A' The lumms smokeless! No ae jack turnin' a piece o' roastin' beef
afore ae fire in ony ae kitchen in a' the New Toon! Streets and
squares a' grass-grown, sae that they micht be mawn! Shops like
bee-hives that hae de'd in wunter! Coaches settin' aff for Stirlin',
and Perth, and Glasgow, and no ae passenger either inside or out--only
the driver keepin' up his heart wi' flourishin' his whup, and the
guard, sittin' in perfect solitude, playin' an eerie spring on his
bugle-horn! The shut-up play-house a' covered ower wi' bills that seem
to speak o' plays acted in an antediluvian world! Here, perhaps, a
leevin' creter, like ane emage, staunin' at the mouth o' a close, or
hirplin' alang, like the last relic o' the plague. And oh! but the
stane-statue o' the late Lord Melville, staunin' a' by himsell up in
the silent air, a hunder-and-fifty feet high, has then a ghastly
seeming in the sky, like some giant condemned to perpetual
imprisonment on his pedestal, and mournin' ower the desolation of the
city that in life he loved so well.--_Noctes--Blackwood's Magazine_.
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