THE ATHENS AND THE ATHENIANS IN GENERAL.
“A city set on an hill, which cannot be hid.”
IN point of diversity of situation and beauty, and durability of
building materials, few cities have the same advantages as the Athens;
and I know of no city, of which the general and distant effect, upon
what side soever one approaches it, is more picturesque and striking.
But, as is the case with most things that look well as wholes, one
is miserably disappointed when one comes to examine the details. The
ground upon which the Athens is built bears some resemblance to a fort
with a ditch and glacis. The Castle and High Street, with the clustered
buildings on each side, compose the fort; the Cow-gate on the south,
the Grass Market on the west, and the North Loch on the north, form
the ditch, which bears some resemblance to a noose thrown round the
Castle, and having the ends stretching away eastward by the Holyrood;
and beyond this ditch the glacis slopes toward St. Leonard’s, the Loch
of Duddingstone, and the Meadows on the south, and toward the water
of Leith on the north. The central division, although its situation
be very airy, and also very favourable for cleanliness, has nothing
to boast of in either of these respects. The houses are so closely
huddled together, that, excepting the High Street itself, which is
rather spacious, the inhabitants may almost shake hands from the
windows of the opposite houses; and they are built to such a height,
that scarcely a glimpse of sunshine can find its way within two storeys
of the foundations. In all this part of the Athens, there seems to be
the greatest dislike to subways and common sewers; and thus, unless
when the High Street is washed by a torrent of rain, it is by no means
the most pleasant to perambulate. The southern ditch, or Cow-gate,
is, throughout its whole extent, as filthy and squalid as can well
be imagined; and, with the exception of a few public buildings, and
one or two little squares, there is not much to be commended on the
glacis beyond. Indeed the whole, southward of the North Loch, which
the Athenians style the sublime part of their city, is more remarkable
for the sublimation of mephitic effluvia than of any other thing. The
new town again, or the portion between the North Loch and the water of
Leith, is as dull as the other is dirty. The principal streets consist
of long lines of stone building, without any break or ornament except
wicket-doors and trap-hole windows, which render the whole very heavy,
and induce one to believe that they are constructed with the intention
of being as inaccessible and dark as possible. Princes Street, which is
a single row, looking across the tasteless and unadorned gulf of the
North Loch toward the beetling and shapeless masses of the old town,
had originally been intended for private dwelling-houses, at the rate
of a whole family per floor. Circumstances have changed, however. The
Athenian fashionables (contrary to the natural tendency of the Scotch)
have moved northwards; their places have been supplied by drapers from
the Lawn Market, barbers from the Parliament Stairs, and booksellers
from the Cross; and, as the immense weight of tall stone-houses renders
the alteration of the ground-floor dangerous, without taking down and
rebuilding the whole, the expense of which would be very great, Princes
Street is perhaps the most tasteless and clumsy line of shops in the
island of Great Britain; while, so anxious are the people to huddle
upon the top of each other, that it is not uncommon to find four or
five shops for very opposite kinds of wares, in a pile up and down
the same stair-case. George Street is the most gloomy and melancholy
that can well be imagined; and a walk along its deserted pavements is
sufficient to give any one the blue devils for a week. Queen Street
is longer, but not a whit more lively; and, though the view from it
be both extensive and varied, it seems no great favourite with the
Athenians. Farther to the north the buildings are newer, and there is
occasionally an attempt at the recurrence of architectural ornaments at
the end of certain lengths of the buildings; but these ornaments want
taste in their form, and force in their projections, and thus increase
the poverty of the effect. Throughout the whole private dwellings of
the Athens, you are impressed with the cold eternity of stone and
lime, and you look in vain for that airy elegance, that rich variety
of taste, and that repose of comfort, which you find in other places.
Villas, self-contained houses, and snug or even decent gardens, seem
to be held in the greatest abhorrence. You meet not with one of the
delightful little boxes which are scattered round London by thousands,
and of which there are always a few in the vicinity of even third-rate
towns in England. The ambition of the Athenians appears to be, to make
every four stone walls a joint stock company, as dull, as tasteless,
and as heavy, as a stack of warehouses in Thames Street.
