MUNCHAUSEN RIDE THROUGH EDINBURGH.
We were sitting rather negligently on an infernal animal, which, up to that day, had seemed quiet as a lamb—kissing our hand to Mrs. Davison, then Miss Duncan, and in the blaze of her fame, when a Highland regiment, no doubt the forty-second, that had been trudging down the Mound, so silently that we never heard them, all at once, and without the slightest warning, burst out, with all their bag-pipes, into one pibroch! The mare—to do her justice—had been bred in England, and ridden, as a charger, by an adjutant to an English regiment. She was even fond of music—and delighted to prance behind the band—unterrified by cymbals or great drum. She never moved in a roar of artillery at reviews—and, had the Castle of Edinburgh—Lord bless it—been self-involved, at that moment, in a storm of thunder and lightning, round its entire circle of cannon, that mare would not so much as have pricked up her ears, whisked her tail, or lifted a hoof. But the pibroch was more than horse-flesh and blood could endure—and off we two went like a whirlwind. Where we went—that is to say, what were the names of the few first streets along which we were borne, is a question which, as a man of veracity, we must positively decline answering. For some short space of time, lines of houses reeled by without a single face at the windows—and these, we have since conjectured, might be North and South Hanover street, and Queen-street. By and by we surely were in something like a square—could it be Charlotte-square?—and round and round it we flew—three, four, five, or six times, as horsemen do at the Caledonian amphitheatre—for the animal had got blind with terror, and kept viciously reasoning in a circle. What a show of faces at all the windows then! A shriek still accompanied us as we clattered, and thundered, and lightened along; and, unless our ears lied, there were occasional fits of stifled laughter, and once or twice a guffaw; for there was now a ringing of lost stirrups—and much holding of the mane. One complete round was executed by us, first on the shoulder beyond the pommel; secondly, on the neck; thirdly, between the ears; fourthly, between the forelegs, in a place called the counter, with our arms round the jugular veins of the flying phenomenon, and our toes in the air. That was, indeed, the crisis of our fever, but we made a wonderful recovery back into the saddle—righting like a boat capsized in a sudden squall at sea—and once more, with accelerated speed, away past the pillared front of St. George's church!
The castle and all its rocks, in peristrephic panorama, then floated cloud-like by—and we saw the whole mile-length of Prince's-street stretched before us, studded with innumerable coaches, chaises, chariots, carts, wagons, drays, gigs, shandrydans, and wheel-barrows, through among which we dashed, as if they had been as much gingerbread—while men on horseback were seen flinging themselves off, and drivers dismounting in all directions, making their escape up flights of steps and common stairs—mothers or nurses with broods of young children flying hither and thither in distraction, or standing on the very crown of the causeway, wringing their hands in despair. The wheel-barrows were easily disposed of—nor was there much greater difficulty with the gigs and shandrydans. But the hackney-coaches stood confoundedly in the way—and a wagon, drawn by four horses, and heaped up to the very sky with beer-barrels, like the Tower of Babel or Babylon, did indeed give us pause—but ere we had leisure to ruminate on the shortness of human life, we broke through between the leaders and the wheels with a crash of leathern breeching, dismounted collars, riven harness, and tumbling of enormous horses that was perilous to hear; when, as Sin and Satan would have it—would you believe it?—there, twenty kilts deep at the least, was the same accursed Highland regiment, the forty-second, with fixed bayonets, and all its pipers in the van, the pibroch yelling, squeaking, squealing, grunting, growling, roaring, as if it had only that very instant broken out—so, suddenly to the right—about went the bag-pipe-haunted mare, and away up the Mound, past the pictures of Irish Giants—Female Dwarfs—Albinos—an Elephant endorsed with towers—Tigers and Lions of all sorts—and a large wooden building, like a pyramid, in which there was the thundering of cannon—for the battle, we rather think, of Camperdown was going on—the Bank of Scotland seemed to sink into the NorLoch—one gleam through the window of the eyes of the Director-General—and to be sure how we did make the street-stalls of the Lawn-market spin! The man in St. Giles's steeple was playing his one o'clock tune on the bells, heedless in that elevation of our career—in less than no time John Knox, preaching from a house half-way down the Canongate, gave us the go-by—and down through one long wide sprawl of men, women, and children we wheeled past the Gothic front, and round the south angle of Holyrood, and across the King's-park, where wan and withered sporting debtors held up their hands and cried, Hurra—hurra—hurra—without stop or stay, up the rocky way that leads to St. Anthony's Well and Chapel—and now it was manifest that we were bound for the summit of Arthur's Seat. We hope that we were sufficiently thankful that a direction was not taken towards Salisbury Crags, where we should have been dashed into many million pieces. Free now from even the slightest suburban impediment, obstacle, or interruption, we began to eye our gradually rising situation in life—and looking over our shoulder, the sight of city and sea was indeed magnificent. There in the distance rose North Berwick Law—but though we have plenty of time now for description, we had scant time then for beholding perhaps the noblest scenery in Scotland. Up with us—up with us into the clouds—and just as St. Giles's bells ceased to jingle, and both girths broke, we crowned the summit, and sat on horseback like king Arthur himself, eight hundred feet above the level of the sea!
Blackwood's Magazine.