and acting under advice of the cabman, we drove to Addison's Alma Hotel,
which we find to be in Prince's Street, having Scott's monument a few
hundred yards below, and the Castle Hill about as much above.
The Edinburgh people seem to be accustomed to climb mountains within
their own houses; so we had to mount several staircases before we reached
our parlor, which is a very good one, and commands a beautiful view of
Prince's Street, and of the picturesque old town, and the valley between,
and of the castle on its hill.
Our first visit was to the castle, which we reached by going across the
causeway that bridges the valley, and has some edifices of Grecian
architecture on it, contrasting strangely with the nondescript ugliness
of the old town, into which we immediately pass. As this is my second
visit to Edinburgh, I surely need not dwell upon describing it at such
length as if I had never been here before. After climbing up through
various wards of the castle to the topmost battery, where Mons Meg holds
her station, looking like an uncouth dragon,--with a pile of huge stone
balls beside her for eggs,--we found that we could not be admitted to
Queen Mary's apartments, nor to the crown-room, till twelve o'clock;
moreover, that there was no admittance to the crown-room without tickets
from the crown-office, in Parliament Square. There being no help for it,
I left my wife and J----- to wander through the fortress, and came down
through High Street in quest of Parliament Square, which I found after
many inquiries of policemen, and after first going to the Justiciary
Court, where there was a great throng endeavoring to get in; for the
trial of Miss Smith for the murder of her lover is causing great
excitement just now. There was no difficulty made about the tickets,
and, returning, found S----- and J-----; but J----- grew tired of
waiting, and set out to return to our hotel, through the great strange
city, all by himself. Through means of an attendant, we were admitted
into Queen Margaret's little chapel, on the top of the rock; and then we
sat down, in such shelter as there was, to avoid the keen wind, blowing
through the embrasures of the ramparts, and waited as patiently as we
could.
Twelve o'clock came, and we went into the crown-room, with a throng of
other visitors,--so many that they could only be admitted in separate
groups. The Regalia of Scotland lie on a circular table within an iron
railing, round and round which the visitors pass, gazing with all their
eyes. The room was dark, however, except for the dim twinkle of a candle
or gaslight; and the regalia did not show to any advantage, though there
are some rich jewels, set in their ancient gold. The articles consist of
a two-handed sword, with a hilt and scabbard of gold, ornamented with
gems, and a mace, with a silver handle, all very beautifully made;
besides the golden collar and jewelled badge of the Garter, and something
else which I forget. Why they keep this room so dark I cannot tell; but
it is a poor show, and gives the spectator an idea of the poverty of
Scotland, and the minuteness of her sovereignty, which I had not gathered
from her royal palaces.
Thence we went into Queen Mary's room, and saw that beautiful portrait--
that very queen and very woman--with which I was so much impressed at my
last visit. It is wonderful that this picture does not drive all the
other portraits of Mary out of the field, whatever may be the comparative
proofs of their authenticity. I do not know the history of this one,
except that it is a copy by Sir William Gordon of a picture by an
Italian, preserved at Dunrobin Castle.
After seeing what the castle had to show, which is but little except
itself, its rocks, and its old dwellings of princes and prisoners, we
came down through the High Street, inquiring for John Knox's house. It
is a strange-looking edifice, with gables on high, projecting far, and
some sculpture, and inscriptions referring to Knox. There is a
tobacconist's shop in the basement story, where I learned that the house
used to be shown to visitors till within three months, but it is now
closed, for some reason or other. Thence we crossed a bridge into the
new town, and came back through Prince's Street to the hotel, and had a
good dinner, as preparatory to fresh wearinesses; for there is no other
weariness at all to be compared to that of sight-seeing.
In mid afternoon we took a cab and drove to Holyrood Palace, which I have
already described, as well as the chapel, and do not mean to meddle with
either of them again. We looked at our faces in the old mirrors that
Queen Mary brought from France with her, and which had often reflected
her own lovely face and figure; and I went up the winding stair through
which the conspirators ascended. This, I think, was not accessible at my
former visit. Before leaving the palace, one of the attendants advised
us to see some pictures in the apartments occupied by the Marquis of
Breadalbane during the queen's residence here. We found some fine old
portraits and other paintings by Vandyke, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey
Kneller, and a strange head by Rubens, amid all which I walked wearily,
wishing that there were nothing worth looking at in the whole world. My
wife differs altogether from me in this matter; . . . . but we agreed, on
this occasion, in being tired to death. Just as we got through with the
pictures, I became convinced of what I had been dimly suspecting all the
while, namely, that at my last visit to the palace I had seen these
selfsame pictures, and listened to the selfsame woman's civil answers, in
just the selfsame miserable weariness of mood.
We left the palace, and toiled up through the dirty Canongate, looking
vainly for a fly, and employing our time, as well as we could, in looking
at the squalid mob of Edinburgh, and peeping down the horrible vistas of
the closes, which were swarming with dirty life, as some mouldy and
half-decayed substance might swarm with insects,--vistas down alleys
where sin, sorrow, poverty, drunkenness, all manner of sombre and sordid
earthly circumstances, had imbued the stone, brick, and wood of the
habitations for hundreds of years. And such a multitude of children too;
that was a most striking feature.
After tea I went down into the valley between the old town and the new,
which is now laid out as an ornamental garden, with grass, shrubbery,
flowers, gravelled walks, and frequent seats. Here the sun was setting,
and gilded the old town with its parting rays, making it absolutely the
most picturesque scene possible to be seen. The mass of tall, ancient
houses, heaped densely together, looked like a Gothic dream; for there
seemed to be towers and all sorts of stately architecture, and spires
ascended out of the mass; and above the whole was the castle, with a
diadem of gold on its topmost turret. It wanted less than a quarter of
nine when the last gleam faded from the windows of the old town, and left
the crowd of buildings dim and indistinguishable, to reappear on the
morrow in squalor, lifting their meanness skyward, the home of layer upon
layer of unfortunate humanity. The change symbolized the difference
between a poet's imagination of life in the past--or in a state which he
looks at through a colored and illuminated medium--and the sad reality.