Of all the objects of Athenian detestation, the greatest, however, seem
to be decently laid out pleasure-grounds, and trees. Strangers used
to say that the rustic Scotch cut down all sorts of bushes, because
ghosts and spirits whistled in them on windy nights; and really, when I
looked at the many fine situations in and about the Athens, which the
Athenians have taken particular care neither to improve nor to plant,
I could not help thinking that this superstition, now banished from
every province in Scotland, has taken up its abode in the Scottish
metropolis. True, they have a public walk round the Calton-Hill, but
that is merely a thing of yesterday; and though they have placed upon
the top of it a monument to Lord Nelson, modelled exactly after a Dutch
skipper’s spy-glass, or a butter churn; an astronomical observatory,
tasteful enough in its design, but not much bigger than a decent
rat-trap, or a twelfth-cake at the Mansion-House; and are to build “the
National Monument;” yet they have never thought of planting so much
as a thistle, but have left the summit of the hill in all its native
bleakness, and allowed it to be so much infested by lazy black-guards
and bare-footed washerwomen, as to be unsafe for respectable females
even at noon-day;--while after dusk this, the most fashionable
promenade of the Athens, is habitually the scene of so much and so
wanton vice, that instead of an ornament to the city, as it might
easily be made, it is a nuisance and a disgrace.
The royal precinct of the Holyrood, which occupies a piece of rich
level ground about the palace, and which stretches a considerable way
up the romantic heights to the south, is, one would think, a chosen
place for taste to display itself upon; and when there are taken
into the account the boast of the Athenians that their Holyrood is
the finest royal palace in Britain, and that other boast which is so
habitual with them that there is no need of repeating it, one would
imagine that among all their boasted improvements the royal precinct
would not have been overlooked; but all that they appear to have done
for it has been to make it as dirty and as desolate as ever they could.
The whole filth of the old town (and that is no small commodity) is
collected in cesspools within a few yards of the palace; and lest
that should not be grateful enough to the Athenian olfactories, a
considerable portion of the adjoining ground is set apart for the
collection of manure from all places. Upon the other parts of the
royal domain, about half a dozen of scraggy and withered trees, and
an old thorn-hedge, more than half of which was when I viewed it
reposing in the lap of its neighbour ditch, are the only attempts at
landscape-gardening; and the grand-children of those by whom they were
planted must, by this time, be in their graves or their dotage.
Salisbury Crags, again, are a natural object which the people of a
less classical city would not only adore, but adorn by every means in
their power. The Athenians act differently; their rulers hew down the
picturesque masses of basalt, sell them at so much a cart-load, for
paving the streets and Mac-Adamizing the highways, and put the proceeds
into that bottomless box called the “common gude.” About midway up
that bold front of these cliffs which looks towards the city, there
is what may be termed an accidental public walk. It has been formed
by the cutting away of the rock above for the purposes of gain, and
the tumbling down of the smaller fragments which were not saleable.
When the Athenian authorities were alarmed at the Radicals, and
bestirred themselves in getting a general subscription for the relief
of those whom the changes consequent upon the late war had thrown out
of employment, a few labourers were set to work on the middle of this
walk; but they had no plan and no superintendant, and the funds were
exhausted before it could be made accessible at either end; while the
whole face of the Crags, instead of being tufted with brushwood and
festooned with creeping plants, as might have been done at very little
expense, is as naked as--the shame of those who let it remain in its
present condition.
The meadows southward of the city, and the adjoining common called
“Bruntsfield-links,” are not in much better condition. At some period,
indeed, a walk or two had been formed in the meadows, and some hedges
and trees planted, but neither the one nor the other have been attended
to; while the grass is in so marshy a state that the cows, to which
it is almost exclusively assigned, can with difficulty make their way
across it. The whole extent of the North Loch, too, was till very
lately, and great part of it is still, a putrid and pestilent marsh,
at once offensive to the eye, and injurious to the health; and indeed,
throughout the whole compass of the Athens, there is scarcely a tree
or any thing green, except grass in the melancholy streets towards the
meadows, and moss upon the dank walls of several of the more low and
squalid dwelling-houses.
Notwithstanding all this, there are few places that boast more of their
improvements than the Athens; and not many in which the people have
been made to pay more upon that score. But either there has been a
total want of skill in the projectors, or a total want of economy in
those who had the execution,--if indeed there has not been both. I was
told repeatedly, that every scheme and measure to which the Athenian
authorities give the name of a public improvement, is uniformly a job
for the benefit, not of the public, but of some party or individual;
and really, comparing what is said to have been expended with what has
actually been done, I can find no other theory that will sufficiently
explain the facts. The bell-rope of the Tron-Kirk appears not to have
been the only case in which a hundred pounds’ expense has been incurred
for the purpose of saving a shilling.
