Returning thence to the High Street, we followed it up to the Castle,
which is nearer the town, and of more easy access from it, than I had
supposed. There is a large court or parade before the castle gate, with
a parapet on the abrupt side of the hill, looking towards Arthur's Seat
and Salisbury Crags, mud overhanging a portion of the old town. As we
leaned over this parapet, my nose was conscious of the bad odor of
Edinburgh, although the streets, whence it must have come, were hundreds
of feet below. I have had some experience of this ugly smell in the poor
streets of Liverpool; but I think I never perceived it before crossing
the Atlantic. It is the odor of an old system of life; the scent of the
pine forests is still too recent with us for it to be known in America.
The Castle of Edinburgh is free (as appears to be the case with all
garrisoned places in Great Britain) to the entrance of any peaceable
person. So we went in, and found a large space enclosed within the
walls, and dwellings for officers, and accommodation for soldiers, who
were being drilled, or loitering about; and as the hill still ascends
within the external wall of the castle, we climbed to the summit, and
there found an old soldier whom we engaged to be our guide. He showed us
Mons Meg, a great old cannon, broken at the breech, but still aimed
threateningly from the highest ramparts; and then he admitted us into an
old chapel, said to have been built by a Queen of Scotland, the sister of
Harold, King of England, and occupying the very highest part of the hill.
It is the smallest place of worship I ever saw, but of venerable
architecture, and of very solid construction. The old soldier had not
much more to show us; but he pointed out the window whence one of the
kings of Scotland is said, when a baby, to have been lowered down, the
whole height of the castle, to the bottom of the precipice on which it
stands,--a distance of seven hundred feet.
After the soldier had shown us to the extent of his jurisdiction, we went
into a suite of rooms, in one of which I saw a portrait of Queen Mary,
which gave me, for the first time, an idea that she was really a very
beautiful woman. In this picture she is wonderfully so,--a tender
womanly grace, which was none the less tender and graceful for being
equally imbued with queenly dignity and spirit. It was too lovely a head
to be cut off. I should be glad to know the authenticity of this
picture.
I do not know that we did anything else worthy of note, before leaving
Edinburgh. There is matter enough, in and about the town, to interest
the visitor for a very long time; but when the visit is calculated on
such brevity as ours was, we get weary of the place, before even these
few hours come to an end. Thus, for my part, I was not sorry when, in
the course of the afternoon, we took the rail for Melrose, where we duly
arrived, and put up at the George Inn.