary their
outlines at every step ; hut everywhere there is the
same unmoved effect of general expression, the same
lofty and imposing i mage, to which the eye turns
with the same unquestioning worship. Whether
you pass on the southern side, close under the bare
and shattered blocks of granite, where the crumb-
ling turrets on the summit seem as if they had shotout
of the kindred rock in some fantastic freak of nature,
and where, amidst the overhanging mass of darkness,
you vainly endeavour so descry the track by which
Wallace scaled — or whether you look from the
north, where the ragged cliffs find room for some
scanty patches of moss and broom, to diversify
their barren grey — wherever you are placed, and
however it is viewed, you feel at once that here is
the eye of the landscape, and the essence of the
grandeur. Neither is it possible to say under what
sky or atmosphere all this appears to the greatest
advantage. The heavens may put on what aspect
they choose, they never fail to adorn it. Changes
that elsewhere deform the face of nature, and rob
her of half her beauty, seem to pass over this ma-
jestic surface only to dress out its majesty in some
new apparel of magnificence. If the air is cloud-
less and serene, what can be finer than the calm
reposing dignity of those old towers — every de
licate angle of the fissured rock, every loop-hole,
and every lineament seen clearly and distinctly in
all their minuteness ? Or, if the mist be wreathed
around the base of the rock, and frowning fragments
of the citadel emerge only here and there from out
the racking clouds that envelop them, the mystery
and the gloom only rivet the eye the faster, and the
half-baffled imagination does more than the work of
sight. At times, the whole detail is lost to the eye
— one murkytinge of impenetrable brown wraps rock
and fortress from the root to the summit — all is lost
hut the outline; but the outline makes up abun-
dantly for all that is lost. The cold glare of the sun,
plunging slowly down into a melancholy west be-
yond them, makes all the broken labyrinth of
towers, batteries, and house-tops paint their heavy
breadth in tenfold sable magnitude upon that lurid
canvass. At break of day, how beautiful is the
freshness with which the venerable pile appears
to rouse itself from its sleep, and look up once more
with a bright eye into the sharp and dewy air ! At
the grim and sultry hour of noon, with what languid
grandeur the broad flag seems to flap its long weight
of folds above the glowing battlements ! When the
daylight goes down in purple glory, what lines ol
gold creep along the hoary brow of its antique
strength ! When the whole heaven is deluged, and
the winds are roaring fiercely, and ' snow and hail
and stormy vapour,' are let loose to make war upon
his front, with what an air of pride does the veteran
citadel brave all their well-known wrath, ' cased in
the unfeeling armour of old time ! ' The Capitol it-
self is but a pigmy to this giant."
The good interior views of Edinburgh are at once
exceedingly numerous, exceedingly diversified, and
eminently picturesque. No other city in the world
can show their equal. Not only is architecture here
in her finest forms of both romance and beauty j not
only does statuary lend large aid to her sister art ;
not only are there grand street views, great expanses
of masonry, all varieties of urban magnificence ; but
there are also mighty natural features- — cliffs, dells,
and ravines, — and remarkable breadths of artificial
rural decoration, — gardens and pleasure-grounds,
elaborate productions of landscape gardening. The
streets of the city, too, even in its central parts,
afford multitudinous prospects, brilliant and exten-
sive, through sudden openings, along vistas, or over
masses of house-tops, away to the distant country,
over frith and dale to the mountains or the ocean.
One of the richest of these prospects is seen at the
head of Castle-street, on emerging to the east side of
the castle-esplanade, or still better from the boml*