Even in her public buildings, the Athens has little of which she can
boast. All the places of worship belonging to the established Kirk
are tasteless; and the most modern ones are the most so. St. Giles’
Cathedral is a black, shapeless, and ruinous mass, stuck round with
booths and police-officers; and when one has said, that the portion
of it set apart for public worship as the High Kirk, has a handsome
old roof spoiled by tasteless painting, and a square tower with an
imperial crown, which looks well at a distance, and not absolutely
ill when one is close to it,--one has about summed up the whole of
its merits. Respecting most of the other Presbyterian churches, the
less that is said the better; the Grey-Friars, situate south of the
Castle, has an interest with the more devout people of Scotland, from
the tombs of the martyrs that are in the adjoining burial-ground; and
St. George’s Church, which terminates the street of the same name,
westward, is perhaps the most expensive and unseemly abortion of modern
architecture. Public monuments in the Athens there are none, except
Nelson’s (formerly mentioned) on the Calton-Hill, and Lord Melville’s
column in St. Andrew’s Square; and it is not the fashion of the Athens
to consider her burying-grounds as sacred, or to set up memorials for
the illustrious dead. If her plan gives her as much trouble as this
would do, it is trouble of a different kind: she keeps down, as much as
she can, all those who are not either illustrious already, or have not
something to confer, as long as they are alive; and when they are dead,
she gives herself no more trouble about them.
Of her other public buildings, the College is the largest; but
as the plan was far beyond her means, it stood a ruin for a very
considerable period, and will ultimately be a piece of patchwork in
consequence of a deviation from the original design. Still, however,
if it could be seen, the entrance front is majestic; and the opposite
square (especially the whole façade in which the Museum is, and the
rooms for the Museum itself) is singularly chaste and beautiful. The
Register-House is a neat building, and seen to considerable advantage;
but there is something trifling in the whole air of it.
That frost-work style of architecture, which out-Goths all the Goths
that ever existed, has visited the Athens, in some of its most tawdry
and fantastic specimens,--the chief of which are an episcopal chapel
near the west end of Princes’ Street, and another near the east end of
Queen Street, of which it would puzzle a conjuror to point out the most
ridiculous.
Even the Castle has suffered the infliction of the modern Athenian
taste, by the erection of two or three piles within its ramparts which
have every appearance of being cotton manufactories. So much for the
still life of the modern Athens.
To give a general idea of the Athenian people, is by no means so easy
a matter. They take their character from a number of circumstances;
and the circumstances cannot be properly explained without an allusion
to the character, nor the character rightly appreciated without a
reference to the circumstances. If one dwell upon the general subject,
one is forced to assert without any means of proving; and if one take
up a single particular, although the proof be perfect in as far as that
is concerned, it is difficult to establish the connexion, and point out
the effect, with regard to the whole. To examine society with a view to
determine the general spirit and character of those who compose it,
is like examining an animal with a view to a knowledge of the nature
and operation of the living principle. If we examine it while alive
and in the performance of its functions, we see the results without
being able to understand the machinery; and if we dissect and separate
the different parts, we have the machinery without the results; nor
does it appear that there are any means by which we can obtain a
contemporaneous view of both.
Thus, I found the character of the Athenians different from that
of the inhabitants of any other city; and I also found many of the
circumstances under which they are placed to be peculiar; but still
I am not prepared to say, that the one set of peculiarities are
altogether to be set down as causes, and the other as effects. The
Athens has, doubtless, stamped upon her people much of their character,
and they have requited her by service of the same kind; so that any
pretension to be profoundly philosophic in the matter would be as
impossible as for my purpose it is unnecessary.
The leading characteristic of the Athenians, of all ranks, all degrees
of understanding, all measures of taste, all shades of party, and both
sexes, is to esteem their own idols in preference to the idols of every
other people on the face of the earth. Their own situation is the
finest that can possibly be found; and their own mode of improving
it is superior to any that could be suggested. Their men, taken on
the average, excel all others in wisdom, and nothing can any way
compare with the brilliance of their women. In their manners they are
never vulgar; and in their tastes and judgments they do not make half
the slips and blunders which are made by the rest of the world. The
songs of their poets (when they happen to have any) are transcendent
for sublimity and sweetness; and the theories of their philosophers
(of which they are never without a reasonable portion) are ever the
most agreeable to nature, and the most nicely put together. Upon the
latter point they are somewhat amusing; for in no place whatever have
philosophic theories been so often changed, as among the sages of the
succession of schools which, shining from the Athens, have dazzled and
illuminated mankind; and yet, while each of these theories has been the
object of Athenian adoration, it, and none but it, has been the true
one. In politics they have not, at least for a long time, been agreed
in their doctrines, or unanimous in their worship; for in politics,
interest has generally much more to do than principle; and, being by
much the stronger of the two, and pulling opposite ways with different
parties, it has produced among the Athenians, divisions which are as
remarkable as their union of self-adoration in most other things.