This morning we took a cab, and set forth between ten and eleven to see
Edinburgh and its environs; driving past the University, and other
noticeable objects in the old town, and thence out to Arthur's Seat.
Salisbury Crags are a very singular feature of the outskirts. From the
heights, beneath Arthur's Seat, we had a fine prospect of the sea, with
Leith and Portobello in the distance, and of a fertile plain at the foot
of the hill. In the course of our drive our cabman pointed out
Dumbiedikes' house; also the cottage of Jeanie Deans,--at least, the spot
where it formerly stood; and Muschat's Cairn, of which a small heap of
stones is yet remaining. Near this latter object are the ruins of St.
Anthony's Chapel, a roofless gable, and other remains, standing on the
abrupt hillside. We drove homeward past a parade-ground on which a body
of cavalry was exercising, and we met a company of infantry on their
route thither. Then we drove near Calton Hill, which seems to be not a
burial-ground, although the site of stately monuments. In fine, we
passed through the Grass-Market, where we saw the cross in the pavement
in the street, marking the spot, as I recorded before, where Porteous was
executed. Thence we passed through the Cowgate, all the latter part of
our drive being amongst the tall, quaint edifices of the old town, alike
venerable and squalid. From the Grass-Market the rock of the castle
looks more precipitous than as we had hitherto seen it, and its prisons,
palaces, and barracks approach close to its headlong verge, and form one
steep line with its descent. We drove quite round the Castle Hill, and
returned down Prince's Street to our hotel. There can be no other city
in the world that affords more splendid scenery, both natural and
architectural, than Edinburgh.
Then we went to St. Giles's Cathedral, which I shall not describe, it
having been kirkified into three interior divisions by the Covenanters;
and I left my wife to take drawings, while J----- and I went to
Short's Observatory, near the entrance of the castle. Here we saw a
camera-obscura, which brought before us, without our stirring a step,
almost all the striking objects which we had been wandering to and fro to
see. We also saw the mites in cheese, gigantically magnified by a solar
microscope; likewise some dioramic views, with all which I was mightily
pleased, and for myself, being tired to death of sights, I would as lief
see them as anything else. We found, on calling for mamma at St.
Giles's, that she had gone away; but she rejoined us between four and
five o'clock at our hotel, where the next thing we did was to dine.
Again after dinner we walked out, looking at the shop-windows of
jewellers, where ornaments made of cairngorm pebbles are the most
peculiar attraction. As it was our wedding-day, . . . . I gave S----- a
golden and amethyst-bodied cairngorm beetle with a ruby head; and after
sitting awhile in Prince's Street Gardens, we came home.
July 10th.--Last evening I walked round the castle rock, and through the
Grass-Market, where I stood on the inlaid cross in the pavement, thence
down the High Street beyond John Knox's house. The throng in that part
of the town was very great. There is a strange fascination in these old
streets, and in the peeps down the closes; but it doubtless would be a
great blessing were a fire to sweep through the whole of ancient
Edinburgh. This system of living on flats, up to I know not what story,
must be most unfavorable to cleanliness, since they have to fetch their
water all that distance towards heaven, and how they get rid of their
rubbish is best known to themselves.
My wife has gone to Roslin this morning, and since her departure it has
been drizzly, so that J----- and I, after a walk through the new part of
the town, are imprisoned in our parlor with little resource except to
look across the valley to the castle, where Mons Meg is plainly visible
on the upper platform, and the lower ramparts, zigzagging about the edge
of the precipice, which nearly in front of us is concealed or softened by
a great deal of shrubbery, but farther off descends steeply down to the
grass below. Somewhere on this side of the rock was the point where
Claverhouse, on quitting Edinburgh before the battle of Killiecrankie,
clambered up to hold an interview with the Duke of Gordon. What an
excellent thing it is to have such striking and indestructible landmarks
and time-marks that they serve to affix historical incidents to, and
thus, as it were, nail down the Past for the benefit of all future ages!
The old town of Edinburgh appears to be situated, in its densest part, on
the broad back of a ridge, which rises gradually to its termination in
the precipitous rock, on which stands the castle. Between the old town
and the new is the valley, which runs along at the base of this ridge,
and which, in its natural state, was probably rough and broken, like any
mountain gorge. The lower part of the valley, adjacent to the Canongate,
is now a broad hollow space, fitted up with dwellings, shops, or
manufactories; the next portion, between two bridges, is converted into
an ornamental garden free to the public, and contains Scott's beautiful
monument,--a canopy of Gothic arches and a fantastic spire, beneath which
he sits, thoughtful and observant of what passes in the contiguous
street; the third portion of the valley, above the last bridge, is
another ornamental garden, open only to those who have pass-keys. It is
an admirable garden, with a great variety of surface, and extends far
round the castle rock, with paths that lead up to its very base, among
leafy depths of shrubbery, and winds beneath the sheer, black precipice.
J----- and I walked there this forenoon, and took refuge from a shower
beneath an overhanging jut of the rock, where a bench had been placed,
and where a curtain of hanging ivy helped to shelter us. On our return
to the hotel, we found mamma just alighting from a cab. She had had very
bad fortune in her excursion to Roslin, having had to walk a long
distance to the chapel, and being caught in the rain; and, after all, she
could only spend seven minutes in viewing the beautiful Roslin
architecture.