Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 1, 1894 - Miscellanies, Volume I

NOTES ON EDINBURGH
a ramble among lilacs full of piping birds ; many an
exploration in obscure quarters that were neither
town nor country ; and I think that both for my
companions and myself, there was a special interest,
a point of romance, and a sentiment as of foreign
travel, when we hit in our excursions on the butt-
end of some former hamlet, and found a few rustic
cottages imbedded among streets and squares. The
tunnel to the Scotland Street 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 impressive-
ness to a young mind. It was a subterranean passage,
although of a larger bore than we were accustomed
to in Ains worth's novels ; and these two words,
' subterranean passage,' were in themselves an irresis-
tible 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
Kock 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 remem-
bered 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
Canonmills or Water Lane, or the nugget of cottages
at Broughton Market. They were more rural than
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