Whence, it may be asked, does this self-adoration arise? To which
I would answer, in the true Athenian manner, by asking where the
affections of a widowed and childless woman, who has no hope and no
chance of being courted by another, are centred. The Athens is a
widowed metropolis: she stands registered in the pages of history as
having been the seat of kings,--she has her walls of a palace, her name
of a royal household, and her gewgaws of a crown and sceptre; but the
satisfying, the fattening, the satiating,--or perhaps, as some would
call it, the stultifying presence and influence of the monarch is not
there; neither is there any vice-roy, or other kingly vice-gerent set
high enough in its stead, to attract the attention, and invite or
command the worship of the people. Thus, she is in herself not only the
capital of Scotland, but all that Scotland has localized as an apology
for a king; and therefore, besides assuming the consequence due to a
royal seat, she puts on the airs of royalty itself, and worships her
own shadow in the mirror of the passing time. She is the only city
in the British islands which is so situated; and this alone would be
sufficient to give her a peculiarity of character, and to make that
peculiarity an inordinate pride.
Thus the Athens, taking her nominal and her real situation into the
account, is both metropolitan and provincial: with regard to Scotland,
she has the name, and assumes the pride, of being metropolitan in
every thing; and in as far as concerns the administration of the laws
as peculiar to Scotland, and in some degree, also, as concerning the
internal discipline of the Scottish Kirk, she is really metropolitan;
but in respect of Britain generally, she is nothing more than a
provincial city, and the matters in which she is provincial have, to
the full, as powerful an influence upon her rival character, as those
in which she is, or flatters herself to be, metropolitan, have upon
the character which she is anxious to assume. It is not, for instance,
in the nature of things, that she can ever take the lead in matters of
taste and fashion. Wherever the executive and legislative powers of
the state are allocated, it is there that the gay and the rich will
throng; and notwithstanding all the boasted elegance and taste of the
Athens, no Scottish nobleman, or even squire, spends his winter there,
if he can afford to spend it in London. Hence, the Athens is not only
destitute of the source whence fashion flows, but she is also left
without the means by which it could be supported: she is second-rate in
her very nature, and also in those who form her leading society.
But it follows of necessary consequence, that a place which is
second-rate in fashion and in wealth, must be second-rate also in
every thing which fashion can encourage and wealth reward. A solitary
student who prosecutes a science, or a solitary artist who practises
an art, for its own sake, and with an inferior degree of regard to
present honour and emolument, might perchance succeed better in the
Athens than in the British metropolis. But, as British society is at
present constituted, there are few who have the means, and apparently
not many who have the desire, of proceeding in this way; and therefore,
the place which attracts the fashion and the wealth, will also attract
the superior talent, in consequence of the superior means of rewarding
which it possesses; and upon this principle, it would be just as vain
for the Athens to hope to rival London in any of the liberal arts, or
elegant amusements, as it would be for the Scotch lords of Session,
to rival the upper House of the British Parliament, the George Street
Assembly Rooms to rival Almack’s, or the speeches of the Scotch
advocates to be read with as much attention as those of the leading
orators in the House of Commons.
Of those classes of persons whose professions fix them in Scotland,
the Athens, if she manages her patronage honestly and judiciously, may
always command the best. The judges and pleaders in her supreme court
ought to be superior to the sheriffs and attornies in the Scottish
counties; her clergymen, if those who have the appointment of them were
to be guided solely by merit, ought to be the most learned and most
eloquent that Scotland can produce; the professors in her university
ought (under the same proviso) to be superior to those of Aberdeen
and St. Andrews, and perhaps also to those of Glasgow; and, even in
other cases, she may produce one or two lights more brilliant than
the average in the metropolis;--but, in all cases, where there is no
necessary tie, real or imaginary, to bind a man northward of the Tweed,
the Athens must be satisfied with making her selection after London
has been supplied. Or if she deny the conclusion, she must also deny a
principle upon which her people know as well how to act as the people
of any place,--that whoever can afford to pay the best, will get the
best and the readiest service.
For adopting this theory, the Athens must not accuse me, either of
ignorance of her erudition, or of a wish to detract from her real
merits. I know her more intimately than she may perhaps be aware; and
if I were to judge her by the strict letter of my own experience, I
should place her sundry degrees lower still; and tell the world of some
of the bitterness which she foolishly squeezes into her own dish,
and some of the ludicrous positions into which she works herself, by
attempting a grace and a dignity, which her nature and her education
alike deny to her; but I have no desire to state any more than is
sufficient to establish the truth; and if she can point out a theory
either of this leading feature of her general character, or of any of
the more detailed and particular ones, which will explain the phenomena
better than mine, I shall be very willing to adopt it. Meanwhile,
however, it is fitting that a city, which not only looks down in scorn
upon the country to which she owes her daily bread, but which affects
to sneer at those whom she must notwithstanding copy, and whom it is
utterly impossible that she can ever equal, should be rebuked for her
arrogance, and resisted when she would claim that to which she neither
has nor can have the smallest title.